Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
poor pnin!
enjoyed this read. good taste of Nabokov.
sidenote - this moldy copy did indeed make me sneeze
enjoyed this read. good taste of Nabokov.
sidenote - this moldy copy did indeed make me sneeze
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
we love the russian american mr. bean of waindell college
funny
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Forgive me for calling the prose of Pnin (pronounced puh-neen) “lush” and “lugubrious,” but that’s exactly what it is. And the way Nabokov converts his writing to a vehicle for literary comedy, makes it a unique book with ancestry to the writers like Kingsley Amis and John Kennedy Toole. Though Pnin’s episodic structure makes it light on plot, this is great character-driven comedy.
challenging
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Nabokov has some consistent preoccupations: being an immigrant, being a Russian immigrant, linguistic misunderstandings, the crassness and wonder of the U.S. in the 50's and 60's, the struggle to express synthaesthetic thoughts. I've now done the big five (Lolita, KQK, Pale Fire, The Gift, and this one), and this falls solidly in the low end of them, above The Gift but not at the level of the top three. It's slight. I read it in less than a week, sometimes at work when I wasn't busy, whereas the others took me a week and a half of concentrated effort.
There are more great joys and sadness in it than most novels, more delicious turns of phrase, more puncturing of the utter facetiousness of the modern university than most university novels besides White Noise have ever been able to match. The quasi-reveal of the POV of the main character at the end of the novel is enigmatic without being cloying, and the interludes from university life, from the bus to the forest, allow Nabokov to flex his descriptive muscles outside of the boxy confines of the campus.
Try it, you'll like it.
There are more great joys and sadness in it than most novels, more delicious turns of phrase, more puncturing of the utter facetiousness of the modern university than most university novels besides White Noise have ever been able to match. The quasi-reveal of the POV of the main character at the end of the novel is enigmatic without being cloying, and the interludes from university life, from the bus to the forest, allow Nabokov to flex his descriptive muscles outside of the boxy confines of the campus.
Try it, you'll like it.
A comic trifle of a book with Nabokov's wonderful word play and sense of the absurd. He was such a snob and there are so many deliciously catty asides in the book. He clearly hated psychology and saves some of his sharpest barbs for the psychology professors and their surveys and studies that are supposed to glean deep insights into human behavior. The book would simply be clever and slight if he didn't so poignantly capture the pain of nostalgia for an immigrant. Missing the landscape of home, the comfort of language, the life lost to revolution, Pnin is given gravitas and a heart.
This was a reread for me, and I’m so glad I reread it. The way Nabokov uses language is joyful, and the combination of comedy and tragedy in this short novel is what fiction is all about.