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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
The episodes don’t connect well for me, but there are so many brilliant moments in each that I’m perfectly willing to overlook the episodic nature of the book.
Pnin is a Russian emigre Don Quixote without his Sancho Panza. He’s funny, extremely romantic, and pathetic, and you feel you want to protect him from life.
Pnin is a Russian emigre Don Quixote without his Sancho Panza. He’s funny, extremely romantic, and pathetic, and you feel you want to protect him from life.
Pnin is my second Nabokov book after Lolita. I didn't enjoy it quite as much, but its portrait of academic life is highly entertaining and I had a couple of giggling fits which were all the better for appearing by surprise. It's a campus novel, reminding me of Small World by David Lodge. I see someone on here has compared it with Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amas, and I got a start of recognition a few pages in when I read a description of Pnin having all his teeth extracted and I realised I had read this extract before, in Martin Amis's memoir, Experience, in relation to his own well-known dental adventures.
The central character, a Russian professor at an American college is beautifully drawn and it's a pleasure to spend time with him, even if he isn't really doing much. In fact, the character was the main reason the book was recommended to me. Not wrong there. It's a good book, and small enough to read on a longish train journey if you're lucky enough to have an attention span longer than mine.
Rambling, incoherent review. Sorry.
The central character, a Russian professor at an American college is beautifully drawn and it's a pleasure to spend time with him, even if he isn't really doing much. In fact, the character was the main reason the book was recommended to me. Not wrong there. It's a good book, and small enough to read on a longish train journey if you're lucky enough to have an attention span longer than mine.
Rambling, incoherent review. Sorry.
Little, episodic Nabokov, complete with all his typical hallmarks (ornate prose, descriptions of flowers and butterflies, esoteric vendettas between European comparative literature scholars who met through their governesses in the wake of the Russian Revolution, etc.). Here the subject is Timofey Pnin, an eccentric professor from St. Petersburg — at home in the labyrinths of Tolstoy and Pushkin arcana, but completely alien to the liberal arts university in America where he teaches. The book is very funny, studying his odd behavior from afar. And in contrast to something like Lolita (about a different kind of European immigrant, smooth-talking and demonic), is surprisingly sweet. Pnin has been blown westward by misfortune (civil war, the Holocaust, a manipulative ex-wife), and though he tries to adapt to his new country, remains nostalgic and tearful for the past he's left behind. Despite outward appearances, he is a kind-hearted man, and I think Nabokov renders Pnin (an amalgamation of Nabokov's friend and Nabokov himself) with extreme sympathy and tenderness.
curb your enthusiasm met pnin, verteld door een (niet zo’n) goede vriend. wordt herlezen in der zukunft. Algoeds.
Muy bueno Nabokov, me sorprendio el tono tan distinto a Lolita que tiene esta novela, es mucho más entretenida y ligera. Me encariñé con Pnin, él era el único real entre tantos académicos soberbios.
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:
Complicated
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Desperately fond of Pnin (novella; character). Nabokov springs this trap so masterfully of telling you how this character will grow on you and in six strokes converting you so completely that nothing is as tragic as the strained tenderness of Pnin discreetly disposing of the soccer ball via the river beneath his window, nothing as terrifying as the fear he may have shattered a lovely(!) aquamarine glass punch bowl. A portrait of a life lived in—not just its history, but the grooves of habit, linguistic Pninisms, etc. Nabokov’s style is perfectly at home in mundanity and his misanthropy has a remarkably direct translation into profound sympathy and humanism. Every sentence a delight.