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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
**
my first Nabakov; I am in love.
incredibly funny, overflowing with brilliant, witty, masterful descriptive language, playful, dazzlingly original, gradually more and more emotionally moving and suddenly, all at once like a high-speed train, inducing of heavy, ugly sobs.
usually when a novelist is described as playing with, toying with, tricking his reader my expectations plummet. I was aware Nabokov had this kind of reputation and so was a tad reticent; I associate this kind of thing with writers who are too cowardly to be sincere, too emotionally constipated to penetrate to the heart of things and so comfort themselves with silly intellectual games that make them feel superior to the reader. but when Nabakov plays with you he's playing with you, inviting you warmly into his mischievous little game rather than perching above you and sneering down as you try to navigate a pedantic puzzle. one of the great gifts of Pnin is the special honour of feeling that you've been invited to share in Nabakov's glee, his pure delight of wordplay and web-weaving.
there are many little games here; puns, solecisms, callbacks, but the long game Nabokov is playing, which I won't spoil here, is a wonderful display of structural mastery.
literally the only intelligent piece of writing I could find online on this novel, which is a huge shame:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/may/08/classics.vladimirnabokov
my first Nabakov; I am in love.
incredibly funny, overflowing with brilliant, witty, masterful descriptive language, playful, dazzlingly original, gradually more and more emotionally moving and suddenly, all at once like a high-speed train, inducing of heavy, ugly sobs.
usually when a novelist is described as playing with, toying with, tricking his reader my expectations plummet. I was aware Nabokov had this kind of reputation and so was a tad reticent; I associate this kind of thing with writers who are too cowardly to be sincere, too emotionally constipated to penetrate to the heart of things and so comfort themselves with silly intellectual games that make them feel superior to the reader. but when Nabakov plays with you he's playing with you, inviting you warmly into his mischievous little game rather than perching above you and sneering down as you try to navigate a pedantic puzzle. one of the great gifts of Pnin is the special honour of feeling that you've been invited to share in Nabakov's glee, his pure delight of wordplay and web-weaving.
there are many little games here; puns, solecisms, callbacks, but the long game Nabokov is playing, which I won't spoil here, is a wonderful display of structural mastery.
literally the only intelligent piece of writing I could find online on this novel, which is a huge shame:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/may/08/classics.vladimirnabokov
Not Nabokov’s best novel, but for the first 170 pages it may be his most humane. The initial chapters seem to be a comedy of errors and manners as Timofey Pnin struggles to arrive on time to a guest lecture, find suitable lodging at the college where he teaches, and attempts to engage the half dozen students on his schedule. Nabokov's narrator wants us to laugh at Pnin, but the middle of the book reveals a different, far more human side as Pnin's relationship to the son of his ex-wife from her subsequent marriage becomes the focus. Chapter 5 is a masterpiece within the novel, launching Pnin into a Proustian reconstruction of the crucial summer decades earlier and the tragic loss that underpins a man we now view in a totally different light. That tragedy continues throughout the bumbling comedy: physical, situational, and linguistic that occurs at a "house-heating party" before the final chapter upends everything and elicits serious reflection.
Pnin lacks the virtuoso language that characterize The Gift, Lolita, and Ada, and it does not have the formal experimentation of Pale Fire, but it is a key text as Nabokov reconciles his prose to one of his most human characters, a fundamentally kind man who is the antithesis: physical, emotional, and linguistic of the monstrous Humbert Humbert.
Pnin lacks the virtuoso language that characterize The Gift, Lolita, and Ada, and it does not have the formal experimentation of Pale Fire, but it is a key text as Nabokov reconciles his prose to one of his most human characters, a fundamentally kind man who is the antithesis: physical, emotional, and linguistic of the monstrous Humbert Humbert.
emotional
funny
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
"Presently all were asleep again. It was a pity nobody saw the display in the empty street, where the auroral breeze winkled a large luminous puddle, making of the telephone wires reflected in it illegible lines of black zigzags".
Nabokov is able to very easily write about basic human experience and thoughts which many other writers struggle to do. Can't recommend this book more.
Nabokov is able to very easily write about basic human experience and thoughts which many other writers struggle to do. Can't recommend this book more.
funny
lighthearted
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
funny
lighthearted
reflective
medium-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
funny
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
It has all of Nabokov's beautiful prose on top of a charming main character and it's just really wholesome and quite enjoyable. It was a bit...I don't want to say boring or thin, but it's a book where nothing really happens but it does so in a charming way. So I rather liked it.
A book that was hard to read without a smile on your face, which is not something you'd expect from the author of Lolita.
A book that was hard to read without a smile on your face, which is not something you'd expect from the author of Lolita.
funny
sad
Pnin traipses along in a short 200-odd page book with many of the same glimpses of sublime prose, over-detailed quotidian observations, incredible descriptions of trees and weird, semi-erotic fascinations around the mouth that enchanted readers in Lolita. Pnin is neither as dark or masterful as that book, adopting instead a wry, absurd tone that is equally as intelligent but far less arrogant and psycho-sexually charged than Humbert Humbert. That the book is more comical than the author's reputation might suggest (however much I think the book's reputation somewhat overstates its hilarity) is not to say it's a pleasant but shallow romp without subtext. Indeed, the titular character of Pnin, bumbling, often mocked, the butt of many jokes and constantly bewildered carries within him, the deep pain of the Russian emigre. His nostalgia for a pre-Bolshevik Russia entwines his transient nature, forever skipping from one rented lodging to the next, the instability of having lost the country of your memories, his impractical and useless pedagogy as an academic for the study of his mother tongue - for which he supplies plethora of past emotions, personal linguistic inventions and cultural artifacts instead of actual clear and constructive instruction.
Despite its short length, Pnin is sometimes a dry read, lacking a clear sense of focus, plot or tension that held readers of Lolita so captive. There are some very striking moments such as the description of a panic attack, an Oedipal-like episode and the wrestling of the past, half-remembered, fading all the time. There are also exasperating instances in which Nabokov ratchets up the sheer absurdity for how long he can keep a sentence going - how many innocuous, inconsequential clauses and non-sequiturs he can add in the middle - before finally, mercifully bringing the reader to a rare full-stop. The book was for the most part enjoyable and even interesting to think about but a far cry from Nabokov's peak writing.
Despite its short length, Pnin is sometimes a dry read, lacking a clear sense of focus, plot or tension that held readers of Lolita so captive. There are some very striking moments such as the description of a panic attack, an Oedipal-like episode and the wrestling of the past, half-remembered, fading all the time. There are also exasperating instances in which Nabokov ratchets up the sheer absurdity for how long he can keep a sentence going - how many innocuous, inconsequential clauses and non-sequiturs he can add in the middle - before finally, mercifully bringing the reader to a rare full-stop. The book was for the most part enjoyable and even interesting to think about but a far cry from Nabokov's peak writing.