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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Ontzettend sympathiek boek en prachtig geschreven. Ik heb hem in het Engels gelezen, waardoor ik er, voor een boekje van 160 bladzijden, erg lang over deed. Misschien is het tijd om aan Lolita te beginnen.
challenging
emotional
funny
lighthearted
slow-paced
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
“You turn north and go on bearing north at each crossing—there are quite a few logging trails in those woods but you just bear north and you’ll get to Cook’s in twelve minutes flat. You can’t miss it.”
Pnin had now been in that maze of forest roads for about an hour and had come to the conclusion that “bear north,” and in fact the word “north” itself, meant nothing to him.
My first Nabokov read (an unusual place to start, I know!), for my reading bingo square “A book by an author with English as a second language”. I got stubborn and decided that a book in translation wouldn’t count, so I specifically tracked down authors who wrote in English despite it not being their native tongue.
Pnin was surprisingly enjoyable: it’s a dryly comedic academic satire, feat. the boisterous and yet woebegone and unfortunate Professor Pnin, and his adventures in ivory-tower America — while also dogged by memories of past mistakes and lost friends and lovers and the bloody history he left behind in Europe. And yet despite having fled such dreadful circumstances, Timofey Pnin himself is such a bright and cheery figure that you can’t help but love him (because I am predictable, his paternal relationship with Victor gave me the most feelings, as well as his painful memories of Mira).
He’s a deeply sympathetic character, sketched in detail, and this review elucidates better than I can how Lolita & Pnin contrast each other, this book operating like a balm to the unpleasantry of the other.
I’m absolutely astonished at Nabokov’s grasp of English: deft wordplay, tongue-in-cheek bilingual code-switching, a playfulness with the form that even native speakers often can’t reach. This was the perfect choice for my bingo square. There’s also some playfulness in terms of the narrator and their identity, and how the pieces slowly come together at the end and you realise who’s actually telling this story.
There’s just about zero plot, which is the main reason I was glad it was short and didn’t drag on for too long; it reads more like an extended character study (which is apt), so I wasn’t in love with it, but I really enjoyed this short novel and am looking forward to eventually reading more Nabokov now.
PS: Tangentially, what this novel kept reminding me of, too, is T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, in terms of aging balding men and their regrets (“the smoke that rises from the pipes / Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows”).
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It’s not good. It’s not funny and it’s barely interesting. In Pale Fire Nabokov wrote off orientalism as a weird fetishising quirk of his last pseudo-intellectual protagonist. Here it’s getting harder to pass off his weird exoticist and sexist predilections as mere character traits.
The tale follows this lumbering, ridiculous, and inconsistent old man. Its most silly moments seem to want to evoke the airs of Gogol. However, Nabokov possesses no powers of self reflection, fails to critique anything besides faculty at Cornell who are Sovietophiles or don’t know much about Russian culture — and even then it’s surface-level. With no further explanation he describes Soviet Social-Revolutionary groups as “terrorists, mainly”, and “medieval tortures in Soviet jail” before turning around and idealising America to an uncomfortable, slobbering degree.
Sure, I personally enjoyed the brief discussions of classic Russian literature and Russian cultural tidbits. Doesn’t mean I found anything particularly salient, true, or surprising here.
Nabokov has always been all style and no substance. If I wasn’t sure of that before I’m sure now.
Very good! Pnin and the other characters were all very interesting and it was written very well. I'll ahve to read more Nabokov
challenging
dark
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
adventurous
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes