Customer Reviews

Pnin (Everyman's Library Contemporar)

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1 star:		(4)

 

 

Vladimir Nabokov is so often called a "master stylist" that it is easy to forget that he is an adept storyteller as well. Even though PNIN, one of his lesser known works, threatens to disappear under the gorgeous stylistic turns, it is ultimately the pathetic title character and his nemesis/narrator who drive this novel. Pnin is a Russian instructor at a college, and, due to his solitary existence and his failure to grasp the subtleties of English, he has become a running joke to most of his colleagues. He is fussy, awkward, and usually clueless. The novel reads as episodes in Pnin's life: losing his lecture notes on a train he should never have been on; his weekend with other Russian immigrants; the crushing love and hope he experiences when his ex-wife visits him; a party he gives for his colleagues. The narrator's the biting and hilarious commentary about Pnin and those he associates with keeps the reader from taking these events too seriously. But should we?

In the writing of this work, Nabokov breaks all the rules. His shifts in points-of-view, his sometimes favoring of lengthy exposition over scene, his dropping of plots and subplots just as they get going all work precisely because he is such a skilled novelist and knows the effect of abandoning conventions. In dashing the reader's hopes, his style takes tenacious hold of the reader's imagination; we learn to trust the voice - even if we shouldn't. This last is what is truly brilliant about the novel: we allow ourselves to be swept into a story of non-events and pathos, laughing along the way and becoming in essence yet another of Pnin's mocking colleagues.

Students of literature and book discussion groups can discover a wealth of topics here: Is the narrator reliable? How can the narrator be both omniscient and a specific character? How does the touching story of Pnin's first love fit with the mocking tone in the rest of the novel? What is the range of the Russian immigrant experience Nabokov supplies? Is Pnin heroic or merely pathetic?

While PNIN is hardly the masterpiece that PALE FIRE or LOLITA is, it has its own rewards. Once I advanced past the first chapter, I didn't want to leave this odd, Old World character. Highly recommended, especially if you've already read one or more of Nabokov's other works.

The only recommendation I had for this book was the ever-evolving readers' list that Random House is keeping on-line, which tallies the votes of what readers believe are the 100 best English language novels of the 20th Century. "Pnin" showed up near the bottom of the list, but with a respectable number of votes. Having always wanted to get past the Nabokov of "Lolita" fame, I took the plunge. What I found knocked my socks off. If you know ANY Russian intelligencia emigres, you know Timofei Pnin. Pnin is an unsubtle chucklehead with a heart of gold who manages to live a great deal of his life in an academic cocoon, as utterly clueless about how he is being arbitrarily protected by his dean as he is clueless about the comic effect he has on others. Doesn't sound promising? Believe me, Nabokov's deft brush turns this slender thread of an idea into a veritable War-and-Peace of an exercise in how we react to others in our life. Dare we laugh at others? We certainly laugh at Pnin. We howl. How dare we? I place this book among the top five percent of the many books I've read over the last five years.

The overwhelming success and notoriety of Lolita has sometimes had the unfortunate effect of obscuring some of Nabokov's other treasures. Pnin is one such gem, being his third English novel, fragments of which were published during the 50's in the New Yorker.
It is the account of a Timofey Pnin, professor of Classical Russian Literature at Waindell College, a course failing year after year to garner deserved interest. The novel is a succession of carefully blended time morphs, the beginning and end forming a kind of cycle, wherein the reader is made privy to various comical blunders of Pnin's academic life, as well as his painful memories of an exiled Russian past, bloody revolutions and a war-torn Europe. Pnin is proud to have adopted America as a new home, being largely oblivious of his total incompetence in the English language and his role as the butt of many cruel and childish jokes, perpetrated by the rest of Waindell staff. He lives alone, with the pangs of unrequited love and a son whom he barely has the chance to see. Pnin is a charming character, capable of inspiring a spectrum of different emotions.
Such is the plot on surface, deceptively simplistic, though having a complex clockwork running behind scenes. Things take a surprising turn when the narrator is revealed, and Nabokov himself (Mr.N) makes a bewildering appearance in his own book, inviting a complete re-interpretation of many key events. The careful reader will be left pondering the motifs of the squirrel, the identity of the novel's `Evil Maker' and the significance of Pnin's flashbacks. Some logical paradoxes are posed by the novel: there are puzzles to be worked out.
The work is slender and as such is considered one of Nabokov's more accessible novels, which can be enjoyed on a few different levels. Vladimir Nabokov did rely on a number of his own experiences, being a professor throughout several colleges in the U.S. (Stanford, Cornell, Harvard), to poke a little fun at the mechanism of academic life, though unlike poor Pnin, he possessed an unmatched control and execution of the English language. Much of the novel's translucent beauty is captured so perfectly in Nabokov's prose that many sentences deserve to be re-read several times for full appreciation of what John Updike called the `ecstasy' effect that is evident in the late master's writing.

"A score of small butterflies, all of one kind, were settled on a damp patch of sand, their wings erect and closed, showing their pale undersides with dark dots and tiny orange-rimmed peacock spots along the hindwing margins; one of Pnin's shed rubbers disturbed some of them and, revealing the celestial hue of their upper surface, they fluttered around like blue snowflakes before settling again." (Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin)

In such thrilling undulations of verse will the memory of this novel preserve itself in the mind of its sensitive reader.

PNIN must surely be one of the most gentle, merry, sad, and clever books in the English language today. All of these marvelous characteristics rely, of course, on the ability of its creator to weave visual tapestries from his word-hoard, and a superb weaver he is indeed. Vladimir Nabokov is an artist who paints fascinating images for us, with words as his paint and a pen as his brush. That English is a second language for the Russian-born Nabokov merely increases our incredulity at his skill in manipulating it so adroitly with such apparent ease.

In this one slim volume, readers will, on occasion, find a wry, sardonic grin spread across their faces at the description of the ubiquitous college campus, its students, its not-too-illustrious faculty and their pretensions, its too-efficient librarian, and the machinations of campus politics. They will smile with compassion at Timofey Pnin's efforts, never quite successful, to master the peculiarities of English, one chapter, for example, being devoted to his hosting a "house-heating" party. They will feel their protectiveness rise for this essentially good man who continually suffers the slings and arrows of cruel fortune.

Analyses of PNIN speak of the instances of bathos in the book, but that word, to me, suggests an exaggeration of pathos so great that the reader is repulsed by its artificiality. I do not find Nabokov's writing to be that crude or "over the top." Rather, the pathos is almost understated. For instance, when he learns that his ex-wife's son, fathered by her second husband, is to visit him on college vacation, Pnin buys him a fine leather football (which we Americans would call a soccer ball), and we are treated to a bit of humor at the linguistic confusion in the store while still understanding that, in Pnin's eyes, this is a delightful gift for any young athletic man on campus. He is so proud of the gift that he removes the rumpled brown wrapping paper so that Victor's first sight of the ball will be of its excellent leather cover. In hopeful conversation between the station and Pnin's rented room, Pnin excitedly brings up the topic of football only to discover that Victor has no interest in the sport whatsoever. Finally at the rooming house, while Victor is yet engaged in pleasantries with the landlord, Pnin slips upstairs and opens the window. The magnificent leather soccer ball is consigned to the storm.

Such sad conflicts are part and parcel of Pnin's life. The pleasure of meeting Victor is counterbalanced, at least in the reader's mind, by the disappointment of the failed gift. The pleasure of Pnin's marriage to Liza is offset by her obvious lack of commitment, to which Pnin seems oblivious, and her abandonment of him for Dr. Wind. The pleasure of having given a wonderful "house heating" party is supplanted by the despair of learning that he is to lose his job at the college. And so it goes from event to event-happiness is always offset by disappointment.

Pnin is an innocent, truly and thoroughly naive, who is thrust into life's ambushes without the benefit of any useful weapon at all. Yet, Nabokov does not permit him to be destroyed. He appears always accepting and even at times oblivious to the ambushes and, at the end, when he has lost his job at the college, he drives off "up the shining road, . . . narrowing to a thread of gold in the soft mist where hill after hill made beauty of distance, and where there was simply no saying what miracle might happen."

In addition to painting a verbal portrait of a guileless émigré, thoroughly lovable despite, or perhaps because of, his amusing malapropisms with his new language, Nabokov also treats the reader to an exhilarating romp with that language. One of the author's linguistic jokes actually sent me on a search for its meaning! In Chapter 3, Nabokov shares with us that, during the academic year, Pnin "existed mainly on a motuweth frisas basis." Motuweth frisas? What in the world? Latin? No. Russian? No. Purely English. Look at the first two letters of each weekday (except for Sunday from which you must take only one letter). What fun!

PNIN is a truly beautiful book, both for its pathetic, naive professor whom we quickly come to love and for the author's admirable use of our language in evoking that response in us. If your literature courses, like mine, inexplicably bypassed the works of Vladimir Nabokov, PNIN is a fine example of his art with which to rectify that omission!

With Pnin, Nabokov does what he has done elsewhere -- he spoofs middle-class, middle-century America, exploding its pretensions quite handily. But the subject matter here is a bit closer to home, as Pnin deals with the plight of Russian expatriates adrift in exile after the Revolution. One imagines Nabokov identified more than a little with his lovable, excitable protagonist, and at times the satire parts to reveal aching sadness.

The last two pages of Chapter Five, in which Pnin ruminates on the memory of a lost love who died in World War II, contain some of my favorite writing in the English language. I will quote here an exquisite paragraph:

"Pnin slowly walked under the solemn pines. The sky was dying. He did not believe in an autocratic God. He did believe, dimly, in a democracy of ghosts. The souls of the dead, perhaps, formed committees, and these, in continuous session, attended to the destinies of the quick."

In passages such as this, Nabokov walks an astonishing tightrope between caustic comedy and heartbreaking tragedy.

One of Vladimir Nabokov's lesser-known works is "Pnin," a gently comic story about a perpetually lost Russian expatriate and the chaos that is his life. Nabokov slyly lampoons America, expatriates, psychiatry and fussiness through Pnin, but he managed never to be mean-spirited about it.

Timofey Pnin is a timid professor of the Russian language at an American college, who moves every semester. Originally from Russia himself, he struggles with English, trains, appliances, dental work, and his relationship with his manipulative ex-wife, who insists that he give financial aid to her young son. The offbeat Russian expatriate drifts through his life, trying to arrange things the way they should be.

At first glance, Pnin looks like a clueless, absentminded loser. However, after Nabokov shows us his lost loves, his absurd little life, his reminiscences, we see him differently. Okay, he's still a clueless, absentminded loser. But he's a loser with depth! "Pnin" has pessimism, but there's a certain sense of comic optimism as well (despite Nabokov's explanation that he dislikes happy endings). Pnin's theme song should be "I Will Survive."

Nabokov's writing is less rich here than in many of his other novels, in keeping with the humorous plot. Perhaps the funniest chapter is when he describes Victor's lack of psychiatric complexity, making fun of shrinks everywhere. But there's plenty of subtlety with the satire, such as the tragic story of Mira, a woman Pnin loved who was killed by Nazis. Or how Pnin washes the dishes after a disastrous party.

Pnin is ethical, generous and forgiving as well as fussy, picky and more than a little strange; he's perhaps the most sympathetic character Nabokov ever made. Nabokov pokes fun at Pnin while making us like him for his essential kindness. He's no buffoon, but a person who could really exist. The other characters aren't quite as vivid, although Victor (Pnin's ex-wife's son) is very good: the hapless artist son of two shrinks, who disappoints them by not having any weird complexes.

In the end, Nabokov's "Pnin" is a sort of personal Don Quixote who is dealing with the strangeness of his own life. Comical and a bit saddening, this is an undeservedly little-known book.

Pnin is surely one of the most pathethic--and beloved--characters in modern literature. This novel is not "about" anything; rather it is a hilarious yet poignant study of a bumbling, lonely, eccentric professor of Russian literature--whose every attempt at a sentence in English is a painstaking struggle--at the fictional Waindell College. (Nabokov himself taught Russian Literature for years at Wellesley College). The novel is thoroughly engaging due to Nabokov's stylistic brilliance and his searing take on the vicious world of academia in this country. We pity Pnin, yet we adore him; he (and the novel) are unforgettable. I found myself re-reading most passages, astonished by Nabokov's inventiveness, his ability to depict the most mundane act as something truly beautiful and transcendent. The best novel I've read in a long time. I finished the book a week or so ago; already I miss Pnin. But I plan to visit him again soon.

Nabokov is one of those authors you either connect with or don't, which is perhaps more a matter of taste than we would like to admit. His characters are bizarre, usually neurotic if not truly insane, yet almost always funny.

Pnin is one of his finer creations: an inhibited academic, whose past is laced with pain and betrayals, he lives a little life from all appearences. Yet within him is a being of extraordinary sympathy and quirky intelligence, which floursihes under Nabokov's comic and tragic gaze. Only those who come to love him experience the treasure that lies within him, and as he is revealed to the reader, who can fall in love with him or not. Though very little occurs in this book in terms of plot, Pnin's existence takes on a kind of significance. THe reader comes to acccept his limitations while feeling such an acute ache of sympathy for him.

Warmly recommended, but it isn't for everybody.

I first read _Pnin_ in a 20th Century Russian Lit class which I was taking in the spring of 1992. In during the past eight years, I have read _Pnin_ at least once or twice every year. Last month, I concluded my tenth reading. Strange to say, I have yet to tire of Timofey Pavlovich. True, it is more a set of related sketches than a novel in the same sense as _Lolita_. To me, that is one of the novel's strengths. Like Woody Allen's film _Broadway Danny Rose_, the structure of _Pnin_ is anecdotal. We see Pnin as others see him, whether he is browsing the stacks at the Waindell Library, or enjoying the company of fellow emigres. Pnin is foolish, but he is nobody's fool. I am also enchanted with Nabokov's eliptical prose. Whether he is playing games with words (Laurence Clements eats a frugal breakfast of oranges and lemons to the sound of the Waindell College Bells, which are directed, futhermore, by a Professor Trebler), or cleverly telling us that a particular day in Pnin's life is, in fact, his birthday, Nabokov's prose never fails to amuse and delight. I really don't understand people who dislike _Pnin_. I suspect that it is because they really don't understand _Pnin_.

With this book, Timofei Pnin takes his place along side Leopold Bloom, Rabbit Angstrom, Holden Caufield, and Col. Aureliano Buendía among the great protagonists of 20th century literature.

A linguistics professor, the often hapless and despairing and always comical Mr. Pnin has an unexplainable pride and an obsessive-compulsive personality. Like the book's author Vladimir Nabokov, Mr. Pnin is a quirky Russian expatriate in middle class America: he would be hard pressed to be more foreign. And yet he is a wonderful illustration of everyone's fruitless attempts to control what cannot be controlled in their lives. He is a stinging parady of himself, of Mr. Nabokov, of us.

In my mind, Pnin surpasses even Mr. Nabakov's masterpiece Lolita, simply because so much of the story of unforgettable Lo-li-ta has become so cliché that much of the author's artistry is obscured from modern readers' eyes. But with Pnin, Mr. Nabokov's deft and subtle hand is plain to see.