Book 10 - Vladimir Nabokov "Pnin"

[jazzy_dave]

Vladimir Nabokov "Pnin" (Penguin Modern Classics)





Nabokov must have had a lot of disdain for American academics. Actually, it seems he was disdainful of everyone involved in the insular world of humanities' departments in American universities and colleges, from ignorant undergraduate to dedicated, but inane graduate student, from lowly lecturer to chairs of departments. Not to say I didn't enjoy this book, because I did. After all, anyone who has ever been in grad school in a literature and language department knows there is something quite ridiculous about the whole thing. Nabokov is an amazing writer, his way with language (not his own even!) is breathtaking, his metaphors are divine, his descriptions of the inner lives of his characters draw you in, but somehow, while I would have loved to listen in on a lecture by Nabokov, I wouldn't have wanted to be his student.


The first paragraph of Chapter 3 gives us this delicious little characterization of the eponymous hero of our novel:

“During the eight years Pnin had taught at Waindell College he had changed his lodgings – for one reason or another, mainly sonic – about every semester. The accumulation of consecutive rooms in his memory now resembled those displays of grouped elbow chairs on show, and beds, and lamps, and inglenooks which, ignoring all space-time distinctions, commingle in the soft light of a furniture store beyond which it snows, and the dusk deepens, and nobody really loves anybody. The rooms of his Waindell period looked especially trim in comparison with one he had had in uptown New York, midway between Tsentral Park and Reeverside, on a block memorable for the wastepaper along the curb, the bright pat of dog dirt somebody had already slipped upon, and a tireless boy pitching a ball against the steps of the high brown porch; and even that room became positively dapper in Pnin’s mind (where a small ball still rebounded) when compared with the old, now dust-blurred lodgings of his long Central-European, Nansen-passport period” (p. 44).

Or — much later in the novel — say, at a point at which we might have a slight craving for an academic’s inside (and somewhat sardonic) observations on the animal instincts of other tillers (i.e., colleagues) in the fields of academe, we have the following:


"'He received a grant of ten thousand dollars,' said Joan to Betty, whose face dropped a curtsy as she made that special grimace consisting of a slow half-bow and tensing of chin and lower lip that automatically conveys, on the part of Bettys, a respectful, congratulatory, and slightly awed recognition of such grand things like dining with one's boss, being in Who's Who, or meeting a duchesse" (p. 115).



The displacement of such past griefs in the new life of affluent, optimistic America is one of the book's fine achievements. Nothing is resolved as Pnin drives off into the sunset, having absorbed--we may believe, if we wish--his own measure of optimism.

A highly recommended read.