Pnin (Vintage International)

Rating:
Summary: Nabokov creates his own rules in this satiric novel
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The Nutty Professor
Review: Widely recognized as the most atypical of Nabokov's novels, "Pnin" is the story of a Russian immigrant professor who cannot quite fit in. Initially conceived as a series of short stories, "Pnin" appears to be just that; there is little to link each chapter and any of the chapters could work as a self-contained story. A deeper look, though, presents the reader with several themes which meander from chapter to chapter, creating a coherent book, albeit one that is less up front about its continuity than most readers are used to.

The first chapter of "Pnin" brings us the misadventure of Professor Pnin as he tries to ride the bus to a speaking engagement in a nearby city. This story serves as an excellent and hilarious introduction to the Pnin's personality. Although this personality can at times seem like a neurotic caricature, there is something of Pnin in each of us, some familiar form of human frailty over which we form an immediate bond. We laugh at him and his oddities, but it is a reserved laugh for we see a little of ourselves in him.

After this introduction, Nabokov proceeds to construct a carefully drawn character, bringing to light different aspects of Professor Pnin's past and showing us how they work to create the character we see before us. One pervasive element through the book is Pnin's status as a Russian immigrant and the effect it has on him as an American citizen. Pnin's Russian upbringing, the life in Russia he left behind, his travels in Europe, his experiences in World War II, his choice to immigrate, his difficulty with new languages; all these and more work together to forever alienate Pnin from his adopted nation. Pnin's life in America is not a difficult one, but it is awkward, and through this awkwardness and the barriers Pnin erects to mitigate it Nabokov appears to have captured an interesting aspect of the immigrant's experience.

Reading Pnin is not an earthshaking experience. Some books have the power to open up new realms, to train your mind on faraway, previously ignored, vistas of thought. Pnin does not. What is does do is provide the reader with a fun, entertaining story with enough interesting plot points and ideas thrown in to distinguish itself from all the other fun stories out there. Additionally Nabokov's writing is, as always, startling beautiful. Pick up Pnin for a fun time, but save your thinking cap for some of Nabokov's other works.

Rating:
Summary: More modest than Lolita, but at times exquisite
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Needles and Pnin
Review: 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.