Pnin

My friend Pnin… poor guy. Aloof autistic Russian lit professors deserve happiness too…

one of the most wonderful things i’ve ever read. i’ve always been apprehensive about nabokov but this has shown me the light. hilarious, touching, nail-bitingly mundane. the ending with the impersonator is genius.

I’m laying in a puddle of tears

What begins like one of Calvino's metaphysical and metatextual novels -- "Now a secret must be imparted. Professor Pnin was on the wrong train. He was unaware of it, and so was the conductor, already threading his way through the train to Pnin's coach." -- becomes a brief study of the bumbling, English-challenged Professor, whose career at an American college is stalling. Pnin is a pathetic character, but we root for him rather than pity him; Nabokov's comic detachment and (as always) sparkling prose suit his subject matter well. A scene at the end of chapter six becomes the novel in miniature: it captures the aloof, well-meaning, misunderstood (and misunderstanding), optimistic, methodical Pnin in a moment of disappointment and mundane, narrowly-avoided tragedy, while leaving no question that everything will work out for him in the end.

To be fair, I adored the start of this book, and I ate everything "Pninian". It seemed to be very alluding to me and I loved the character Pnin. He was so naive whilst also being so wise to me for some unknown reason, and I found the backstories and the flashbacks and the flashforwards to be very attractive in my initial opinion.

I loved the narritive story. I loved how our narrator was very chatty but also in a formal way, he tended to acknowledge the audiance alot, and used collective words like "our" and "we" which I also loved quite a bit.

What I started to feel throught the book, however, that it just dragged on. I found myself getting bored and my mind was absolutely wandering to different topics before i caught myself out and carried on reading. I don't even think it was the classic literature writting style, it's just i did not have alot of care for what was going on, because everything just dragged on.

Nabokov é um dos escritores que mais respeito, nomeadamente pelo seu virtuosismo formal, ou capacidade para laborar o texto como se de uma jóia se tratasse. Contudo nesta obra esse labor torna-se excessivo, adquirindo estatuto de predominância sobre tudo o resto, não apenas sobre a história, mas sobre a própria narrativa. Em termos de história e seus personagens, temos um universo próximo de “Lolita”, uma América pastoral dos anos 1950, personagens principais isolados e com muitos tiques, mas com uma diferença, aqui não existe um verdadeiro objeto de interesse para além do personagem em si. Nada o move, e o relato limita-se a dar conta da enfadonha ausência de vida, sendo também aquilo que garante a comicidade do relato, mas até neste, Nabokov se perde por trabalhar as suas gags sempre de modo muito cruzado, minimal ou encerradas em conhecimento literário russo profundo. Se quisermos atravessar por entre o vazio interior e o destrinçar dos sentires de um professor universitário americano, sem tão grande capacidade estilística é verdade mas com verdadeiro aprofundamento psicológico, podemos recorrer em vez desta à obra esquecida de John Williams, “Stoner” (1965). “Do ponto onde me encontrava vi-os diminuir na moldura da estrada, entre a casa mourisca e o choupo da Lombardia. Depois, o carrito ultrapassou ousadamente o camião da frente e, livre por fim, disparou pela estrada luzidia, que se podia imaginar estreitando até se transformar num fio de ouro na neblina suave em que monte após monte faziam da distância beleza e onde simplesmente não se pode prever que milagre poderá dar-se.” (p.156) No campo da narrativa, a estrutura sofre pelo contorcionismo aplicado por Nabokov ao texto, que dedica grandes trechos a um detalhamento espiralado de cada evento, personagem, ou espaço. É a prosa o centro, sendo a narrativa mera obrigatoriedade, pró-forma de relato.

WHOO! is admitting that a book less than 200 pages took me almost two weeks to finish one of my high points as a reader? no. but i've been super busy and stressed ad all of that so i'm mostly proud of myself for finishing it in the end. (i'd like to add that i've just been... putting it down for weeks because i do not have the time.) but it does give me a lot of exhilaration to be like i finished it! and it was great! i'm always a huge fan of nabokov's clean, incisive prose. when you're learning a language, or when you're not confident in your writing abilities, the advice is often to keep your sentence short and clean. this is a writing tactic that works across the board. the harder thing is to craft long sentences padded with clauses that all make sense and work beautifully. but that was nabokov's talent, to build paragraphs as art unto themselves. what a brilliant man, and what a great story. had a lovely time with this one (which justifies the incoherent review).

Underwhelming as Nabokov goes, but still chock full of delightful humor and prose. The ending felt rushed and overall the booked seemed to lack theme. I've never been huge on satire, so I was thankful this one was short. Still, Nabokov is a master of the craft no matter what he's writing about.

Una novela corta con un sentido del humor al que no le falta la mala leche. Un protagonista ingenuo, con una mala suerte terrible, del que ves los defectos y aun así le coges cariño. Una persona intentando encontrar su lugar sin éxito, una y otra vez. Maravilloso, aunque sea algo triste.

Pnin was my third Nabokov and sadly my least favourite out of both Lolita and Despair. Maybe starting with Lolita has ruined my experience of Nabokov's bibliography because as of right now I don't see anything topping that masterpiece. Still enjoyable but it doesn't even register on the same spectrum as the two I've already read.

I expected a lot out of this one and was really underwhelmed. Maybe I didn't read it closely enough (well, I know I didn't read it closely enough). I'm crossing my fingers that Lolita will prove more captivating.