Born in St. Petersburg in 1899, Vladimir Nabokov was a struggling writer until “Lolita” catapulted him to fame and fortune two years after “Pnin” was published in 1953. Nabokov taught Russian and European literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Harvard and Cornell University to make ends meet. “Pnin” is no doubt based on his own teaching experiences.
Reading any of his more than two dozen published works, it’s astonishing to realize that English was not his first language. Nabokov may be my favorite author, and of his 17 novels (I haven’t read them all), “Pnin” is so far my favorite, though “Pale Fire” is a close second and “Lolita” a brilliant third. Nabokov also wrote a superb autobiography, “Speak Memory,” and, if you want to know more about this extraordinary man, read “Letters to Véra,” 700 pages of love letters, word games and puzzles created for his wife.
In “Pnin,” we meet the eponymous professor, a teacher of Russian at Waindell College in Massachusetts, on his way to give a lecture (“Are the Russian people Communist?”) to a women’s club in nearby Cremona. What Pnin doesn’t know is that he’s on the wrong train. This, we discover, is not unusual. Like Mr. McGoo or the prototypical absentminded professor, he bumbles through life unaware of the near disasters that befall him. “His life was a constant war with insensate objects that fell apart, or attacked him, or refused to function, or viciously got themselves lost as soon as they entered the sphere of his existence….”
Back to Pnin on the wrong train: In his overnight bag, he carries a new suit he plans to wear and the lecture he will present that night. He also has with him another lecture to study for, and a paper by one of his graduate students.
“The quandary was as follows: If he kept the Cremona manuscript—a sheaf of typewriter-size pages, carefully folded down the center—on his person, in the security of his body warmth, the chances were, theoretically, that he would forget to transfer it from the coat he was wearing to the one he would wear. On the other hand, if he placed the lecture in the pocket of the suit in the bag now, he would, he knew, be tortured by the possibility of his luggage being stolen. On the third hand (these mental states sprout additional forelimbs all the time), he carried in the inside pocket of his present coat a precious wallet with two ten-dollar bills, the newspaper clipping of a letter he had written . . . to the “New York Times” in 1945 anent the Yalta conference, and his certificate of naturalization; and it was physically possible to pull out the wallet, if needed, in such a way as fatally to dislodge the folded lecture. During the twenty minutes he had been on the train, our friend had already opened his bag twice to play with his various papers.”
Pnin is revealed to us through a series of scenes that take place over the course of nine years in the 1950s: His journey on the wrong train; his “Pninizing” of the room he rents from Joan and Laurence Clements, where he was particularly happy; a day at the summer home of Russian émigrés; a visit from the teenage son of the despicable ex-wife for whom he pines; and a magnificent party near the end of the book that he throws for colleagues.
The book is narrated discreetly by Pnin’s physician, whom we never see but who adds to our understanding of the Russian émigré scene: Invited to a summer sojourn, the narrator tells us,
“This was the first time Pnin was coming to The Pines but I had been there before. Émigré Russians—liberals and intellectuals who had left Russia around 1920—could be found swarming all over the place. You would find them in every patch of speckled shade, sitting on rustic benches and discussing émigré writers—Bunin, Aldanov, Sirin; lying suspended in hammocks, with the Sunday issue of a Russian-language newspaper over their faces in traditional defense against flies; sipping tea with jam on the veranda; walking in the woods and wondering about the edibility of local toadstools.”
Pnin taught himself English, but never really mastered it. Not so our author. Paragraphs are often pages long—but don’t worry! They are delightful, fluid narratives, easy reading. I consider “Pnin” one of the most tragic of all characters, and yet the book is a comedy and often heartbreakingly funny. Pnin is the brunt of jokes but doesn’t know it. The great love of his life is murderously cruel. Readers want to protect him from the slights he’s so blithely unaware of. In less than 200 pages, you’ll meet a character you may never forget.
Doris Ober is the former managing editor of the “West Marin Review,” author of “The Dogtown Chronicles” and “The Alzheimer Years,” and an avid reader. She lives in Point Reyes Station.