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CRITIQUE:

Exercises in the Style of the Exile

Five points of interest caught my attention in this comical, almost picaresque Russian American émigré campus novel.

One was the circularity of the narrative. Another was the identity of the narrator. The third was the presence of twins, at least metaphorically. The fourth: a youthful love affair. The last was the role of memory (as opposed to the imagination) in fiction.

Literarily Lost on the Wrong Train

The novel has seven chapters, the first of which describes Pnin's disorienting train trip supposedly on the way from Waindell College towards a lecture to the Cremona Women's Club, while the last of which concludes by stating that the character, James Cockerell, is going to tell you, the narrator, "the story of Pnin rising to address the Cremona Women's Club and discovering he has brought the wrong lecture", which is round about what happens in the first chapter (except that Pnin actually has three different papers with him).

While Cockerell (the Head of the English Department) is not a totally reliable source of biographical detail, he is known for his entertaining and convincing impersonations of Pnin.

The Narrator's Placement of First Person Pronouns

Bit by bit, throughout each of the seven chapters, we're exposed to a narrator who is ostensibly an omniscient third person narrator, but who occasionally reveals his existence (by the placement of pronouns) as a first person narrator, though not necessarily the protagonist, Professor Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, himself.

I originally suspected that the narrator was Dr. Hagen (the Head of the German Department), although it is generally accepted that it is actually his twin, the author and "fascinating lecturer", Vladimir Nabokov, both of whom want to renew his academic position in the Russian Department at Waindell.

Whassap Pnin?

Pnin fled St Petersburg after the Russian Revolution and the Civil War, via Germany and France, before arriving in the United States, where, like many other Russian émigrés, he obtained a modest academic post, below his qualifications.

Pnin might be a fish out of water, in regard to both the language and the location of America.

Pnin's physical description and mannerisms reminded me somewhat of the cartoon character, Mr. Magoo:

"Ideally bald, sun-tanned, and clean-shaven, he began rather impressively with that great brown dome of his, tortoise-shell glasses (masking an infantile absence of eyebrows), apish upper lip, thick neck, and strong-man torso in a tightish tweed coat, but ended, somewhat disappointingly, in a pair of spindly legs (now flanneled and crossed) and frail-looking, almost feminine feet."

Pnin as Mr. Magoo (without his tortoise-shell glasses)

Pnin is an object of fun who is often scorned or belittled by those around him, who lack respect or fondness for him. This perspective recalls Nabokov's comments about Cervantes' cruelty towards

The novel displays far more empathy with Pnin, even though (or because) it supposedly reflects the perspective of a narrator in his close peer group.

This empathy is especially evident in the party scene in chapter six, which seems to have birthed party scenes written by William Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon and Michael Chabon.

The Discreteness of Émigré Life

Each chapter is a discrete story, which was actually written and published separately in the "New Yorker", then assembled into one novel.

The narrator comments on discreteness in general:

"I do not know if it has ever been noted before that one of the main characteristics of life is discreteness. Unless a film of flesh envelops us, we die. Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveller's helmet. Stay inside or you perish. Death is divestment, death is communion. It may be wonderful to mix with the landscape, but to do so is the end of the tender ego."

The Duplication of One (An)other

The concept of a twin arises in relation to Professor Thomas Wynn, Head of Ornithology, who at times "graded, as it were, into somebody else, whom Pnin did not know by name but whom he classified, with a bright foreigner's fondness for puns as 'Twynn' (or, in Pninian, 'Tvin')." The narrator refers to Wynn as having a "double" or "duplication":

"Pnin and I had long since accepted the disturbing but seldom discussed fact that on any given college staff one could find not only a person who was uncommonly like one's dentist or the local postmaster, but also a person who had a twin within the same professional group. I know, indeed, of a case of triplets at a comparatively small college..."

Memories of Mira

The "youthful love affair" involves Mira Belochkin, a Jewish girl who had died in Buchenwald. As in "Lolita" (which was written contemporaneously), fate took away Pnin's first love, compromising his ability to form a conventional relationship forever after.

Rememoration

The narrator suggests that the novel has been an exercise in "rememoration":

"In the rememoration of old relationships, later impressions often tend to be dimmer than earlier ones."

In the case of "Pnin", the work is not so much a work of recalled memory, but a work of fabrication or the imagination, and, inevitably, in the case of Nabokov, a work of play.

As has become customary, the author (or their narrator) has made it all up.


SOUNDTRACK:
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Mr Magoo - "Opening Theme"



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