Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
Summary (taken from Barnesandnoble.com): One of the best-loved of Nabokov’s novels, Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian émigré precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950s. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunder-standings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator.
To start off, I have mixed feelings about this book. Though it definitely will never be my favorite book (or even close, for that matter), there was something about it that I did enjoy. That something was the main character, Professor Pnin. He just so endearing. He tries so hard to make the people he cares about happy, even when they treat him horribly. Take, for example, his ex-wife, Liza. She treats him like he owes her something when she is the one who not only left him but then came back just to use him to get her to the United States and leave him again! For the same man! Yet, later in life, when she comes to visit him at the college where he teaches, he treats her with the utmost respect. He does have a backbone, though, which I think saves him from becoming a character at whom you just roll your eyes after awhile.
I found that the only times I actually enjoyed reading this book was when Pnin was directly involved, which seemed rather rare. That's part of the reason I didn't like the book. It would go off into these weird tangents that I couldn't care less about. I feel like it was trying to be poetic and have some deeper meaning, but it just came off as pretentious. Some of the descriptions of, say, a room or an object would go on forever and I could sense myself losing interest. The book also seemed so disjointed. I'm sure this is probably because it was originally published in installments, so I'll give it some leeway there, but it still took me out of the story. The fact that run-on sentences were rampant really didn't help, either. That's really just a personal thing, though. When I find myself reading a run-on sentence, my brain eventually stops actually absorbing the words and all I can think is 'How long can this sentence possibly be?'. Again, though, it completely takes me out of the story and that is a sure way to get me to not enjoy a book.
The other element that I didn't enjoy was the 'deliberately unreliable narrator'. Oh, did I hate the narrator. By the end of the book, the story is more about him than about Pnin and you realize that the guy may be a little crazy. I just did not care for him, so how can I enjoy a book that is told with his twisted point of view tainting everything?
In the end, though this is definitely not going on my 'recommend' list, I'm glad I read it if just to be introduced to a character like Pnin. I'm not sure if I've gotten a true taste of Nabokov's style, though, as, again, this was originally searlized. Perhaps I would enjoy one of his novels, like Lolita, better. As it is, though, I'm not a big fan of his style and I was pretty happy that this was a short book.
To start off, I have mixed feelings about this book. Though it definitely will never be my favorite book (or even close, for that matter), there was something about it that I did enjoy. That something was the main character, Professor Pnin. He just so endearing. He tries so hard to make the people he cares about happy, even when they treat him horribly. Take, for example, his ex-wife, Liza. She treats him like he owes her something when she is the one who not only left him but then came back just to use him to get her to the United States and leave him again! For the same man! Yet, later in life, when she comes to visit him at the college where he teaches, he treats her with the utmost respect. He does have a backbone, though, which I think saves him from becoming a character at whom you just roll your eyes after awhile.
I found that the only times I actually enjoyed reading this book was when Pnin was directly involved, which seemed rather rare. That's part of the reason I didn't like the book. It would go off into these weird tangents that I couldn't care less about. I feel like it was trying to be poetic and have some deeper meaning, but it just came off as pretentious. Some of the descriptions of, say, a room or an object would go on forever and I could sense myself losing interest. The book also seemed so disjointed. I'm sure this is probably because it was originally published in installments, so I'll give it some leeway there, but it still took me out of the story. The fact that run-on sentences were rampant really didn't help, either. That's really just a personal thing, though. When I find myself reading a run-on sentence, my brain eventually stops actually absorbing the words and all I can think is 'How long can this sentence possibly be?'. Again, though, it completely takes me out of the story and that is a sure way to get me to not enjoy a book.
The other element that I didn't enjoy was the 'deliberately unreliable narrator'. Oh, did I hate the narrator. By the end of the book, the story is more about him than about Pnin and you realize that the guy may be a little crazy. I just did not care for him, so how can I enjoy a book that is told with his twisted point of view tainting everything?
In the end, though this is definitely not going on my 'recommend' list, I'm glad I read it if just to be introduced to a character like Pnin. I'm not sure if I've gotten a true taste of Nabokov's style, though, as, again, this was originally searlized. Perhaps I would enjoy one of his novels, like Lolita, better. As it is, though, I'm not a big fan of his style and I was pretty happy that this was a short book.