Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov: Wrap-Up Discussion

Before I get into the wrap up of our lively discussion of Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov, I just want to say Thank You, to all of you. Maybe it’s the Holiday Season, and I’m feeling emotional, but my heart is so full. Seeing what this book club has become, it actually falls short to simply call it a book club. It has become a community of friends who make each other feel at home. Thank you all for bringing the snacks, the bubbly, the baked goods, the powerpoints and the laughs. For those of you who have been there from the very beginning, thanks for sticking around. And for those of you who have joined more recently, I hope it becomes a place that you want to return to again and again.

Alright. Sappy time over. Gonna make myself cry.

Pnin was such an enjoyable read for me, from the very first page and I’m glad all of you who joined felt the same way. While some us had a slower time getting into it than others, I think we all came out feeling a kind of kinship with poor, bumbling Pnin, who was really just doing his best. As we all are. I think he was really relatable, especially to those of us who have also moved to a foreign country and have felt, at times, a bit removed from it all, due to cultural and linguistic differences. While it was a hilarious book at times, Nabokov did not miss out on reminding us how isolating the experience of the immigrant can be. I mean, it wouldn’t be Russian literature without a little bit of bleakness sprinkled throughout the laughter.

Pnin is not only a story about an academic who slowly feels the world moving on without him as he tries to figure out his place within it, as well as the timetable of trains and busses (I mean come on. Who did not crack up at the scene of him on the wrong bus…I’ve been there…), it is also a story of the past, ghosts who haunt us and trauma. While the overall plot was quite banal, there were brief moments that hit hard. Pnin was a haunted man. Haunted by the past, by dead loved ones, the holocaust, and exile. He was haunted by his failed marriage and the son he never got to raise. He was haunted by failure, doomed to feel irrelevant in the only place he knew as home. But was it ever really his home? His transient nature, always moving from lodging to lodging, gave the reader the sense that he would never be allowed to settle down. Even when he did finally have his own home, he was driven out of it by the narrator, and ultimately driven (no pun intended) out of the story altogether. In the end, there was no room for him.

And yet, through all of that, I had a feeling that he would be ok. His passion compelled him. He was maybe not the best teacher, but he was devoted to his students and his subject. He wanted to impart knowledge in any way he knew how. I’d like to think that maybe he found himself at another college, surrounded by a faculty that appreciated his quirks and his accent. Who didn’t make fun of him behind his back. He would finally be able to have a place to call his own, and a full class of eager students.

But again, maybe that’s just the Holiday Season talking.

Feel free to post any thoughts you had while reading, or any that came to you later.

This was our last book club for the year. I’ll see you all for The Poisonwood Bible in January. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year everyone!

And of course, happy reading.