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Vladimir Nabokov: Pnin

Oh boy(d), oh boy(d), oh boy(d) - VN the author and narrator - why, oh why can't they have the same knowledge. Omniscient indeed - and one that likes to tease.
 
pontalba said:
Thats exactly what it seems to me at least. At least to Timofey's feelings in general. Wait, I feel a Boyd moment coming on.......ok, I found it, here it is.
VN: The American Years p/286-87--

Omniscient Author? I would say........yes.
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Pontalba

Tower! again, or maybe Bridge!


But I would also say that's one Omnisicient Breaca we have in this thread!

Wow!
Peder
 
I've got one word to say to you both (Peder and Pontalba):

RASBERRIES:p

Now do please behave cos I ain't got round to Ada yet.

Hahaha - just had a thought: Two 'P's in a pod
 
pontalba said:
Oh, yeeessss omniscient breaca of the Southern Realm....../she proclaimed bowing low/

:p :D
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Enough of the bowing, where are my gifts? Chocolates wrapped in gold foil are rather nice - I especially like chocolate filled with lemon or orange flavoured stuff.:D And please do mind your back (after all I am on omniscient being who cares).
 
Breaca said:
Oh boy(d), oh boy(d), oh boy(d) - VN the author and narrator - why, oh why can't they have the same knowledge. Omniscient indeed - and one that likes to tease.
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Breaca, Pontalba,
After VN, that Boyd is just so amazing!
He can write as clearly as Nabokov can write obscurely.
And a good thing too, I suppose -- else where would we all be? :D
/shaking head/
Peder
 
Boyd is very clear in what he considers Nabokovian Truth. Even if one doesn't exactly agree with him all the time, its great to be able to first of all figure out as much as you can, and then take a look at his reckonings. :) I consider his books to be a sound investment.
 
Now here again is an instance of VV assuming that he and Pnin are the best of friends. The wording leads me to believe that at any rate. p.148 Chap 6.5
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 recall the late Olga Krotki once telling me that among the fifty or so faculty members of a wartime Intensive Language School, at which the poor, one-lunged lady had to teach Lethean and Fenugreek, there were as many as six Pnins, besides the genuine and, to me, unique article.
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Then it goes on about a Professor Thomas Wynn, Head of the Ornithology Dept. and and a Wynn-like stranger that Pnin could not tell apart. One of which he invited to his party.
 
Methinks VN was having a little bit of fun with us here:

I recall the late Olga Krotki once telling me that among the fifty or so faculty members of a wartime Intensive Language School, at which the poor, one-lunged lady had to teach Lethean and Fenugreek, there were as many as six Pnins, besides the genuine and, to me, unique article.
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Fenugreek is an herb used in cooking, and Lethean is (medically speaking) used as an anæsthetic agent. VN and Vera must have had one another rolling in the aisles -- at least some of the time.
 
:D I knew what fenugreek, but had no clue what lethean was. Gotta love the sense of humor! Must be the personalities he was ascribing to them. :eek:
 
pontalba said:
:D I knew what fenugreek, but had no clue what lethean was. Gotta love the sense of humor! Must be the personalities he was ascribing to them. :eek:
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I was thinking that he was referring to the classes that Olga Krotki was teaching. Language classes?
 
While wikipnining around, I found this:


The possibility presents itself that Pnin, vanished from the University without forwarding address and replaced by V.V.N., is no more than the novelist narrator's invention — a character for a novel. However, Pnin materializes out of the void into which he has disappeared—not in this text, but in Nabokov's later novel Pale Fire (1962).
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(Just adding fuel to the fire.) :D
 
StillILearn said:
While wikipnining around, I found this:

(Just adding fuel to the fire.) :D
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Yes Still,
The first half of that conjecture simply sounds bizarre to me. And there are other similar ones around, all of which I find hard to credit. But, when one gets to Pale Fire, that is where such cojectures really blossom forth, to the point where almost nobody seems to simply accept the printed page as written. Which is probably the main reason that I never have felt that I 'got' Pale Fire, or that I really understood it, even though it iis straightforward enough on the surface for that famous/notorious first read of Nabokov's. Maybe, having worked through Pnin, which is also deceptively simple on first read, I'll now find Pale Fire easier, but somehow I am not optimistic.

Peder
 
Placed chronologically between Humbert and Kinbote, and in sharp contraposition to both, Professor Pnin has little command of the English idiom, and his verbal gawkiness, combined with a bent for divagations, spins fabulously amusing situations.
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;)


link


"divagations" ? :confused:
 
StillILearn said:
While wikipnining around, I found this:
(Just adding fuel to the fire.) :D
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:cool: The more the better. :D I did read that before.....somewhere....about Pnin turning up in Pale Fire. Its nice to know that our fella comes to a good place finally. :)

Nabokov does balance everything so nicely. That is such a wonderful website to explore. :)
 
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