Book Review: Pnin (Nabokov)
Have I read this before: Nope. But apparently I’m in a Nabokov mood right now, so let’s go.
Review: Pnin is like academia personified. He’s strange, he’s kind of odd-looking, he’s a bit socially awkward but also socially graceful in certain situations, he makes little absent-minded mistakes…he’s an old prof, basically. I like how we get an idea of who he is through these little snippets of incidents throughout his life.
My biggest issue was not knowing how “Pnin” was supposed to be pronounced, but then I found the most Nabokov way of explaining how it should be pronounced:
“In one of his essays Nabokov said it should be pronounced like “Up, Nina!” without the first and last letters.”
Favorite Part: Story-wise? Pnin not being sure if there is one professor with a certain last name or two different profs who look similar and have similar names. So he invites one of them to his housewarming party, calling him one of the names, and then that prof, upon leaving, is super confused because he’s a totally different dude than the two Pnin is confusing, haha.
Writing-wise? That good old Nabokov sentence that connects the very physical to the very cosmic:
“With the help of the janitor he [Pnin] screwed onto the side of the desk a pencil sharpener—that highly satisfying, highly philosophical implement that goes ticonderoga-ticon-deroga, feeding on the yellow finish and sweet wood, and ends up in a kind of soundlessly spinning ethereal void as we all must.”
(like ALL of Lolita was written like this; hence why it’s one of my favorites.)
Rating: 6/10
Book Review: Pale Fire (Nabokov)
Have I read this before: Nope. This is only my second Nabokov, which is surprising given how much I LOVE his writing style.
Review: I’ve always enjoyed books with an unconventional structure. This definitely has that. It starts with a four-canto poem by fictional poet John Shade, then is followed by a long commentary by his (fictional) neighbor and colleague, Charles Kinbote. He examines the poem nearly line-by-line, interjecting commentary in the form of three main stories: his personal interactions with and knowledge of Shade, a story about the deposed king of Zembla, and Gradus, an assassin from Zembla sent to kill the old king.
Favorite Part: Y’all know I like it when everything builds beautifully to a final point in a story. So few stories pull this off very well, in my opinion, but this one does it nicely. Also, because it’s Nabokov, I have to mention the way he explains how Kinbote took all the index cards on which Shade had written the lines of his poems and hid them on his person to keep them safe:
Some of my readers may laugh when they learn that I fussily removed it from my black valise to an empty steel box in my landlord’s study, and a few hours later took the manuscript out again, and for several days wore it, as it were, having distributed the ninety-two index cards about my person, twenty in the right-hand pocket of my coat, as many in the left-hand one, a batch of forty against my right nipple and the twelve precious ones with variants in my innermost left-breast pocket. I blessed my royal stars for having taught myself wife work, for I now sewed up all four pockets. Thus with cautious steps, among deceived enemies, I circulated, plated with poetry, armored with rhymes, stout with another man’s song, stiff with cardboard, bullet-proof at long last.
I LIKE THE WAY HE WRITES I’M SORRY.
Rating: 5/10
Book Review: Lolita (Nabokov)
Alrighty, book time! Today we’re looking at Nabokov’s Lolita.
(Yes, it’s another installment of “Claudia’s Too Anxious to Check Out a New Book from the Library so She’s Re-Reading One She Owns.” Hopefully someday soon I’ll stop being a loser.)
Have I read this before: See above.
Review: Don’t call me a pervert, but I freaking love this book. I honestly love it more for the way it’s written than the actual story.
Edit: holy crap, I didn’t know it was written in English. I thought it was originally in French and just translated (yes I know I’m dumb, shut up).
Edit edit: He could speak English before he could speak either Russian or French. The more you know!
Edit edit edit: This isn’t so much a review as me freaking out about Nabokov. Sorryz.
Favorite part: Can I just say “the language” for this? ‘Cause holy gods.
“The two voices parted in an explosion of warmth and good will, and through some freak mechanical flaw all my coins came tumbling back to me with a hitting-the-jackpot clatter that almost made me laugh despite the disappointment at having to postpone bliss. One wonders if this sudden discharge, this spasmodic refund, was not correlated somehow, in the mind of McFate, with my having invented that little expedition before ever learning of it as I did now.”
The whole damn book is like that: beautifully written. Flawless Nabokov is flawless.
Rating: 9/10
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