>author's name bigger than title
dropped tbhfam

I'm reading this now and I'm loving it. I've also read Lolita and Real Life of Sebastean Knight and this is my favourite so far

Anybody who thinks that is Nabokov's best novel clearly is just in love with brevity. Nabokov fell in love with the English language, my friend. The proof is in Lolita and Pale Fire, not in Pnin, which is a sad little tale about an inadvertent exile, mistaken for comedy.

I think Pnin is Nabokov's most human character. I like the narration, the sense that the narrator and reader are intruding on his private pains. I like the role of memory and the way Pnin draws from it without dwelling on the past. And I love his "son" and Nabokov's typical digs at Freud.

>>7384490
I would say 'well meme'd' but 'well meme'd' has become a meme itself now so all I have left is fuck off

>>7384623
Pleb

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hahaha :-DD Pnin XD

Chapter 5 is some of Nabokov's best prose and scene setting.
I go back just to read that chapter sometimes.

>>7385060
Rusing? I don't remember there being a chapter 5

>>7384486
finished it last week, then i read a book about pnin and realized how much i didn't get. nabokov being all about the prose is just a /lit/ meme. while his prose is really great he's also playing an intricate game with references throughout the book which, taken together, reveal a second, underlying structure of the novel and a different view on the narrated events.
hint: byelotshka means squirrel in russian

>>7385495
There's 7 chapters
Chapter 5 is when he goes to the Russian emigre's house in the woods for the weekend.

>>7386323
that one's maybe the best chapter

also this guy is right >>7385536, Nabokov's prose is wonderful but he is an extremely careful constructor of character and narrative. I don't know why he isn't worshipped for his structural games as much as for his language games.

I don't remember the significance of Byelotshka though, what does that matter?

>>7384486
does Nabokov still alive?

>>7386739
no

is this about the trolley dilemma?

>>7386664
He's haunted by his dead wife like Mason?

>>7384486
this cover it's so ugly

>"I think I'm going to like this," said polite Victor. "Last summer I read Crime and--." A young yawn distended his staunchly smiling mouth.
>With sympathy, with approval, with heartache Pnin looked at Liza yawning after one of those long happy parties at the Arbenins' or the Polyanskis' in Paris, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years ago.

This hit me like a brick.

I haven't finished it yet, but it's pretty fantastic so far. Hopefully I can come back to it one day and read it without having to look up every other word.

>>7386664

you're (>>7386782) right, but there's more to it, than pnin just being haunted by his dead wife (whose maiden name is byelotshkin), the squirrel thing goes much further.

if you can read german, you should read 'sieben arten, nabokovs pnin zu lesen' by michael maar, which was a real eye opener for me. it made me realize just how much i missed while reading pnin (and probably in other novels, too)

>>7387185
bump for reference

A minor work of Nabokov's which, if written by just about anyone else, would be considered a major work. It was a lot more tragic than I expected (got a little teary-eyed in a few places_ and, as someone else already mentioned, chapter five is brilliant. This is definitely a book I'll reread throughout my life.