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And so continues my quest to read 50 classics in a year . . .

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

Picking books that are short is all well and good . . . right up until you realize that the text has been printed in 10 point font. Suddenly 140 pages seems a lot longer. And when the book lacks a plot, it’s even worse. Such is the case with my choice for book nine: Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov.

Besides, it's irritating reading a book when I can't pronounce the title. Rake's Progress claims that "Pnin" is pronounced much as you would "Up, Nina," minus the U and the A. But when I try that, it just sounds like I'm spitting.

Anyway, in the Everyman's Library version of Pnin that I read, David Lodge begins his foreword with the following proclamation: “Vladimir Nabokov was a literary genius.”

And I, ever the contrarian, have to disagree with Lodge on this point. Unless you define "literary genius" as "one who writes a book so boring, your eyes glaze over every time you pick it up."

Even worse, the dust jacket advertises that the book is a comedy. To this, I say: Ha! Ha, ha!

I get the feeling Nabokov was trying to make jokes, in this series of long-winded, meandering essays about Pnin, a Russian emigre employed as a professor at an American college. But any jokes that might be there -- and they're bad, for example, the line "Ping pong, Pnin?" (Get it? Ping pong, Pnin? Alliteration? Ho ho ho, nothing says funny like alliteration!) -- get lost in Nabokov's sloppy and longwinded prose. The man does not know when to leave well enough alone.

But maybe Nabokov should be graded on a curve. After all, English was not his native language. How many people can not only master a second language, but then write novels in it?

So I'm giving the awful Pnin a C-, although honestly, it really deserves a D.

Posted 21 April 2006 at 09:41 PM