Vladimir Nabokov

Pnin is one of those books that'd been on my list for a while. Though I must admit, it wasn't that high. Pale Fire sort of scared me off. 

That said, Pnin's a funny book, an engaging one, and it immediately pulls at you. Pnin, of course, is a sorrowful man, almost pathetic, but he's endearing, too. Oddly likable, I guess (for a faded academic). 

For me, it's Nabokov who's the hero of the story. His prose cannot be beat: I mean, talk about a writer in command of his medium. Line by line, page by page, Pnin is the work of a master. As a stylist, Nabokov must be toward the top of the list; that much, I concede. 

Pnin doesn't move much as a book - or at least its plot is less ambitious than I'd imagined. But the novel does come full circle in a sort of magical way, where the end meets the beginning, and Pnin's stories become the stuff of comedy and lore. Along the way, Nabokov subjects his characters (not just Pnin) to travails almost for the sake of extending himself as a writer, of trying his best - and succeeding - to describe their condition (part pathos, but idyllic). 

As a treatment of academia, I prefer Lucky Jim; but as a treatment of character, it's Pnin. 

Line of the book: "The evolution of sense is, in a sense, the evolution of nonsense." Which must be true.