I've Read Pnin, Now What?
Our last book club before summer break was at Biergarten. We discussed Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov, a novel about a Russian college professor teaching in America. It's about the immigrant experience, about small colleges and the wackiness of Pnin himself.
It was so much fun to meet up with some book clubbers IRL again to discuss the book. Most of us definitely enjoyed the novel, although we did have the feeling that some of the references and jokes went a little over our head. That didn't stop us from talking about all the weird shit that Pnin did and how much of the novel was based on Nabokov himself and if we would read more of his work, especially if this was the first novel. Overall it was a good book with plenty to talk about and I look forward to many more IRL book clubs in our future.
With this post, I'll recommend some other novels that you might want to try if you enjoyed Pnin. If you know of any others, feel free to leave them in the comments. There will also be discussion questions at the end in case you're reading the book with your own book club.
Reading recommendations for Pnin
One of our book clubbers is a big Nabokov fan and told me to read Invitation to a Beheading if I enjoyed Pnin. It's about a young man condemned to death for a crime that defies definition. He spends his final days in an absurd jail being visited by even stranger people. Sounds like fun to me!
This might be a weird recommendation and I could be entirely wrong, but in my gut it feels like lovers of Pnin will like Helen DeWitt as well, especially The Last Samurai. It's about a young woman and her son who becomes a prodigy due to his mother's education, but ends up getting distracted by his quest to find his father. Helen DeWitt has a similar vibe to Nabokov to me, in that they both are way too clever when it comes to language and a lot of it goes over my head, but it intrigues me though.
Pnin is a quintessential college novel and if we talk about college novels, we cannot not talk about Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. It's the story of a hapless professor in medieval history who has to do everything he can to keep his job and win the girl he fancies. A romp of a novel about provincial college life and boredom.
Discussion questions for Pnin
I got the feeling that we are supposed to like Pnin and root for him. How did you feel about the main character?
The different chapters were short stories written for The New Yorker and then collected as a novel. Does this affect your reading off the book, especially if you look at it with as a novel with a longer story arc.
The book contains many jokes and references that went over our heads. Did you understand all the references and if not, did it affect your understanding of the novel?