Ah yes...reading Nabokov. As I so often do. This is a great book, very silly and playful about a Russian man, Pnin, who teaches Russian language at a New England college. His English is terrible, he is so very Russian: entitled, emotional and tender. Comic and poignant at the same time.(Pnoignant!) Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim and Mister Magoo owe him a literary debt.
It's a small quiet book. Like a Philip Larkin character but much more joyous. His writing is so fresh. Pnin's teeth are all pulled: "His tongue, a fat sleek seal, used to flop and slide so happily among the familiar rocks, checking the contours of a battered but stills secure kingdom, plunging from cave to cove, climbing this jag, nuzzling that notch, finding a shred of sweet seaweed in the same old cleft; but now not a landmark remained, and all there existed was a great dark wound, a terra icognita of gums which dread and disgust forbade one to investigate." No one else writes that well. I either have to have my teeth pulled or read Lolita finally.
I think I'll read Lolita.
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