Williamsburg Modern Lit Book Club #141 - Pnin by Viktor Nabokov

Hey team - Another summer, another theme! One of the lucky problems of sticking to 20th century literature are all the great books by wonderful authors available for us to read. It's always exciting to choose a book for this book club from an author that I, and maybe others, have never read before. With the dizzying bevy of global literature from this time period, I try to avoid double dipping into a previously assigned author's oeuvre so as many unique literary voices can be discussed in this club. The downside is other great novels from well-known, already read authors may never be given their chance to be assigned. Well, not this summer! Our theme this summer will be The B-sides (or maybe A?). The four novels I have chosen for the next four months are all written by authors who had another work selected years ago. (And, as I recall, whose works were considered favorably and led to lively discussion!)

For our first novel, I have decided we will read Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov, the book that first made him famous in the US. Ever since we read Lolita in this book club back in 2019 I've been wanting to read and assign another novel of his. Really, he is partially the reason I even created this theme in the first place. Published in 1957, the novel tells the story of Professor Timofey Pnin, a Russian émigré who is now working at an American university. Using comedic situations and satire, Nabokov skewers American university politics from an outsider's perspective.

The novel is readily available pretty much everywhere and comes to ~200 pages. Easy to complete in a month. Here is the tentative schedule for the rest of summer:

• June - As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, we previously read Absalom, Absalom! in 2017
• July - If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin, we previously read Another Country in 2019
• August - The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch, we previously read The Bell in 2022

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