Nabokov’s Pnin seen Stonehill’s Views on Self-Conscious
Nabokov’s Pnin seen through the lens of Stonehill’s views on the self-conscious novel
Nabokov’s Pnin is a novel that incorporates all of its interior and exterior ideas into its story, or in the words of Brian Stonehill is a “self-conscious novel”. Stonehill explains that the essential key that separates a “self-conscious” novel from one which is not involves four ideas: the author of the novel, the reader of the novel, the literary history behind the novel, and the “real world” relevance of the novel. Stonehill explains that in a novel which is not “self-conscious” these ideas remain exterior and are only involved from a distance. In other words: the author is “invisible”, the reader of the novel isn’t recognized within the novel itself, the literary history of the novel is simply alluded to, and the novel is very fictional based, having very little relevance to “real world” issues. Stonehill describes a “self-conscious” to involve these four ideas in quite a different way. He explains these ideas as “approaches” to literature.
“Each of these approaches implies, of course, a different assumption about what a work of literature essentially is: whether it is a revealing expression of its author’s subconscious; a verbal machine constructed so as to create a specific effect upon its reader; an artifact which is, at least partially, determined by and determining a tradition; or, a representation of a political, social, sexual, racial, or economic reality” (Stonehill 4).
Stonehill explains that in a “subconscious novel” these four ideas are “inside the novel itself.” He explains that the topics that might arise from these ideas such as the author’s subconscious, effects on the reader, the actual history of the literature, and “real world” issues such as politics, sociality, sexuality, race, and economy, are all discussed within the novel as opposed to being alluded to. Nabokov’s Pnin, through the lens of Stonehill’s perspectives on the “self-conscious” novel, will be the focus of this essay.
When analyzing Pnin, it is important to realize that, although there are many different stories occurring within Pnin’s life that seem to take over the story, the actual story Nabokov writes is about the life and the struggle of one individual man, Pnin. The story encapsulates the adversity one individual man faces every single day of his existence. Throughout the story it may seem to some that the...