''Vladimir Nabokov's Comic Quest for Reality' - Nottingham eTheses

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directly from Pnin's peculiar and surprising approach
to the world. His approach is considered as comic because
it is different from everybody else's and not
"normal". But if his approach is not normal, then the
norm must be an unthinking, blind, matter-of-fact acceptance
of things and an equally unthinking attitude
to people and life. This is,. in fact, the attitude
that characterizes the Waindell community as it emerges
from Pnin (although it might as well be stated that
this attitude is not limited to that particular group
of
people).
The general approach to things is to regard them
as merely useful and functional. Their specific uses
are indicated by their names which are attached to
them like labels, and behind these labels hardly anybody
tries to look. People see that side and that
quality of a thing which the label promises will be
useful to them, and to that side and quality they react.
The other qualities they notice only in passing,
if at all, so that the thing itself escapes them.
They do not normally even try to find out how or why
a thing works. They are aware of how inconvenient it
is to have to do without it when it refuses to function.
They are seldom aware of the wonder that it
should function at all.
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What is true of the general reaction to things also
applies to the general ("normal") reactions'in many
other spheres of life. In many fields life is regu-
lated by conventions, customs, and laws which fulfill
the same function as the names of things: they'label