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

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cp. 180). The narrator also gives himself away by
what Field calls his "narrative 'slips "'39: points
in the story at which he quite clearly gives up all
pretence of being the objective reporter of the true
story of Pnin's life; at which he invents scenes and
elaborates on them rather in the fashion of an omniscient
narrator, and at which, moreover, he quite
frankly takes pleasure in a skilful relation of his
inventions.
This tendency on his part is underlined by his
quasi-identification at certain moments with Nabbkov
himself. Like the author (who has in turn invented him
and Pnin) he is "a prominent Anglo-Russian writer"
(140), a "fascinating lecturer" (169), he shares his
love of butterflies, and even his initials (V. V. ) with
him (128). Therefore, together with Pnin, critics mistrust
him, and apart of accusing him of a tactless and
unforgivable intrusion into Pnin's life and privacy
and of exposing not only his comic eccentricity but
even his most private sorrows40, they'w. onder whether
"the version of Pnin we have come to believe in, through
the narrator, is any more authentic than Jack Cock-'
erell's imitation" of him.
41
The scene in the park and the narrator's implied
knowledge of all its similarites with an earlier experience
of Pnin's would be another pointtin the
critics' argumentation, for here the narrator oversteps
again the limits of what he can reasonably be expected
to know. So, paradoxically, even while adding another
touch of depth to Pnin's story, and while apparently