Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0011801, Thu, 8 Sep 2005 16:33:16 -0700

Subject
Fwd: Re: Pnin, first and third
Date
Body
As the reviewer said, PNIN is written in first person; this is not clear in
every chapter, but is not restricted to the final one. (I didn't want the
reviewer's point to be "traduced," since I thought the review was excellent.
--Chaz


>>> chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu 09/06/05 9:31 PM >>>
----- Forwarded message from rborski@sbcglobal.net -----
Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 19:44:09 -0500
From: rborski@sbcglobal.net
Reply-To: rborski@sbcglobal.net
Subject: Re: Review of Jo Morgan's _Solving LOLITA's Riddle_
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum

----- Original Message -----

> <Morgan's superficial knowledge of Nabokov's work is manifest throughout
> the text: she asserts that 'Lolita was one of very few pieces of prose by
> Nabokov where he adopted the first person narrative' (180), when, in fact,
> his novels Pnin, Pale Fire, Despair, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight,
> his autobiography Speak, Memory, and a large number of his short stories
> were all narrated in the first person.>
>
> PNIN is written in the first person? A pox then on the person who
> reconfigured my edition so that it's told in the third!
>
> (Doesn't this also traduce the reviewer's point a bit?)
>
> rjb

Ah, me: I stand corrected. _Pnin_ from Chapter Seven on *is* written in the
first person. It just starts out, if sneakily so, in the third person. All
apologies tendered, etc.

rjb

----- End forwarded message -----

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