I feel certain, amateur Nabokovian though I am, that, just for knowing something about VN’s total oeuvre, I can claim with confidence that in Pnin he did not indulge in gratuitous cruelty or sadism.  At the end of Chapter One, the first line of section 3, VN both tips us off and taunts/tempts us to believe in his 'sadism':

"Some people - and I am one of them - hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam."

The alert reader should ask herself, "But who is this guy, who can both predict what's gonna happen, sees even things only a god could know, and yet is in the novel too?"

With Timofey Pavlovich, as he did with Dolores Haze, VN lures readers into forgetfulness and tempts them, with exquisitely crafted humour, to guffaw mindlessly at the expense of poor Pnin. This indeed  appears sadistic. But that is exactly the point - later, when the whole work has been well digested, he literary intricacy, pleasure/sadness and ultimate vindication hinge upon a realization. The good reader clearly sees the suffering protagonists for what they are: victims who did not deserve their fate, and who were decent individuals .

One of my favourite parts of Pnin occurs precisely when he is mentally sizing up just how INdecent is the morality of his treacherous ex lover Liza. He muses,

To hold her, to keep her - just as she was - with her cruelty, with her vulgarity, with her blinding blue eyes, with her miserable poetry, with her fat feet, with her impure, dry, sordid, infantile soul. All of a sudden he thought: If people are reunited in Heaven (I don’t believe it, but suppose), then how shall I stop it from creeping upon me, over me, that shriveled, helpless, lame thing, her soul?

This is simultaneously so hilarious, profound and bleak. I get a little shiver each time I reread it.

As for the identity of the narrator, it is Nabokov himself, or a composite of VN and a very similar personage: another Russian intellectual in exile, the “fascinating lecturer” who is in fact Pnin’s rival in the novel, both in love and labor.  Yet he is also quite fond of Pnin, appreciates his qualities, calls him “my friend”, and, as also author of the novel, is therefore also Pnin’s creator  (even “his physician, for the nonce”, if I quote correctly).  This creator/doctor seems - again I must stress this verb - to delight in placing his hero on the wrong train, getting him stuck for two weeks on Ellis Island, scaring the devil out of him with faux heart attacks, or parsing his endless errors in adopting the English language. But that’s again just the point, to deceive or tempt the reader. This marvellous fusion of the real author and the literary narrator is perhaps the filament of the novel’s brilliance.

According to some, this revelation of the narrator’s identity is usually obtained “too late” by most, or all first time readers. I’m not sure I can grasp that, but for my two cents’ worth, while Pnin is not the sprawling masterpiece that Lolita and Pale Fire exemplify; it’s a delightful read (and re-read), rich with Nabokovian detail, beauty, and, of course, pity - the latter to be fully appreciated, naturally, only after one has well imbibed all of the former. A fully satisfying work.

(On a different note, one very interesting recurring motif in Pnin is what I call the “miniature” or “little echo”, of which I’ve counted four clear examples. If anyone is curious, I’ll detail them in another post.)