Pnin. Garden City, New York, 1957

Knowing from the start that he might never find a publisher for Lolita - and that if he did, he might have to resign his Cornell position - Nabokov began Pnin in the hope of securing an income and an audience. He knew that the adventures of the star-crossed Russian émigré lecturer at an American university, drawn from his observations and experiences, would appeal to The New Yorker's editors and readers. Though two chapters were rejected for content, four of the seven were greedily devoured: one at the end of 1953 and three in 1955. In part because of Pnin's short length, Nabokov had trouble finding a book publisher. When Doubleday brought it out in 1957, Nabokov received the first of five National Book Award nominations (he never won the prize). In addition, he was thrilled by the dust jacket art. For the first and last time in his career, Nabokov was delighted to see his vision for a book cover nearly met by reality, courtesy of Milton Glaser, one of the most innovative graphic designers of the day. The book's popularity - due in large part to its New Yorker serialization - was unprecedented in his career; Pnin went into a second printing within two weeks of publication. Edmund Wilson attempted to explain the work's success, writing Nabokov that he "may at last have made contact with the great American public. . . . the reviews I have so far seen all say exactly the same thing: this shows that no one is puzzled, they know how they are meant to react." Perhaps surprisingly, Kingsley Amis was appalled by the novel; he wrote: "That this limp, tasteless salad of Joyce, Chaplin, Mary MacCarthy [sic] and of course Nabokov (who should know better) has had delighted noises made over it by Edmund Wilson, Randall Jarrell and Graham Greene is a mystery of some dimensions."

The items listed below pertain to Nabokov's life and career and are the contents of the exhibition at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, on view from April 23 through August 21, 1999. This checklist, primarily of items from the Library's Nabokov Archive, is included here to provide a sense of the rich holdings in this special collection.

Vladimir Nabokov
"Pnin's Day"
In: The New Yorker, April 23, 1955
Berg Collection

Vladimir Nabokov
Pnin
Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, [1957]
Berg Collection

Vladimir Nabokov reading Pnin with cat Bandit, Ithaca, New York, 1958
Photograph by Maclean Dameron
Berg Collection

Véra Nabokov
"American Chronology for Dmitri"
Typescript with holograph note, ca. 1958
Berg Collection

Vladimir Nabokov
Notes on the Swedish translation of Pnin
Holograph notes in a Cornell University Examination Book in the hand of Véra Nabokov, ca. 1958
Berg Collection