11/21/2024
Spoiler Warning: This post has spoilers for the book Pnin. Do not proceed with reading if you don’t want the ending of the book spoiled.
I really enjoyed the book Pnin. This is not a book review. The plot of the novel Pnin too complex for me to do it justice without writing an extremely long treatise. I have briefly reviewed Pnin on Library Thing which you can find here.
I just want to share a few notes about who the real people were in the novel. Almost all good writers based some of their portrayals on real people. Mark Yuryevich Sheftel (1902 –1985) is considered to be the primary prototype of the character Timofey Pnin.
I purchased the book “Pniniad” by Galya Diment because I was curious to see how much Mark Sheftel who was a former colleague of Vladimir Nabokov at Cornell University (Wainsdell College in the novel) resembled him. Nabokov and Mark Sheftel both left Cornell at approximately the same time the early 60s. Vladimir Nabokov moved to Switzerland and retired from teaching forever which was similar to what happens to the character Timofey Pnin at the end of the novel. Pnin’s modest hopes and ambitions of becoming a tenured professor are crushed when his boss informs him that he will be getting a salary reduction and a demotion next term. He is so incensed by this treatment that he drives away from Cornell, leaving all his friends and colleagues wondering what he was all about. Perhaps Timofey Pnin would be considered Neurodivergent today because he tends to fixate on certain goals that he is not able to achieve?
I was relieved to know that Mark Sheftel did not leave Cornell University in huff of anger. He left Cornell University because he got what he thought was a better offer from a less prestigious university called Washington University in Seattle. Unfortunately Washington University started backpedaling on what they had promised him after he had made the move. But in spite of this, Mark Sheftel had a successful life. He married and had two children.
I discovered that the two grifting psychiatrists in the novel Pnin Eric and Liza Wind were based on a real couple, but they were not psychiatrists. Alexei Remizov (1877-1957) and his wife Serafima Remizova-Dovgello (1882-1943) were in the literary business which must have been how Vladimir Nabokov came into their acquaintance. I found very little and almost no information about them nor if they in any way resemble the characters from the novel Pnin. The events in the novel are all fictional. Mark Sheftel had interesting and compelling life, but his life was nothing like the character Pnin’s life.
I was disappointed that the book Pniniad had almost no information about Mark Sheftel’s time at Cornell. The information in Pniniad came from recollections of his daughter during his Washington University years. Therefore it isn’t clear if any of the comical events that happened in the novel actually occurred at Cornell or if Mark Sheftel was an absent minded professor. Is the classically absent minded professor character created by ADD Inattentive Disorder in which a gifted individual focuses upon his favorite subject such as the study of literature to the detriment of every other aspect of his life including sociability with coworkers and friends? Timofey Pnin dislikes noise (over stimulation) and prefers to be alone. Perhaps Timofey Pnin would be considered Neurodivergent today because he fixates on certain goals that he is not able to achieve. Could Pnin’s struggles to relate to others be caused by being on the autistic spectrum? We now understand so much more about how the brain works.
The entire subplot involving the paternity of the boy Victor Wind also did not exist in real life. Unfortunately ,the novel Pnin closes without ever giving satisfaction to the reader over the identity Victor’s biological father. Liza Wind, his mother, appears to be notoriously promiscuous.
Another Russian Professor Yuri (George) Ivask (September 14, 1907 – February 13, 1986) was suggested as a model for Timofey Pnin.
This quote from the book Pniniad illustrates that neither wanted to be the model for the character.
“Willis Konick, a professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Washington, remembers having coffee once with Yuri Ivask when, in all confidence, Ivask told him that Pnin was actually modeled on Szeftel. A week later, while eating lunch with Szeftel, Konick was in turn assured by Szeftel that it was definitely Ivask who served as the prototype for Nabokov’s character. Szeftel’s and Ivask’s designating each other as real-life Pnins was apparently so routine a practice that quite a few people knew about it.”
In today’s world of social media perhaps they would have been interviewed on the Today Show because of their likeness to the character, but at the time there was no benefit to being known as a prototype for a fictional character.
I want to add that some of the character Pnin is based on Vladimir Nabokov himself. Vladimir Nabokov at times found himself frustrated with his students and unable to convey what he wished to them. Nabokov was happy to quit teaching forever and concentrate full time on his writing.
Once one starts getting into Vladimir Nabokov’s imaginary world one will find many similarities amongst his books. The most villainous characters are always psychiatrists. There seems to be no profession that was more hated by Nabokov than Psychiatry. I’m not sure exactly why. It’s not as if he was pumped full of toxic psychiatric drugs that gave him Tardive dyskinesia or he was ever confined to a sanitarium against his will. The character Humbert from “Lolita” frequently checks himself into mental hospitals voluntarily in an attempt to free himself from the torment caused by the loss of Lolita.
Vladimir Vladimirovich is the narrator of the novel. The letters VV are used to represent Vladimir Nabokov himself on other works of his. He is interested enough in Pnin to write the book about him, but also mocks him throughout the novel.
Nabokov took a post a Cornell University in 1948 and Mark Sheftel came to Cornell in 1945. In the New York Version Pnin joins Cornell in 1948 which means the events happened during Nabokov’s time at Cornell. In the book version the date is changed to 1945 to coincide with Sheftel arrival. More information is needed about both Nabokov and Sheftel careers at Cornell us to understand the novel’s climate of academic one-upmanship, backstabbing to get ahead, and cruel gossip. Mark Sheftel did not publish enough to become promoted in the publish or perish culture of academia. He failed to engage his students. In particular he felt distain for under graduates and their were not enough Russian graduate students for him to mentor.
Another interesting bit of information is that Mark Sheftel joined the Vladimir Nabokov Society founded in 1978 (after Nabokov’s Death in 1977) and paid his dues of $2.00. My assumption is that the Vladimir Nabokov Society was formed to encourage interest in Nabokov’s other works besides “Lolita”. Mark Sheftel hoped some of the attention created by the book Lolita would cause his own works to be more highly valued. Mark Sheftel’s pointed out in letters and diaries that the book Lolita caused a renewed interest in Nabokov’s older Russian novels. They were all published in English with the help of Nabokov’s son Dmitri Nabokov as a translator. Nabokov had an extremely supportive family as both his wife and son helped him. Mark Sheftel perceived this as an unfair advantage. I want to stress that Mark Sheftel’s life was not the dumpster fire that was Timofey Pnin’s.
Further Reading: I found another Word Press Blog on Pnin which touches on subjects from the book that I have not mentioned, as I don’t want to steal their information. Welwyn Garden City Literature Society Blog from the UK on Pnin
Macy Makes Magic 