A memoirist, who used to know Nabokov at Cornell in the nineteen-fifties, recounts this characteristic anecdote:

“At a crowded party, I found myself pushed up against him. Feeling the need to say something, an impulse I should have resisted, I told him that I had just read Pnin, which I had liked very much. He could have said "Thank you," but instead [he] asked, "Why?" I told him (and it was a truthful remark) that I liked it for the compassion I found within it. He abruptly turned away, as if I had slapped his face.”

James McConkey, "Nabokov and 'The Window of the Mint'," in The Achievements of Vladimir Nabokov, eds. George Gibian and Stephen Jan Parker (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), p. 31. See Dmitri Nabokov's reaction in "A Few Comments on the Cornell Festival Volume," Vladimir Nabokov Research Newsletter, XIV (Spring 1985), p. 14.

Why did Nabokov abruptly turn away upon hearing McConkey say, at a noisy party, that he liked Pnin for its compassion? Did Nabokov think otherwise? If so, why?