I don't think there are any overt references in the novel that point to Pnin as Victor's real father. I've been paging through the novel, trying to find the exact wording, but I know Dr. Wind, at one point, refers to himself as the earth father, and Pnin as the water father. In his article, "Pnin's History", Charles Nicol writes, "Pnin's triumph is that eventually he and Victor qualify as father and son under every test but flesh itself".

On Jan 18, 2014 10:34 PM, "Samuel Newhouse" <snewhouse9@gmail.com> wrote:

As I recall, it's one of the novel's quiet, almost secret joys, that Pnin himself, not Dr. Wind, is the father of Victor.

There's some confusion on the subject early on but eventually Nabokov quite clearly states that Victor is Pnin's, in the segment detailing Victor's life, to my recollection.

Unfortunately, at the present moment I cannot find my copy of Pnin to obtain a citation. Can anyone verify?

Thank you

On Jan 18, 2014 7:48 AM, "Nabokv-L" <nabokv-l@utk.edu> wrote:



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Ice Palace ...
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 21:05:45 -0500
From: Sandy Pallot Klein <spklein52@gmail.com>
To: Nabokov List <NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.edu>
CC: Nabokv-L <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU>




The Weekly Standard

BOOK REVIEW



Complete article at following URL: 

The Ice Palace

Jack London’s thousand words a day.

JAN 27, 2014, VOL. 19, NO. 19 • BY WILLIAM H. PRITCHARD

In one of the most charming moments of Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin (1957), our hero is about to be visited by a 14-year-old American boy, son of Pnin’s former (and dreadful) wife and her fraudulent lover, Dr. Eric Wind. Pnin wonders what gifts of welcome he can give young Victor, and decides that along with a football, he will provide some pleasurable reading. Since Pnin believes everyone in his native Russia knows Jack London’s work, Pnin asks a bookstore employee for London’s autobiographical novel Martin Eden (1909), to which the lady responds “Eden, Eden, Eden .  .  . let me see, you don’t mean a book on the British statesman? Or do you?”  

Jack Oakie, Loretta Young, Clark Gable in ‘The Call of the Wild’ (1935)

JACK OAKIE, LORETTA YOUNG, CLARK GABLE IN ‘THE CALL OF THE WILD’ (1935)

20TH CENTURY PICTURES / EVERETT COLLECTION

When the confusion is cleared up, the only book of London’s to be found is an old edition of The Son of the Wolf (1900), a collection of stories and London’s first published book. Pnin decides to buy it, though it is inferior to Martin Eden: “Not his best book but O.K. O.K, I will take it.” It turns out that Victor doesn’t like sports and believes the London volume is a translation from Russian, Pnin’s mother tongue. Politely, Victor says he’s sure he will like the book and reveals, “Last summer I read Crime and”—at which point he yawns and doesn’t complete the title of a novel by a writer whom Nabokov, if not Pnin, abhors.

( ... )











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