Speak. Words.
A new podcast by performer and director Daniel Isengart that celebrates the spoken word, presenting excerpts from literature, poems and spoken versions of song lyrics.
Speak. Words.
Excerpt from Pnin, by Vladimir Nabokov
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Daniel Isengart
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Vladimir Nabokov began writing Pnin in 1954, around the time his Lolita was being finalized. It was at first published in period installments in The New Yorker before a revised version came out in book form, in 1957, a year before Lolita, garnering him his first American success. The novella tells the story of Russian emigré, Professor Pnin, who teaches Russian at a fictional American College in New England. Much of the novella draws from Nabokov's own experiences as a professor at Cornell University.
This is the novella's first chapter.