moving under skies

I don't reread books often as a rule. But I reread this one almost once a year with startling regularity. Though it lacks the famous Nabokovian puzzle structure of Pale Fire or the intense psychological horrors & delights of Lolita, Pnin is my favourite of his works. This book is Nabokov at his most delicious, witty, and glittering, proof of his mastery as a writer of perfect sentences--but unlike others of his books (which--caveat--I read regularly and tend to love anyway), the pageantry does not dwarf the pathos of its story. Pnin is simultaneously one of the saddest and funniest books I have ever read, an endearing character sketch of a fascinating and tragic man. And oh, those sentences! Glorious.