''Vladimir Nabokov's Comic Quest for Reality' - Nottingham eTheses

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74
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development of a base conditional reflex" (113) even
when the road is clear?
It does not occur to him that his reasoning and his
nonconformity in such matters could possibly be regarded
as eccentricity by those who behave "naturally",
and be the object of mirth and laughter. In fact, it
does not occur to him that his attitudes might not be
regarded as perfectly natural as to him they are, and
this self-delusion adds of course another facet to
the picture of the comic Pnin.
20
When he meets with
contradiction, or with surprise at what he thinks is
right, he reacts to the judgements behind them "with
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a dignified scorn for their manifest inferiority. "
What if he did get the number of a library volume
wrong as long as he got the date right! "Eighteen,
19... There is no great difference! I put the year
correctly, that is important!... They can't read, these
women. The year was plainly inscribed" (75).
It is true that he sometimes does submit to laws
and conventions (when he eventually learns about them),
but he does so unwillingly and out of sheer necessity:
to pass his driver's licence test, for instance. There
are other occasions where he makes it quite clear
that there are limits to his readiness to compromise
and that he has "reservations" (60). He applies (or
misapplies) logic to things that by agreement should
not be treated and questioned logically. He strictly
refuses, for example, to accept the laughable assump-
tions one has to accept in order to find a cartoon
funny: "So small island, moreover with palm, cannot