Wellesley. Nabokov himself was capable of Pninian mistakes; according to his former student Alfred Appel: Galya Diment also notes another Pninian anecdote of Nabokov's: In terms of literary influences, Pnin's flight from Waindell in his blue car recalls Chichikov's flight from town by wagon, at the end of the first part of Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls. Criticism Reception Contrary to popular belief, it was not Lolita that made Nabokov a well-known writer in the United States, but rather Pnin, which was published a year earlier (1957) in America. Although it did not become a mainstream novel as Lolita did, Pnin had a relatively wide readership in literary circles, garnering favourable reviews. Upon its second week of publication, Pnin had already begun its second printing, and Nabokov was referred to as "one of the subtlest, funniest and most moving writers in the United States today" by Newsweek magazine. This was completely unprecedented for Nabokov, whose first two English-language novels, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1940) and Bend Sinister (1947), were largely ignored by the American public. Pnin was also a particular favourite of the Southern writer Flannery O'Connor (who provides the blurb in the Vintage edition), who found the story of the humorous Russian Professor "wonderful". Pnin is also a favorite of British writer Martin Amis, who ranked it fourth on his list of best Nabokov novels. Pnin's success culminated in a nomination for the 1958 National Book Award for Fiction, the first of seven such nominations for Nabokov. Analysis A detail mentioned toward the end of Chapter 5 concerns the fate of Pnin's first love, Mira Belochkin, a Jew murdered at Buchenwald concentration camp. (Nabokov's wife, Véra was also Jewish). Many Nabokov scholars, such as Boyd, Elena Sommers and Leona Toker have pointed out the recurring motif of the squirrel in Pnin which follows him throughout the book - and that the name Belochkin is derived from the Russian diminutive for "squirrel". William W. Rowe suggests that not only do the squirrels embody the "resurrections" of Pnin's former love, but that the spirit of Mira can be found apart from the squirrels in the form of a "mysterious observer" who acts through the squirrels to oversee and influence the events in Pnin's life. In a sense, via Belochkin and the recurring squirrel, Pnin constitutes a subtle addressal of the Holocaust, where many of Nabokov's acquaintances and his own brother