Chapter One Summary

Professor Timofey Pnin is on a train intending to reach a town called Cremona to deliver a lecture. Russian-born, he is a professor of his native language at an American college called Waindell College. The Russian program is small and, as such, he only has a few students, who vary in the amount of interest they have in his subject. As a teacher, Pnin is a humble man. He is content simply to teach his mother tongue and the literature written in it; he has no aspiration to get into the abstract field of linguistics, a science which is particularly popular at the time. He is also a very humorous man and, especially when he is drink, he can often be seized with uproarious bouts of laughter which, generally speaking, tend to infect all of those around him. His English, though...