The beauty, the sorrow, the cruelty of Pnin and of Nabokov

I will admit that Nabokov's Pnin gets better toward the conclusion - first chapter promised a sly, comic novel about a bumbling academic, then the novel devolved into mean-spiritedness, but there are some very fine sections in the last (of 7) chapters - in particular the chapter in which Pnin visits a summer colony of fellow Russian emigres. A woman among the group introduces herself to him and mentions some mutual acquaintances, which gets P thinking about some childhood moments andhe recalls a young woman he'd been in love w/ briefly and remembers that she had been killed in one of the Nazi camps - all this material that could be maudlin and cheap and is certainly familiar, even over-worked ground by now (not so much in 1957 admittedly) but in N's handling becomes extremely beautiful and moving, with the chapter closing on a stunning image of a young couple seen - or imagined? - standing in a clearing in profile. This chapter would stand alone (and maybe has done) as a great story, as would the penultimate chapter: Pnin's dinner party. He has moved into a new house that he hopes to buy (the undercurrent of the whole novel is the emigre's constant yearning for a home). He invites a group of fellow academics, serves them bountifully in the Russian tradition. At the end, his department chair lingers to tell P not to buy the house, that he's going to lose his job. The chair is a cruel and egocentric man who has no idea of the power of what he'd said - he actually believes he's done P a great favor in warning him (he could have done a much greater favor by ensuring P's job security). The final image here - of P driving away, alone, in his crappy almost comical car - is very sad and touching. It's odd how much this reminds me of the novel I've recently posted on, the near contemporary Stoner - w/ the difference that Stoner is a weak but more deeply understood character, whereas P is a comic (and tragic) foil. The final section of the novel reveals that the narrator is actually the new dept chair arriving and clearing out the deadwood (i.e., Pnin) - so what does that tell us? The narrator isn't Nabokov exactly, but it's odd how N is willing to identify so closely with a narrator who is cruel and hard-hearted - to VN, I'm afraid, Pnin is not just one of his creations but one of his specimens, captured and pinned to a board.