figure
Pupkin
Uncle Pupkin
also: дядя Пупкин, Uncle Pupkin, Senya
The narrator's uncle in "Both Better", a shabby, garrulous vicar's relative whose threadbare household (broken furniture, vodka-soaked orange peels, complaints of hemorrhoids and bathhouses) supplies the story's comic centerpiece.
Reading notes
- Both Better §21 uncle Pupkin
"Pupkin" (from пуп, "navel") is a deliberately unglamorous comic surname, of a piece with the story's other joke-names.