Turgenev’s last and lengthiest novel is a riveting tale of Nordniks or Populists from the Russian intelligentsia looking to live among the peasants anTurgenev’s last and lengthiest novel is a riveting tale of Nordniks or Populists from the Russian intelligentsia looking to live among the peasants and teach them the wonders of revolutionary socialism. As explosive as that sounds, the bulk of the novel is contained within a country estate, where the moody tutor Nezhdanhov clashes with the pettiness of the aristo classes, foremost the snooty Sipyagins. A discursive, talky novel, presaging the far longer and far talkier ‘What is to be done?’ style of novel from Dostoevsky, Virgin Soil is a quieter, more ironically ruminative snapshot of Russia nearing the end of the century, on the cusp of social and political upheaval. The NYRB Classics edition simply reprints Constance Garnett’s very old translation, without endnotes or translations for the French dialogue, so I’d recommend reading a more recent translation. ...more
Before penning his bestselling slacker classic Oblomov, Ivan Goncharov served up a delicious debut exploring the fraught relations between a naïve cheBefore penning his bestselling slacker classic Oblomov, Ivan Goncharov served up a delicious debut exploring the fraught relations between a naïve cherubic poet manqué from the provinces and a world-weary factory owner in the Big Smoke. The young poet Alexander’s idealism is slowly crushed by his abusive, embittered uncle Pyotr, whose emotional vocabulary mainly extends to calling his nephew a talentless, unthinking wastrel who should devote himself to wealth accumulation at all costs, while rebuffing every opportunity for warm hugs or any signs of familial affection. Packed with riveting dialogues that foreshadow the talky epics of Dostoevsky, Goncharov’s first novel is a waspish, entertaining study of a toxic relationship and what happens when idealism clashes with reality. ...more
As another reviewer wrote, I like Krzhizhanovsky more in theory than in practice—a surreal, avant-garde Soviet modernist with an explosive satirical aAs another reviewer wrote, I like Krzhizhanovsky more in theory than in practice—a surreal, avant-garde Soviet modernist with an explosive satirical and fantastical imagination? What’s not to like? There’s plenty to like in this novel, a restless pell-mell of mythomaniacal mayhem, a fantastical picaresque of surreal ramblings, punctuated by frequently hilarious pseudo-philosophical monologues. As with most novels that indulge in unapologetic stylistic lunacy, Munchausen is a high-wire act that continually titillates and exasperates the reader, and the obscure, plotless rumbustiousness of the prose invariably creates a sensory bloat that left this reader begging for the end to come. ...more
Early Russian satire, a proto-postmodernist text where an ‘editor’ presents passages from a chronicle (about the succession of ninnies ruling over GluEarly Russian satire, a proto-postmodernist text where an ‘editor’ presents passages from a chronicle (about the succession of ninnies ruling over Glupov or Stupid Town) and offers a running commentary alongside. The humour here is wild, caustic, absurdist, and among the sharpest satire to come out of the 1800s. A note on the Apollo 2016 paperback reissue of I.P. Foote’s 1980 translation—halfway through the novel, around ten pages of a different book were spliced into the text, forcing me to hit up the Kindle edition for the missing pages. A re-order on Amazon confirmed that this wasn’t a fluke flub on my copy—clearly an entire print-run of this reissue has been released with this insane printing error, putting this up there in the Hall of Publishing Shame with the Vintage Classics edition of Kafka’s stories that had no full stops included, and that copy of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man with all the pages in the wrong order....more
Ivan Goncharov, most famous for the slacker classic Oblomov, spent his twilight years reeling against Ivan Turgenev, a colossus of the Russian canon wIvan Goncharov, most famous for the slacker classic Oblomov, spent his twilight years reeling against Ivan Turgenev, a colossus of the Russian canon who needs no introduction. In this acid-tongued portrait of unhinged literary rivalry, Goncharov accuses Turgenev of cribbing almost the entirety of his most famous works from his own (then-unfinished) novel The Precipice or Malinovka Heights, extending the accusation across Europe to Flaubert, who (allegedly) pinched enough scenarios from Goncharov to render Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education works of egregious literary brigandry. There is more than a kernel of truth to Goncharov’s grievance, according to the scholars, in the sense that Turgenev’s artistic development occurred in tandem with Goncharov’s and certain structures and scenarios will have occupied similar narrative space (as with all Russian novels of the period), and the ambitious Turgenev was keen to succeed sooner than his rival. But this is a tale of two monumental egos at war, with Goncharov emerging the loser—An Uncommon Story finds him a paranoid, persecuted loner, cut apart from the literary scene in which he was never comfortable, seeking to inflate his own position in the canon and take down some titans in the process. Published posthumously in 1924, the work is a fascinating little peep inside the mind of an isolated, embittered writer consumed with burning professional envy. This new Alma Classics edition is translated seamlessly by Stephen Pearl....more
An underread Victorian-era Russian maestro. This collection contains six novellas, the longest among them the picaresque ‘The Enchanted Wanderer’, wheAn underread Victorian-era Russian maestro. This collection contains six novellas, the longest among them the picaresque ‘The Enchanted Wanderer’, where tenacious monk Ivan Flyagin narrates a sequence of adventures in and out of serfdom, the military, and the realm of funky monkery; the titular story concerning the bodacious lusts of Katerina Lvovna which laid the groundwork for many fine softcore 1970s romps; and ‘The Steel Flea’, which makes amusing use of malapropisms and wordplay in a strange tale about a mechanical flea that loves to microscopically boogie. The NYRB Classics edition also includes ‘The Unmercenary Engineers’, a bleak tale of an engineer ostracised from the bourgeoisie for his unwillingness to take kickbacks, ‘The Sealed Angel’, and ‘The Innocent Prudentius’, a tale of bloodthirsty piracy and lusting for your father’s murderer’s missus. The Penguin Classics edition contains the title story, ‘The Sealed Angel’, and three that are not present here, ‘The Musk Ox’, ‘Pamphalon the Entertainer’, and ‘A Winter’s Day’, while the Vintage Classics edition contains fourteen other stories not printed here or in the Penguin edition. For Leskov appreciators, it’s probably worth tolerating the repeated content to read the other work of this fine Russian maestro....more
Turgenev is your best choice if you want to tussle with Russian classics without embarking on forests of nervy insanity (Dostoevsky) or bricky pomposiTurgenev is your best choice if you want to tussle with Russian classics without embarking on forests of nervy insanity (Dostoevsky) or bricky pomposity (Tolstoy), for Ivan serves up stylishly concise narratives of unhappy families in a permanent tizzy at the only things the 1800s were concerned with—maintaining hereditary privilege, staying in ill-fated marriages until one spouse conveniently dies, and keeping the peasants at bay. Turgenev is a writer thoroughly involved in his deftly drawn characters, and the cast of this novel are exquisitely rendered across 200+ sublimely written pages of mellow Russian mastery....more
Goodreads and Wikipedia have attributed the authorship of this samizdat novel to Nikolai Bokov, whose subsequent canon was written in French, without Goodreads and Wikipedia have attributed the authorship of this samizdat novel to Nikolai Bokov, whose subsequent canon was written in French, without a single title translated into English over the last four decades. First published in 1975 by Calder & Boyars, Nobody is not the novel version of Bob Odenkirk’s bone-crushing action thriller, but a humorous, psychologically insightful novel on the exile of the artist in Soviet Russia. Petatorov is the protagonist, a professor whose banishment from professorship sees him stumblebumming around the artistic wastelands of a Russia where only state-sanctioned works of literature are permitted, and any radical thinkers are socially evaporated. The novel’s scattershot structure incorporates satirical tableaux, wrenching self-examination, classic Russian miserablism, and playful typography in a fresh and exciting manner. The novel was written in 1966, when the (attributed author) was twenty-one, and the novel has the playful mischievousness of a younger author, despairing if not undone. ...more
You know, sitting down to review (I rarely review standing up much these days), the entire corpus of stories by Nabokov is not an undaunting challengeYou know, sitting down to review (I rarely review standing up much these days), the entire corpus of stories by Nabokov is not an undaunting challenge, especially for someone as lazy and prone to haiku-length spasms of critique as me. The bulk of these stories are from the Russian, circa 1921-1940, meaning the style is predominantly early Vlad—an astonishing felicity for pastoral and psychological detail, a playfulness uncorroded by the arch cynicism of the later novels, and the firm establishment of the Master’s stylistic brilliance, where every sentence instantly compels you into a world that is serenely vivid, surreally off-beam, and recognisably Nabokovian. As Nabokov’s prose is exhaustively magnificent from sentence to sentence, the density of the quality of these stories is a challenge for speedier readers like me (and two were skipped—‘Ultima Thule’ and ‘Solus Rex’). Among the most memorable for me were ‘Spring in Fialta’, ‘Tyrants Destroyed’, ‘The Admiralty Spire’ and ‘A Forgotten Poet’, each mixing the sardonic humour and penchant for literary mischievousness that makes Nabokov one of the 20thC’s most lovable literary imps. There are occasional thickets of wild Nabokovian prose where lucidity is sacrificed at the altar of his more abstruse, opaque stylistic leanings (stories like ‘Lance’ or ‘Easter Rain’), but rarely is a Collected Stories as consistently breathtaking as this. The conclusion? Nabokov’s stories sit alongside Gogol’s and Chekhov’s as among of the finest of the Russian short form....more
Two satires set in 1700s Russia, short slaps at the madness of plutocrats. The serene absurdism of Gogol is evoked in the tale of a nonexistent lieuteTwo satires set in 1700s Russia, short slaps at the madness of plutocrats. The serene absurdism of Gogol is evoked in the tale of a nonexistent lieutenant who is magicked to life through a bureaucratic error, while a living lieutenant recorded as dead brings headaches up the chain of command. ...more
Sveltely devastating full-fanged fisting of a Putinesque oligarchy, run by murdering, plundering bandits with a penchant for conga lines of sodomy. ThSveltely devastating full-fanged fisting of a Putinesque oligarchy, run by murdering, plundering bandits with a penchant for conga lines of sodomy. The seemingly irreparable problem of fascistic psychotwats rising to power and ruining millions of lives remains as ever the only topic for Russian satirists, although these days the chuckles are bitter, and the threats are no longer exotically skewered in translated novels. If we have learned anything from 2020, and we haven’t, it’s that whatever crisis lies ahead, whatever pain and suffering we must endure in the future, we know for certain our elected officials will utterly powerfuck the whole thing and kill thousands of people through incompetence and indifference, and our only chance of electing better people will perpetually be spoiled by mutton-headed twerps voting for similar mutton-headed twerps. The year ahead will reek like a can of mouldy surströmming and those minute flickers of hope and expectation you feel at the year number changing will swiftly be cudgelled in the arse by the merciless butcher of reality. Until human beings realise we haven’t evolved to adequately occupy the planet, we should concentrate on passing the baton to a more enlightened species, like the bonobos or the chinchillas. Merry etc....more
Loading...
