Sometimes it can really help to have a professor guide your reading. This was one of those times. I was well over halfway through Anton Chekhov’s novella My Life translated by Constance Garnett before I could decide just how satirical it was. To be honest before I could decide if it satirical or not. There is a lot of Russian literature from Mr. Chekhov’s day dealing with the … Continue reading My Life by Anton Chekov
I’m one of those people who get excited over the Man Booker Prize. Almost every year, once the long list is announced, I head over the my local library to get as many of the nominated books as I can. Typically, there are a few not yet available in America, and there are a couple my library doesn’t have yet. So I check out two … Continue reading Sunday Salon: Why the Booker Short List Ruins my Reading and Other Bookish Items
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsk’s novel, The Letter Killers Club, opens when an un-named narrator informs us he has been invited to attend the weekly meeting of seven well-respected authors. The author’s have come to the conclusion, most of them late in their careers, that by writing down their ideas they prevent others from having them. So instead of writing, they now meet once a week to tell … Continue reading The Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsk
I’ve failed. Should have seen it coming really. For this long stay in New York City–20 days cat-sitting in Brooklyn–I vowed to buy only one book per bookstore visit. And to visit no more than one bookstore a day. The buy one book was to be a requirement which, while it might force me to buy books, would have resulted in fewer books purchased overall … Continue reading Unnameable Books, Brooklyn, New York
Do you read to understand yourself or to understand other people? If what you’re looking for can be boiled down to what you have in common with others, does that mean you are essentially reading to understand yourself? Burannyi Yedigei, the hero of Chingiz Amitiov’s novel The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years, has spent his entire adult life on the steppes of Central Asia … Continue reading The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years by Chingiz Aitmatov
In 1921, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel We became the first book to be banned by the Soviet censorship bureau, Glavlit. Mr. Zamyatin was not able to emigrate until 1931 when he arrived in Paris, some seven years after his novel had been published in English. We may have been the model for Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World; Mr. Huxley claimed not to have read the novel … Continue reading We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
In the 1960’s science fiction was about ideas. It was also about rocket ships and invading space aliens, but there was still plenty of room for books about ideas. Even ideas based in actual science. This is still true, but you’d never know judging from what’s playing at the local theatre and on cable television. Not much in the way of ideas there. Once in … Continue reading Solaris by Stanislav Lem
I see now that I was wrong about Leo Tolstoy lacking a sense of humor. At Amatuer Reader’s suggestion I took another look at the opening chapter of The Death of Ivan Ilych–it’s pretty funny. Funny in the same, slightly off-kilter, dark way that Gogol and Dostoevsky are funny. The Death of Ivan Ilych opens with the departed character’s friends arriving to provide comfort to his widow. … Continue reading The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy
Nikolai Gogol cracks me up. Our senses of humor are so in-tuned that I think we’re kindred spirits. Maybe we’re even related somehow. It could be true. I’ve heard it argued that comedy once came from those on the lower rungs of the social ladder looking upwards at the antics of their social betters. You can see this in Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, even … Continue reading How the Two Ivans Quarrelled by Nikolai Gogol
Russian writer Alexander Kuprin (1870-1938) based his 1905 novel The Duel on his experience in the Russian infantry where he spent four years in a provincial outpost in the Ukraine. I’m guessing he didn’t have a very good time. Kuprin was drummed out of the infantry after an altercation with a local police officer over an insult. He then turned full-time to writing. Living in Kiev … Continue reading The Duel by Alexander Kuprin Translated by Josh Billings
I started off last year reading another Russian novel, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky which ended up being one of my favorite reads of the year. (Dakota enjoyed the book as well. She ate it last July.) I had very little experience with Russian novels, other than the first two-thirds of Anna Karinina I’d not read anything. Besides being an excellent psychological thriller, Crime … Continue reading My 400th post! Dead Sould by Nicolai Gogol
If you’re nervous about Tolstoy’s longer works, and you’re not alone, why not start with a novella. Tolstoy’s The Devil, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, clocks in at exactly 100 pages. The Devil tells the story of an aristocratic landowner who is slowly overcome with sexual desire for one of his peasants, a story that may be based on events in the author’s life, according to the … Continue reading The Devil by Leo Tolstoy
May Contain Spoilers 