Favorite Russian Writers A to Я: Erofeev and Esenin

I’ve been struggling over the small pool of letter “E” writers for a some time, hoping more contenders for favorites would emerge from some foggy compartment of my reading memory. Увы, alas, nothing, though there are some worthy writers:

Though Venedikt Erofeev may not be as big a favorite as some of my picks for previous letters, his Москва-Петушки (Moskva-Petushki or Moscow to the End of the Line) is a Soviet-era underground classic that has cult followings in and outside Russia. I wrote a bit about this short novel in a past post. What can I say? It’s a book about life and drinking (or drinking and life?), and its motifs live on. I felt them particularly strongly when I read Vladimir Makanin’s Андеграунд, или герой нашего времени (Underground or A Hero of Our Time) (previous post), plus several theaters have adapted the novella for stage.

On the lyrical side, I’ve always had a fascination with Sergei Esenin’s poetry. I guess I probably identify with his combination of rural and urban themes. And his physical and emotional wanderings. Esenin died in 1925 but he retains a place in Russian cultural life: Russian TV ran a miniseries about him in 2005, singer Aleksandr Novikov has made several albums of songs based on his poetry, and there is a Esenin Café in Moscow. Then there is this: last month’s online auction of items related to Esenin’s last days. The lot contained the rope with which he hanged himself, a lock of hair that his mother cut off his body, and a portrait of Esenin in his coffin. The items evidently sold for a little over two million rubles, but part of me wishes this story were not true because if feels so ghoulish.

The E-List for Future Reading: I’ve long felt a little guilty for not reading Venedikt Erofeev’s play Вальпургиева ночь (Walpurgis Night). Then there is Viktor Erofeev’s Русская красавица (Russian Beauty), which has also stood unread on my shelf since the early ‘90s. I just never seem to get to it. I’m sure I’ll read more from Mikhail Elizarov after enjoying his Библиотекарь (The Librarian) (previous post) this past summer -- several story collections are available but I’m hoping for another novel.

Please let me know who I’ve have missed!

Всякая всячина -- Odds and Ends

A few links and bits of news:

1. The Новая словесность (НОС) award -- New Literature but NOSE in the short version – released its short list yesterday:

Andrei Astvatsaturov -- Люди в голом (People in the Nude). According to this review on OpenSpace.ru, the book begins as traditional and entertaining autobiographical prose of a Soviet intelligentsia childhood. With age, though, the main character becomes sexist, cynical, cowardly, bilious, unsympathetic and, yes, difficult to identify with.

Tat’iana Bocharova -- Новочеркасск: кровавый полдень (Novocherkassk: Bloody Noon). Nonfiction about a riot over economic conditions that resulted in deaths in Novocherkassk in June 1962. (Wikipedia summary. Time magazine report from October 19, 1962)

Lev Gurskii – Роман Арбитман (Roman Arbitman). A “parodic biography” of Roman Arbitman, allegedly Russia’s second president. Yes, there’s even a scandal: Molodaia gvardiia publishing house is asking that copies of Roman Arbitman be destroyed because the cover makes Roman look like part of MG’s famous “Life of Remarkable People” series. That’s a little silly: the book’s cover doesn’t have the famous letters (ЖЗЛ) that identify the series, though I have to admit the design had me fooled at first when I clicked on this article about the book.

Sergei Nosov – Тайная жизнь петербургских памятников (The Secret Lives of Petersburg Monuments). Essays about Petersburg monuments. Winner of the National Bestseller “best book” vote from bloggers (mentioned here).

Andrei Stepanov -- Сказки не про людей (Tales Not About People). The publisher’s blurb about these stories says they are about the nature of people but most of the characters are animals. The blurb also calls the book a “редкий жанровый коктейль” (rare genre cocktail) blending language play, fables, and magical stories, among others.

Elena Eltang – Камменые клены (The Stone Maples). So close but yet so far: I held this book in my hand at a Russian bookstore a few weeks ago when I asked the proprietor for Vladimir Terekhov’s Каменный мост (The Stone Bridge), a stone novel that didn’t make the NOSE short list. I’m reading Terekhov’s long (800+ pages) book now. But no, I didn’t buy Stone Maples.

(Previous post on НОС/NOSE)

2. The Guardian has been running top 10 lists lately. A September list inventoried “Helen Rappaport’s top 10 books on Lenin” (!), and yesterday’s covered “Howard Jacobson’s top 10 novels of sexual jealousy.” The latter list includes Lev Tolstoy’s Крейцерова соната (The Kreutzer Sonata) (previous post) and Fedor Dostoevsky’s Вечный муж (The Eternal Husband). I’ve been meaning to read The Eternal Husband for months...

The Guardian’s Books Blog recently published Hannah Davies’s “The unknown Booker prize,” a piece about Western interest (or lack thereof?) in contemporary Russian literature.

3. Finally, I was sad to see that Esther Hautzig, author of the young adult book The Endless Steppe, died recently. (NY Times obituary) The Endless Steppe was a favorite book when I was a child: it tells the story of a family’s life in Soviet labor camps during World War II. I read the book numerous times; it was one of the first I read about Russia.

4. (Next-Day Addition) This item from the Literary Saloon clued me in to the new Azeri National Book Award. Two articles (new story) (interview) offer conflicting information on whether all nominees must be written in Azeri. In any case, the interview, with the award's founder, mentions the possibility of translations into Russian and French. I visited Azerbaijan four or five times during the '90s and would love to read some Azeri fiction. Azerbaijan's most famous literary figure is probably 19th-century writer Mirza Fatali Akhundov.

Ivanov’s Geographer Finds His Own Way

Aleksei Ivanov’s Географ глобус пропил (Geographer Drank Away His Globe) is, to borrow from Vidal Sassoon’s Wash & Go TV ads in ‘90s Russia, “два романа в одном флаконе” – two novels in one bottle.

And let me count the ways… Emotionally, this novel about Viktor Sluzhkin, a young man in 1990s Perm’ who becomes a geography teacher because he needs a job, is both bitter and sweet, without either ipecac or saccharine. Genre-wise, I’d vote for a late bloomer’s coming-of-age novel and a comedy of morals. For the former, Sluzhkin make realizations about himself and his place in the world, for the latter, there is plenty of humorous melodrama about relationships, where love interests rarely coincide.

Thanks to my incessant focus on the mechanics of fiction, Geographer’s stylistic two-in-one struck me most. The majority of the novel is written in the third-person, but Sluzhkin narrates a hundred-page chapter, “Оба берега реки” (“Both Sides of the River”). The chapter, in which Sluzhkin describes his river trip in the taiga with some students, comes near the end of the book. The trip, with its Greek chorus of temptations and dangers, is every parent’s nightmare: brushes with the elements, vodka drinking, and a teacher (yes, that would be Mr. Sluzhkin) infatuated with a student he wants to “take” right on primeval damp mother earth.

Despite the hazards of nature, drunk locals, and a problematic vessel, I found the wilderness trip almost dull because Sluzhkin’s narrative voice felt flat and detail-oriented compared with the lightly sardonic humor of the third-person storyteller, who resumed duties for the end of the book. I admit many of my biases were at work: I hated Lord of the Flies, never went on Outward Bound, and think first-person narrative often severely limits the author’s ability to dole out details about the narrator.

Yes, I’m a selfish reader who hates losing an engaging narrator for a quarter of a book but I’ll admit Sluzhkin’s story serves a purpose: the trip through the wilderness is also a journey through topics of Russian culture and history – the group finds sites like an abandoned, profaned church and an old prison camp. I’d already figured out the history bit, but Sluzhkin confirmed it: “Мы проплыли по этим рекам – от Семичеловечьей до Рассохи – как сквозь судьбу этой земли, -- от древних капищ до концлагерей.” (“We floated along those rivers, from Semichelovech’ia to Rassokha, as if through the fate of our country, from ancient pagan temples to concentration camps.”)

More important, the wilderness chapter is Sluzhkin’s journey. He is, after all, an untrained geography teacher who navigates, not always successfully, throughout the book’s journeys. The guy even invents his own constellations. After contemplating the history lesson of the trip, he reflects on his transgressions and betrayals but feels at peace, soon equating pain in his cold hands to the pain of life. I think that combination of calm and pain, in the real or metaphorical wilderness, is the core of the novel. The Russian wilderness, with its emptiness, river rapids, trees, snow, and storms, conveys it, too. It’s fitting that the book’s last word is одиночество: loneliness or solitude.

Ironically, I’ve focused on the portion of the book I liked least. I enjoyed the first 250 pages far more, with stories of Sluzhkin’s Russian Sweathogs (one uses urine to moisten the classroom rag for cleaning the blackboard) and personal problems, many of which involve his wife and other women. I particularly loved the passages about Brezhnev’s death, which flash back to Sluzhkin’s high school days, showing him as something of a misfit. Among other things, he gets caught peering through the window of the women’s banya and mistakenly gives his teacher a tape cued to ABBA’s “Money, Money, Money” instead of funereal music for a Brezhnev memorial ceremony.

Geographer, the novel, is a little like Sluzhkin the character. Sluzhkin knows he’s imperfect and Geographer isn’t my perfect novel, but I enjoyed their company and was sorry to finish the book. This is my favorite kind of fiction: enjoyable, vivid, and intelligent without being pretentious. As a northerner, I’m probably predisposed to like the одиночество (as solitude) message. I should add that I have tremendous respect for the fact that Ivanov wrote the book when he was young: he was born in 1969 and he wrote Geographer in 1995.

Translation Watch: This literary agency reports that Geographer has been translated into French and Dutch, with rights sold for Lithuanian. Another agency shows that Bulgarian rights have also been sold.

P.S. This is my first post with “Translation Watch.” I’ve also added a new tag, “available in translation(s)” that I’ll use for any books I review that have been translated into English or other languages. I’ll add tags to old posts, though it may take some time.

Globe image from Izabelha, via Stock.xchng.

Notable New Translations: Krzhizhanovsky’s Memories of the Future

By my calculation, “new” describes about 5/7 of Memories of the Future, a collection of Soviet-era stories by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky translated by Joanne Turnbull and Nikolai Formozov. Liesl Schillinger’s review of Memories of the Future, published by New York Review Books, appeared in yesterday’s New York Times Book Review.

Why is Memories of the Future not all new? I don’t have either book, but it sounds like two of the stories in Memories of the Future already appeared in 7 Stories, translated by Turnbull, and published in 2006 by Glas. Turnbull won the 2007 Rossica Prize for translating 7 Stories. (One story, “Quadraturin,” seems to be in both Krzhizhanovsky collections plus Russian Stories from Pushkin to Buida.) The Literary Saloon noted the overlap in a post last week that also, quite rightfully, bemoaned the pathetic and chronic dearth of reviews of translations in the New York Times Book Review. The Complete Review’s favorable review of 7 Stories includes links to other reviews of that book.

I confess: I haven’t yet read Krzhizhanovsky. If you haven’t either and want to read him in English translation, you could start with Turnbull’s version of Yellow Coal, available online here. A very brief story, “Flylephant,” translated by Andrea Gregovich, is here. A number of Russian originals are online here.

A couple unrelated, moderately recent items…

“Russian Book Market,” by Chad Post, from the Three Percent blog, about discussion of, yes, the Russian book market, at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

“The final twist in Nabokov’s untold story,” by Robert McCrum, from The Observer, about The Original of Laura.

Krzhizhanovsky on Amazon

The Original of Laura on Amazon

Ostap Bender: The (NEP-Era) Rich Cry, Too

Ilya Ilf and Evgenii Petrov’s Двенадцать стульев (The Twelve Chairs) and Золотой телёнок (The Golden Calf or The Little Golden Calf) don’t provide much practical advice on finding diamonds in antique furniture or conning a crooked Soviet millionaire. But anyone who reads them will certainly come away rich with insights into Russian humor and catchphrases.

I read the two books back-to-back – 600-plus pages of satire published in 1928 (Chairs) and 1931 (Calf) – and admit I was itching to get back to contemporary fiction when I finished. But I also confess that I miss Ostap Bender, the rather charming conman who links the two books. In The Twelve Chairs, Bender collaborates with one Ippolit Matveevich (“Kisa,” roughly “Kitty”) Vorobyaninov, to chase down a set of upholstered dining room chairs. One chair is stuffed with family jewels. In The Golden Calf, Bender and three accomplices head out to find a millionaire who hides his wealth using the combination of a suitcase, train station baggage check, and a low-paying job.

The Ilf and Petrov marathon highlighted the similarities and differences between the two books. Both are funny and both contain numerous tangents, many of which don’t relate much to the plotting but reveal aspects of culture. My favorite, in The Twelve Chairs, addresses the Russian phenomenon of not opening many doors, even at crowded places like the circus. I laughed out loud: How many times was I part of a crowd of people trying to squeeze through one open door, while several others remained locked?! The authors also list some door signs, including “Своим посещением ты мешаешь занятому человеку” – I like this one best literally: “With your visit you bother a busy person.” Words to remember.

Though the humor is similar in the two books, The Golden Calf is far more biting and politically risky. On the lighter side, there are American tourists searching for самогон (home brew) recipes during prohibition. There is also ample commentary on the Soviet regime, including one minor character who refuses to work toward socialism, preferring to hole up in a сумашедший дом (“crazy house,” psychiatric hospital) because he has personal freedom there. Ostap Bender himself yearns for Rio de Janeiro.

I’m hypersensitive to narrative devices, so the biggest difference between the books felt formal: The Twelve Chairs, with its ongoing hunt for furniture dispersed all over the landscape, strings together adventures and escapades about looking for one or two chairs at a time. Everything does fit together in Chairs but The Golden Calf’s story line feels more linear and cohesive, with Bender and his small band following one person’s trail. Plus it includes the Department of Horn and Hoof, one of my favorite fictional business ventures.

I enjoyed The Golden Calf’s other Biblical and political references, plus the portrayal of the difficulties of possessing wealth during the NEP era. The satire struck me as more historically rooted and more enduringly relevant than what I found in The Twelve Chairs. Yes, I liked both books and laughed at little things in Chairs, like the conversation with the naked engineer or the absurdity of Bender calling Vorobyaninov “Kisa.” But I laughed hardest at comments on more serious subjects. One of my favorite passages in the books is at the beginning of Chapter XVIII of Golden Calf, when Bender discusses his feelings about religion. He starts by saying “Я сам склонен к обману и шантажу…” (“I myself am inclined toward deception and blackmail…”) Like I said, I kind of miss the guy.

Translation Note: Readers looking for The Golden Calf in English translation will have two new choices later this year. I’ve already mentioned Open Letter’s upcoming release, translated by Konstantin Gurevich and Helen Anderson. Galleys are still available for online previews here. I learned on Saturday, at a reading of Life Stories, that Russian Life Books is preparing a translation by Anne O. Fisher, who also translated texts for Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip (samples on Google books here). Open Letter calls their translation The Golden Calf; RIS calls theirs The Little Golden Calf.

Photo: AllenHansen, via Wikipedia

Ilf and Petrov on Amazon