Here I Am to Brighten Your Day! Darkest Russian Literature

I felt a little jolt last week when I read this tweet from The New York Times Book Review:

George Saunders, author of “Lincoln in the Bardo,” reveals the darkest novel he's ever read https://t.co/OwwMNzl8zd pic.twitter.com/d7sNRk3mHX

— New York Times Books (@nytimesbooks) February 16, 2017

I knew—just knew—that “darkest novel” in George Saunders’s reading life had to be Russian. And I was right: the book is Russian. But I was wrong about the title: the book he mentions is Lev Tolstoy’s Resurrection, about which he says, “Tolstoy’s “Resurrection” might be the darkest novel I’ve ever read — basically, a slow descent down from privilege and power into the terror and cruelty that comes of poverty and ritual oppression. (I know, it sounds bleak but. . . .)”

I’d say that sums up Resurrection pretty well; I, too, remember it as dark for those same reasons. I read Resurrection in my years before the blog and recommended it in a “forgotten classics” workshop, noting some stylistic differences and common themes with both War and Peace and Anna Karenina, though now, years later, I’d be hard-pressed to say exactly what those were…

Saunders hits [sic? is this how it works?] a trifecta for Russian literature in this week’s “By the Book” for the Book Review: he also mentions the narrator of Isaac Babel’s story “In the Basement” as a favorite character and notes that he’s planning to read Svetlana Alexievich’s Zinky Boys; the book’s 1992 translation, by Julia and Robin Whitby, was recently reissued by Norton.

On a related note, Babel receives more attention in this interview for Forward, in which Aviya Kushner asks Peter Orner about, as she puts it in her introduction, “how to read in the age of Donald Trump, why Isaac Babel matters so much, and other questions about the connection between literature and survival.” This is about my hundredth reminder that I need to (re)read more Babel, something I’ve been remiss about for, well, decades. Orner, by the way, specifically cites Walter Morrison’s translations of Babel.

But back to the darkest Russian novels ever written… Which novel did I think would be Saunders’s darkest? My second choice was good old F.M. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which gave me unthinkable nightmares after I read the murder scene at bedtime not so long ago. (Do not read that scene just before bed. Please.) Claustrophobia alone would be enough to qualify C&P as dark but that murder scene is brutal. My first guess, though, was Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin’s The Golovyov Family (here’s the New York Review Books page on Natalie Duddington’s translation, complete with blurbs), which I also recommended in that forgotten classics workshop. I didn’t mention claustrophobia in this summary for handouts, but I felt it, intensely, in this book, too. Here’s what I wrote:

Ouch! This is the ultimate book about dysfunctional families. I have to admit that I found it difficult to read at times, both because of obsolete language and the absolute horridness of the characters. But I’m glad that I stuck with this book that Dmitrii Mirskii, an historian of Russian literature, called “the gloomiest in all Russian literature,” particularly because S-Shch has such a knack for showing the way things really were. The rottenness of the gentry is stunning, and I found the ending almost unbearably depressing. Still, I recommend it.

Those books are pretty dark but I think my very darkest book ever would have to be Roman Senchin’s The Yeltyshevs (previous post), which is chernukha—a Russian word for what I’ll just call pitch-black realism—to end all chernukha. It’s unbearably sad and I used “ouch” in that blog post, too. But I loved that book because it’s so suspenseful and so well-composed as it describes a failing family; I’m not surprised at how much praise I’ve heard for The Yeltyshevs from other Russian writers.

Another big contemporary favorite that’s very dark: Mikhail Gigolashvili’s The Devil’s Wheel (Чертово колесо in Russian), which examines heroin addiction and corrupt cops in Tbilisi. Gigolashvili includes lots of dark (of course) humor, plus action, making nearly 800 pages fly by as if they were 80. This book has stuck with me very well since I wrote about it in 2010.

I could add lots more gloomy books to the list but will stop there. Other dark suggestions will, of course, brighten the coming days!

Disclaimers: The usual. I’ve translated a bit of Senchin, including excerpts of The Yeltyshevs. Aviya Kushner is a beloved friend and colleague.

Up Next: A combo post about Paul Goldberg’s The Yid, which will include thoughts about the book and Goldberg’s upcoming appearance at a local bookstore. Sergei Kuznetsov’s Kaleidoscope, which I finally finished the other night after slowing down to a glacial reading pace: I think my subconscious just didn’t want me to finish. I suspect part of what I love so much about Kaleidoscope is its combination of dark and light. Eventually: Sukhbat Aflatuni’s Adoration of the Magi¸ which friends brought back from Moscow for me: they both read and enjoyed it before passing it along. This is another brick of a book (700-plus pages) so there may be more potpourri posts in Lizok’s future…