Reading in 2018 followed the same pattern as the last
several years, with good novels to translate but a dearth of satisfying new books
to read. Although I don’t track the numbers, I’m certain I abandoned far more
books than I finished. Despite that – and far too many pieces of sad news – there
were some nice reading surprises this year, plus great travel and even some positive
developments on the translation side of things. Here are some highlights:
Favorite book by a
new author: One of my favorite reading highlights this year was Grigory
Sluzhitel’s Дни Савелия
(literally Savely’s Days) (previous
post), which came highly recommended by Eugene Vodolazkin. Savely slinked
his way into my heart thanks to his penchant for valerian, love for traipsing
around Moscow, and smooth way with words. Savely’s
Days would have been a favorite even in a good year but in this lackluster reading
year, the book particularly stood out for its observations of people, cats, and
Moscow.
Most enjoyable books written
by authors I’d already read: Sergei Kuznetsov’s Учитель
Дымов (Teacher Dymov), which, oddly enough, I haven’t
written about, is a sort of ensemble family saga novel, a book where characters,
psychology, and the little things in life are the focus, (generally) leaving historical
crises of the Soviet and post-Soviet eras in the background. The book is vivid and
detailed as it flows from generation to generation and it kept me up late reading.
I also enjoyed Yulia Yakovleva’s Укрощение красного коня (Taming the
Red Horse) (previous
post), an atmospheric retro detective novel that plays with genre.
An unexpected achievement:
I finally read and finished a Strugatsky Brothers novel, Град обреченный (available in English as Andrew Bromfield’s
The Doomed City, Chicago Review Press) (previous
post) in Russian! There are plenty of thoroughly repellant characters in
the novel but it’s, hmm, intriguing in its own odd way so kept me reading and
then thinking, too, as did Eduard Verkin’s Остров Сахалин
(Sakhalin Island) (previous
post), which got under my skin like some sort of stubborn rash or parasite. (Verkin’s Sakhalin still won’t quite let me go so
I was glad that a visiting Russian friend had just read it, too, so we could
talk.)
Favorite
English-language reading: I seem to have read a higher percentage of satisfying
books in English this year than in Russian: Janet Fitch’s The Revolution of Marina M. is the start of a big, thick novel about
a young woman who comes of age at the time of the October Revolution. I also loved
Curzio Malaparte’s The Kremlin Ball,
translated by Jenny McPhee, a piece of writing (fiction? nonfiction? both? does
it matter?) about Moscow in the late 1920s. (previous
post on both) Another good one: Sofia Khvoshchinskaya’s Городские и деревенские,
known in Nora Seligman Favorov’s very pleasant English translation as City Folk and Country Folk. I described
the book in a previous
post as “a fun, smart nineteenth-century novel.”
Speaking of translations:
I was very pleasantly surprised to find that this year’s list of Russian-to-English
translations topped sixty entries (previous
post). There’s something for everybody – we’ll see if the 2019 list can come
close to 2018’s in terms of quality and quantity!
Happiest things while
traveling: Despite seeming to have a reputation as a bit of a recluse (I
think living in Maine and burning wood for heat gives that sort of impression automatically)
I really do love going to translator conferences and book fairs. This year’s
trips – to Moscow for a translator conference (previous posts 1
and 2)
, Frankfurt for the book fair (previous
post), and Boston for a Slavist convention (post coming soon!) – were especially
enjoyable not just for my papers and presentations but for having the chance to
see colleagues. Though I should really say that a good deal of this “seeing”
colleagues is really the chance to “eat with” colleagues. Thanks to them, “the most important meal of the day”
takes on new meaning, eating wurst and French fries in Frankfurt becomes
something positively lovely especially under a warm (!) October sun, and late
dinners are a perfect way to finally sit longer and, yes, eat slower (food) after
rushing around all day. It’s the people I see at these events – translators,
writers, publishers, literary agents, event organizers, and even a few people from
my distant academic past – who make travel so enjoyable despite jetlag and packed
schedules. I’m a very, very fortunate person.
Best acquisitions:
My newish Kobo Aura One electronic reader makes it almost pleasant to read
electronically even if the device doesn’t particularly like PDFs. And A
History of Russian Literature by Andrew Kahn, Mark Lipovetsky, Irina
Reyfman, and Stephanie Sandler is a great (and gigundo) addition to my library
that the good people of Oxford University Press were only too happy for me to
take off their hands toward the end of the Slavist conference. It’s already
come in handy quite a few times and even the index is fun to page through!
Special thanks to the nice Marriott employee who helped me cram it into my
luggage for the ride home.
Final goodbyes: Sadly,
2018 brought the deaths of Vladimir Voinovich (previous
post), Vladimir Sharov (previous
post), and Oleg Pavlov (previous
post), all of whom I’ve written about, as well as Andrei Bitov, whom I’ve
read so little that I’m not even sure what to say other than something absurdly
banal about recognizing his importance. (And that I need to buy a better, newer
edition of his Pushkin House – the late
Soviet-era edition I have is fuzzily printed on awful paper, making it painfully
difficult to read.) The loss of Sharov still gives me no peace.
What’s coming up on the
blog: Despite my complaints about 2018’s Big Book finalists (previous
post) and the high ratio of “abandons” in my reading for much of the year, things
are looking up: I loaded up on books in Moscow and Frankfurt, and have been a much
happier reader since my required reading period ended. I’ll also be reading mostly
books written by women until mid-March, when I’ll be participating in a panel at
the London Book Fair about women in literature and translation. I have quite a
shelf of recent Russian books, thanks to my own purchases plus gifts from
authors, publishers, and the Russian stand in Frankfurt. My stack of English-language
books written by women, many of which are translations from various languages into English, is even
larger. Best of all is that I haven’t abandoned a book in weeks: I’m on a roll
with Alisa Ganieva, Ludmila Petrushevskaya, Yulia Yakovleva, and Olga Stolpovskaya.
On the English side, I’ve been reading Lara Vapnyar and just started Anna Burns’s Milkman
today (a gift from one of those wonderful meal-time colleagues I mentioned above). I’m reading Milkman on the treadmill, which fits the heroine’s habit of reading
while walking, not to mention Burns’s skazzy
writing, with its momentum and flow, as well as plenty of sly humor and word
play.
On that cheery note: Happy New Year! And happy reading!
On that cheery note: Happy New Year! And happy reading!
Disclaimers: The usual.
As noted above, I received copies of some of the books mentioned in this post
from publishers, literary agents, and other sources. Thank you to all! And
thank you to everyone who helped with my travel in various ways. Also: I’m translating
Sergei Kuznetsov’s Kaleidoscope.
Image credit:
Fireworks in Bratislava, New Year 2005, from Ondrejk, via Wikipedia.
