Alphabet favorites are back! Though my entry for the Letter R (Р) is a bit limited in terms of all-out
favorites, there are enough writers I like—with the hope for turns to the even-more-positive—that
I’m not going to skip R like I skipped N and O.
My one true favorite for R is Anatolii Rybakov,
despite my somewhat limited experience reading him: Rybakov’s Дети
Арбата (Children of the Arbat), the first volume
of a trilogy, is enough. I read the trilogy before I started writing the blog
but I did keep a book diary then, where I praised the first volume most, called
the second “awful,” and summed up with, “The books were definitely
flawed but they did manage to capture something important: the mood and stories
of a lost portion of a generation.” Rybakov’s Тяжёлый песок (Heavy Sand) (previous
post) left me with mixed feelings a few years ago, too, but I suspect I’d
probably appreciate its characters and storytelling techniques far more now,
after reading so much more fiction (much of it by Margarita Khemlin, who’s also
from Chernigov) set in Ukraine. I also have a sentimental reason for favoriting
Rybakov: he made a reading in my department when I was in grad school. I think
this was in 1986, though I remember almost nothing except that Rybakov made a
positive impression.
Another R-letter writer I’ve enjoyed is
Irina Ratushinskaya; I read Alyona Kojevnikov’s translation of Ratushinskaya’s
prison camp memoir
Grey Is the Color of
Hope in the late eighties or early nineties. I read a fair bit of fiction
and nonfiction about prison camps when I was in college but I think
Ratushinskaya’s book has stuck with me through the years because her story was
contemporary: she was in prison in 1983, the year I first visited the Soviet
Union. Ratushinskaya’s
Тень портрета (
The Portrait’s Shadow) didn’t impress me much in my preblog years but
I’ve heard good things about her
Одесситы (
The Odessans), which I bought last year and keep meaning to read
sooner rather than later.
As for others…
Andrei Rubanov is another writer that’s
left me with mixed impressions: his
Chlorophyllia
(
previous
post) and
All That Glitters (
previous
post) were both enjoyable and pretty decent but just didn’t feel quite as
good as I thought they should/could/would be. I read some of the stories in
Rubanov’s
Shameful Feats/Exploits at
the beach last summer and thought they were decent, too. As with Dina Rubina
(see below!), Rubanov’s short fiction feels more controlled and focused than
his novels. I like Rubanov’s ability to combine genres and appreciate his blunt
talk very, very much.
I’ve also enjoyed some of
Dina Rubina’s writing, particularly her short story “Apples from
Shlitzbutter’s Garden” (
previous
post), though I find some of her writing too overstuffed with detail. I
have a couple collections of Rubina’s short and medium-length works—several
readers have particularly recommended her shorter, earlier writings to me—and
hope to find more that I like.
 |
| Remizov. |
As for classics, hmm, well, I guess I’m pretty much at zero…
I have some vague remembrance of reading
Kondratii Ryleev’s
poetry in grad school but am probably more likely to seek out
Aleksei Remizov,
whom I seem to have ignored all these years. He sounds like a stylistically
interesting writer, so I’d welcome recommendations! And there’s one modern poet
that’s been recommended to me many times over the years,
Nikolai Rubtsov, whose books I received as gifts back in the late eighties
or early nineties.
Up Next: A trip
report about the Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference in
slushy Boston. Igor Savelyev’s Tereshkova
Flies to Mars, known as Mission to
Mars in English: Amanda Love Darragh’s translation will be out this summer
from Glas. And then Evgenii Vodolazkin’s Laurus.
