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…
