“Unsafe at Any Read,” Lee Siegel’s essay in today’s New York Times Book Review, includes an account of the dangers of reading Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground as a high school freshman. Indeed, hearing “2+2=5” from a “great writer” could cause trouble at a formative age.
Thank goodness I didn’t happen upon Notes until college! Rather than finding a new math paradigm or excuses for additional irrational behavior, I found a cautionary tale about spite and illogic that continues to provide a helpful framework for reading about, yes, politics. Short version: Dostoevsky has provided lots of comfort this year. And I have Myra McLarey, a writer and high school teacher, to thank for guiding my senior English class through Crime and Punishment. I have yet to read that anyone from the group has taken an axe to a elderly pawnbroker. (At least two of us, however, work as writers.)
My first experience with Russian reading was Baba Yaga stories in Jack and Jill, a children’s magazine I insisted on renewing only because it occasionally contained news of Baba Yaga and her spinning house on chicken legs. Several years later, in sixth grade, a kindly teacher started a short story reading group for students who’d already sped through the entire set of color-coded SRA reading materials… it was then that I first read Chekhov -- “Пари” (“The Bet”) -- and learned about various types of irony.
As for practical influences of literature, one of the reasons War and Peace is still such a personal favorite is that its messages about plans and spontaneity fit my life: living in Moscow during the ‘90s and working as a freelancer during economic freefall have meant endless evolution and adjustments to my intentions and ideas. I’m glad I got stuck on the happy chaos of War and Peace rather than, say, the sick feeling in the pit of the stomach from another unforgotten favorite I read and loved in the same era, Sartre’s Nausea.
Hmm, I think the first Russian stories I read were also Baba Yaga - I had a book of Василиса Прекрасчая with beautiful illustrations. As a teenager I fell in love with Russian literature properly, via Tolstoy, Chekhov and Dostoevsky, then decided to study it at University...I enjoy reading about contemporary authors on your site because I don't know much about them :)
ReplyDeleteI also lived in Russia in the 90s - the mid-90s in Moscow were quite something!
That's funny, cat, that you also first read Baba Yaga stories. Those just fascinated me! I also remember reading "The Endless Steppe," about an exiled family and, eventually, classics, beginning with Chekhov.
ReplyDeleteMoscow in the mid-'90s was definitely something! I was fortunate to have some fun jobs that included great travel opportunities.