English-Language Reading Roundup

This post has been incubating for months so I’ll get right to some quick notes on a few books I read in English in recent and not-so-recent months.

I’ll be honest: I requested a copy of Chekhov: Stories for Our Time from Restless Books because of the art, drawings by Matt McCann. Considering the book’s subtitle, I was also interested in Boris Fishman’s introduction, which does, indeed, address what I think of as the stereotypical Chekhov, plus the earthy Chekhov, with a bit of analysis of Chekhov’s writings (which Fishman confesses he didn’t always particularly love), as well as the relevance of Chekhov’s work in our current troubled times. Fishman wonders what Chekhov might have written about people living under certain political leaders. Ouch, ouch, and ouch.

Which is how I felt when I read the first clump of stories – “Stories of Love,” which included “The Darling,” “Anna on the Neck,” “About Love,” and “The Kiss,” plus “The House With the Mezzanine,” from the “Slow Fiction” section – and felt an old funny sadness and sad funniness all over again. Chekhov often makes me feel like I’m being pricked by a pin, like I’m deflating, but I somehow enjoyed that odd sensation when reading these translations by Constance Garnett, which felt just as decent for the purpose now as they did when I read them in college. (I also learned from this book that Garnett considered her mode of dress “unambitious;” perhaps this is an area where she and I truly are peers.) The book also contains a mouth-watering version of “The Siren,” specially translated for this volume by Restless Publisher Ilan Stevens and Alexander Gurvets: Stevens apparently doesn’t know Russian so Gurvets served as his “informant” and the resulting descriptions of hungry people and food, particularly lots of fish, including sterlet, carp in sour cream… In any case, this volume would make a lovely holiday gift, one I’d especially recommend for readers new to Chekhov, for the stories as well as McCann’s evocative illustrations and Fishman’s gentle, humorous guidance.

I probably would have bought Curzio Malaparte’s The Kremlin Ball, translated by Jenny McPhee for New York Review Books, for a picture, too, if I hadn’t already known I wanted to read the book: I’ve always loved the painting on the cover, Yuri Pimenov’s New Moscow. Although The Kremlin Ball was never finished (something McPhee mentions in the first sentence of her foreword) I have to wonder if Malaparte’s account of Moscow in the late 1920s feels particularly honest and scathing – even voyeuristic in his gossipy accounts of famous personages, many from the “Marxist aristocracy” – because he never smoothed it. I’m not a big nonfiction reader but The Kremlin Ball (a title that tosses me back to Bulgakov’s account of “Satan’s Ball” in Master and Margarita every time I read or type it) sure kept me interested. How could I not want to read a book where Chapter 4 begins with “One Sunday morning I went to the flea market on Smolensky Boulevard with Bulgakov”? Or where there’s an account of requesting Lunacharsky’s permission (granted) to visit the apartment where Mayakovsky had committed suicide? McPhee’s translation read very nicely (I didn’t feel the anxiety about Russian material that I sometimes sense when I read translations about Russia that weren’t made from the Russian) and the book’s ten pages of endnotes contain some helpful background information.

Finally, there’s Janet Fitch’s The Revolution of Marina M., which I finished late last winter but which still feels unusually vivid. This eight-hundred-page story of young Marina Makarova’s experiences during and after the October Revolution follows Marina through a storm of personal and public events, beginning with her comfortable upbringing and first love, and moving on to her second love and the collapse of both her country – she supports the revolution – and her relationship with her family. Fitch subjects Marina to ordeals that often correlate in some way to what’s happening around her – there’s violence that made me feel physical pain, for example, and she’s often in near-seclusion – but she also finds love and poetry. (Fitch’s acknowledgements note that translator Boris Dralyuk created “original translations for much of the Russian poetry that appears in this book.”) There’s lots more, including a snowy journey that felt cold, cold, cold and a semi-finale involving mysticism. I write “semi-finale” because I’m waiting for the sequel, which will apparently be out in July 2019.

Coming of age novels are pretty common but Fitch does a beautiful job pushing the genre’s boundaries – I meant what I said about feeling physical pain while reading – by serving up elements of high and low, poetry and the basest of behavior, vermin and astronomy, in a way that remind me of Marina Stepnova’s The Women of Lazarus, which critic Viktor Toporov so memorably called «высокое чтиво» (which I translated as “high-class pulp” when I blogged about the Stepnova book here). “High-class pulp” is probably one of my favorite categories (if that’s possible to say) of fiction because I so enjoy reading about the contrasting elements of the earthy (which often includes disturbing scenes) and the cerebral that these books so often seem to present. I should also note that The Revolution of Marina M. is very much a St. Petersburg/Petrograd novel so I particularly appreciated it after spending a short week in Petersburg last November. I’ve gone a bit light on details because I don’t want to spoil the book for anyone who’d like to read it. For more: The Los Angeles Times ran a nice piece by Fitch last November that offers detail on the book and her travel to St. Petersburg for research.

I’ve also amassed a small pile of other books – all translations – that I’ve read in part and enjoyed very much in recent years but intend to read more of now that I have them in printed book form:

• Horsemen of the Sands, by Leonid Yuzefovich, translated by Marian Schwartz, contains two novellas, Песчаные всадники (Horsemen of the Sands) and Гроза (The Storm), which I described in brief in an old post. I read a large chunk of Horsemen last year before Marian and I participated in a roundtable discussion during Russian Literature Week and am looking forward to reading the whole thing in print, in a lovely edition from Archipelago Books.
• The Land of the Stone Flowers: A Fairy Guide to the Mythical Human Being (Книга, найденная в кувшинке), by Sveta Dorosheva, translated by Jane Bugaeva, is exactly what the title says it is and chapters like “What is a Human?” and “About Human Objects and Residences” are illustrated by Dorosheva’s stylish and humorous drawings, many of which are in full color. Jane told me that Dorosheva even changed a few illustrations to fit the English translation: the book’s text (from which I translated excerpts some years ago) contains lots of idioms that can’t be rendered literally. This one’s a lot of fun and I am very happy that Jane had a chance to translate it. From Chronicle Books.
• Blue Birds and Red Horses, by Inna Kabysh, translated by Katherine E. Young, is a chapbook containing five poems. I’ve heard Katherine read many of her beautiful Kabysh translations at conferences and am glad some of them have made their way into this chapbook from Toad Press.

Disclaimers and disclosures: The usual. I received two review copies: the Chekhov book from Restless Books and the Yuzefovich book from Archipelago Press. Jane sent me a copy of The Land of the Stone Flowers and Katherine sent me a copy of Blue Birds and Red Horses. I bought the Fitch and Malaparte books at a local bookstore. Thanks to Restless and Archipelago for the review copies as well as, respectively, bonus books that look great: David Albahari’s Checkpoint, translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać and Willem Frederik Hermans’s An Untouched House, translated by David Colmer. I’m wondering if the universe is telling me to resurrect my Other Bookshelf blog. I do think about that. It may happen.

Up next: Russian reading roundup, Big Book Award results and roundup, and Eduard Verkin’s Sakhalin Island, which confounds me in some ways because Verkin piles on plot line after plot line but yet the story is so absorbing and Verkin’s post-apocalyptic future is so imaginative that I can’t help but keep reading.

Head-Melting Heat Wave Edition: Short Takes on Short Stories

It seems like it’s getting hotter by the minute here in New England so I’m glad the beach is close, we bought a fairly quiet air conditioner, and I’ve taken a few days off. I think that sets the muddled scene for a post with some (relatively) brief comments about some of the brief stories I’ve read in recent months. Yes, I still prefer novels, preferably long novels with sturdy structures, but I often find there’s nothing better than a good short story for restoring my faith in contemporary literature. My mystical and malleable combination for success is an opening that gives me no choice but to keep reading, brevity, solid internal logic that ties the story’s form to its content, and an emotional kick. On another note, it’s interesting that the two cycles of stories in this post are based on real-life families and I enjoyed them very much, though I often have misgivings about memoirs and, perhaps even more so, fiction that’s obviously based on real lives. That’s because I frequently find that the balance between fact and literary devices (and even thin fictionalization itself for autobiographical fiction) feels uneasy to me, skewing the text’s internal logic. These cycles from Anna Berdichevskaya and Sergei Dovlatov, however, make balance look easy.

Anna Berdichevskaya’s Молёное дитятко (uh-oh, the first word feels like it combines the meanings of “blessed” and “wanted/desired” and the second is a word for “child,” albeit a word that various dictionaries mark as affectionate, regional, and conversational) is a collection of stories about Berdichevskaya’s life, beginning when she’s in utero during the era of the mustached one, continuing to the present, and organized according to the chronological order of her life rather than when they were composed. I only read the first of five sections/cycles in the book—six stories, about ninety pages—because the first story in the second section, set in another phase of life, felt so different to me that I decided to set the book aside to read that cycle separately.

The first cycle carries the collective title “Якубова, на выход!” (fairly literally “Yakubova, to the door!”) and covers notable events like the night of Berdichevskaya’s mother’s arrest—she’s reading Tom Thumb to Berdichevskaya’s brother—as well as her trial, time in the camps, and eventual release, after which Berdichevskaya asks her mother if she’ll always be old now. (Ouch; she feels ashamed for asking.) There’s lots of detail about life as a political prisoner, particularly in one of my favorite stories, “Аккордеон” (“The Accordion”), a love story of sorts that shows female prisoners walking to the men’s part of the “zone” for bath day (every other Sunday), detailing how the women primp by using beets and coal as improvised makeup, and telling how the men watch them even though they aren’t supposed to. I wrote “lovely” (underlined twice) about the story for lots of reasons: the mention of distant mountains and, places that have nothing to do with Leninism, Stalinism, criminalism, or people at all; Berdichevskaya’s ease at slipping in prison camp slang, and the correspondence (via air mail, letters flying over fences) between Berdichevskaya’s mother and a certain Boris. And then there’s the gift of an accordion. I have no idea how much is embroidered or embellished in Berdichevskaya’s stories, though that doesn’t matter to me because I loved reading them for how they feel true in the sense of real, meaning based on events that actually happened and had an impact on Berdichevskaya’s life, as well as true in the sense of artistically right. I got so caught up in them that they inhabited me in a nearly physical way, making them feel more like an experience than simple reading. That doesn’t happen very often. A bonus: one story gets tagged for having “Red Moscow” perfume in its title. It’s popular stuff.

I generally enjoy reading Sergei Dovlatov but his Наши (Ours: A Russian Family Album, in Anne Frydman’s translation) was a pleasant surprise even so. I read it for voice reasons (related to my work translating Sergei Kuznetsov’s Kaleidoscope), choosing this particular collection simply because it was the next set of unread stories in one of my Dovlatov volumes. Ours begins with a great-grandfather in the Russian Far East and ends with Dovlatov’s eventual emigration to the United States, serving up portraits of all kinds of other family members in between. My favorite may well be Aunt Mara, who becomes an editor; Tynyanov, Zoshchenko, Forsh, and Alexei Tolstoy (whom she once inadvertently headbutted in the stomach) were among her authors and Dovlatov includes some little literary anecdotes. I also couldn’t resist the stories about a dog named Glasha, a cousin with theater and criminal careers who only functions well in borderline situations, or the story of how Dovlatov meets his wife, Elena, whom he finds in his apartment the morning after a party because the man she’d arrived with got drunk and left her there. Best of all, though, was reading about the birth of their daughter, Katya, whom I know slightly from literary events, on her actual birthday. Ours contains everything I enjoy about Dovlatov: lots of humor (many pages warranted “ha ha” in the margins), plenty of absurd and tragic tinges, and a distinctive easy rhythm in the writing. I highly recommend Dovlatov to non-native readers of Russian since his language is relatively simple in a way that maximizes the meaning and impact of recognizable words, and he creates an intimate, chatty voice that doesn’t talk down to the reader.

Finally, I also enjoyed Sergei Nosov’s “Белые ленточки” (“White Ribbons”), which starts off with a tick bite during a camping trip—“Ксюшу укусил клещ,” a very k-sounding “A tick bit Ksyusha”—and, thanks to Ksyusha’s concern about encephalitis (who could blame her?), evolves into a story about a trip to find medical help in a not-exactly-nearby town where Ksyusha and her companion learn about mysterious white ribbons that have nothing to do with real-life political demonstrations that came up after the story was written. I find the oddities of Nosov’s stories especially interesting, even charming, because he somehow manages to stay in control (just barely!) of his material even when he wanders a fair bit, sometimes veering into slightly occult—in the “hidden” sense for medicine or metaphor—regions. Given the growth of the tick population in my own sweltering Maine and the existence of a tick jar in our house (it even came in handy for a recent dinner guest who wasn’t sure she’d seen a tick), there’s a lot to be said for a wandering story where a tick bite triggers so much action.

Disclaimers: The usual. I received a copy of the Berdichevskaya book from the organizers of the Russian stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair, thank you! Sergei Nosov gave me a copy of the story collection with the tick story, thank you again!

Up Next: More from the heavy “write about” shelf: Sergei Kuznetsov’s Teacher Dymov, Janet Fitch’s The Revolution of Marina M. (I’m still waiting for the sequel!), and Vladimir Sharov’s The Rehearsals in Oliver Ready’s translation. And then there’s a Vladimir Makanin novella, a long story by Elizaveta Alexandrova-Zorina, and Vladimir Danikhnov’s weird Lullaby, a Booker finalist about serial killings that has shades of Platonov.

2018 Read Russia Prize for English-Language Translations: Winner & Citations

Read Russia announced last week that Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson, and Irina Steinberg’s translation of Teffi’s autobiographical Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea won the 2018 Read Russia Prize for Russian-to-English translation. The book was published in the U.S. by New York Review Books and in the U.K. by Pushkin Press.

The Read Russia jury also made “special mentions” of two other books: Rapture, written by Iliazd (Ilia Zdanevich), translated by Thomas J. Kitson, and published by Columbia University Press’s Russian Library imprint; and Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yankovsky, edited by Bryan Karetnyk, translated by Karetnyk, Maria Bloshteyn, Robert Chandler, Justin Doherty, Boris Dralyuk, Rose France, Dmitri Nabokov, Donald Rayfield, Irina Steinberg, and Anastasia Tolstoy, and published by Penguin Classics.

The full Read Russia shortlist is here.

Hearty congratulations to all involved!

Disclaimers and disclosures: The usual for various ties. I received copies of two of these books from their publishers.

Up next: Sergei Kuznetsov’s Teacher Dymov, a lovely short story cycle, some books in English (including translations as well as Janet Fitch’s long, suspenseful The Revolution of Marina M.), and more award news. I’m still rereading War and Peace, still focusing more on Peace than War, and still particularly enjoying various families’ antics.

NOSE Award Goes to Boris Lego, a.k.a. Oleg Zobern

The NOSE Award was presented to Boris Lego on Tuesday for his Сумеречные рассказы (Dusky Stories or Twilight Stories), a book I described in previous posts as “a collection of nineteen Russian Gothic stories; a cover blurb calls it the scariest book of the year…” One NOSE juror apparently called the stories “trash” during (public) deliberations; that cheery note, and others, are here, on the Год литературы site.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this story for those who read Russian literature in English translation is that Boris Lego is a pseudonym for Oleg Zobern, a name I’ve known since his story “Шестая дорожка Бреговича” (“Bregovich’s Sixth Journey” scroll down), appeared in the anthology Rasskazy, in Keith Gessen’s translation. I wrote about Rasskazy here.

The winner of reader voting was Igor Sakhnovsky’s Свобода по умолчанию, (Freedom by Default, I guess?), which was on the NOSE longlist but not the shortlist.

For more on the NOSE Award debates that determined the winner, check out Konstantin Milchin’s article for TASS. Apparently Sergei Kuznetsov’s Kaleidoscope was also a favorite with jurors and the expert panel. I’ve been enjoying Kaleidoscope very much and, given some of the weak finalists I read (or attempted to read) for the Big Book, I’m very surprised (I think even “shocked” would fit) Kaleidoscope didn’t make more shortlists. For more on the NOSE, here’s Elena Rybakova for Colta, in which she praises the shortlisted books by Kobrin, Kuznetsov, and Petrova but doesn’t even mention the winner. 

Up Next: Alexander Snegirev’s Vera.

Disclaimers: The usual plus much of my translation work is funded by grants, including from the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation's Transcript Program. The NOSE Award is also a program of the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation.

All Sorts of Shorts: Short Stories from Noir and Snegirev + Two Short Summaries

After calling the Moscow Noir short story anthology “a dark book indeed” two years ago, I think I can sum up St. Petersburg Noir, a new collection edited by Julia Goumen and Natalia Smirnova for Akashic’s noir anthology series, as “a pretty dark book.” Put another way: If Moscow is pitch black, St. Peterburg is moving toward deep dusk.

I loved the brutal, elemental scariness of the Moscow book—and recognize how very skewed my perspective is after living and working near all too many Moscow crime scenes—but wonder if the slightly lighter St. Petersburg collection, which is very decent, might find a broader readership.

Bits of St. Petersburg Noir’s stories blended together in my mind as I read, melding into a composite portrait of a city loaded with poverty, aimlessness, drugs, back streets, squalid apartments, ballet, and canals… plus murder and other violent misdeeds set amidst cultural sites and monuments. Here are a few stories that especially distinguished themselves for me:

Andrei Rubanov’s “Barely a Drop,” translated by Marian Schwartz, felt the most classically noir to me, focusing on a writer who takes the train to St. Petersburg to spy on his wife, whom he suspects of having an affair. Rubanov is an economical writer who can fit a lot into a short story.

The first story in the book, Andrei Kivinov’s “Training Day,” translated by Polly Gannon, looks at law enforcement, morgue runs, and everyday fears (e.g. elevators, one of my own Russia phobias) with an apt combination of seaminess and humor.

“The Sixth of June,” by Sergei Nosov and translated by Gannon, stars a first-person narrator who quickly introduces himself as a would-be assassin with plans to act on Pushkin’s birthday.

I thought Julia Belomlinsky’s “The Phantom of the Opera Forever,” translated by Ronald Meyer, a revenge tale, was one of the edgiest stories in the book. It begins with a small chunk of Crime and Punishment and moves on to “All our life here—it’s a fucking Dostoevsky nightmare!”

Though Pavel Krusanov’s “The Hairy Sutra,” translated by Amy Pieterse, felt silly and predictable with its museum zoologists, conflicts, and specimens, it turned out to be one of the most oddly memorable stories in the book because of its distinct setting, characters, and exhibits.

Still, the scariest and darkest story I’ve read lately is in the thick journal Новый мир: Alexander Snegirev’s “Внутренний враг” (“The Internal Enemy”). Snegirev’s story is rooted in sociopolitical and historical tension: a young man, Misha, gets a call about an inheritance and then finds out his family history isn’t quite what he thought. Snegirev plays on Misha’s idealism, identity, and dread of the KGB as he builds a creepy, phantasmagoric family drama set in a house that feels haunted. The story’s psychological suspense and intensity surprised me—and sucked me in—after some early passages that felt a bit conventional. 

Finally, two novels I don’t plan to finish but that I want to mention because they’re both finalists for the 2012 Big Book Award: The first 140 pages of Vladimir Makanin’s Две сестры и Кандинский (Two Sisters and Kandinsky) also center around societal divides and the KGB as Makanin examines the consequences of informing. Alas, the novel, which draws on Chekhovian themes and reads almost like a play, didn’t hold my interest and I stopped reading after the first act section. I also had trouble with Sergei Nosov’s Франсуаза, или Путь к леднику (Françoise Or the Way to the Glacier): eavesdropping on a guy who chats with his herniated disc just isn’t my thing. There’s more to the book than that, of course, including a Russia-India contrast, leeches, a stolen lung, and smoking cessation courses, but the whole package felt gimmicky, contrived, and surprisingly dull. Françoise was also shortlisted for the 2012 NatsBest.

Up Next: Dmitrii Lipskerov’s 40 лет Чанчжоэ (The Forty Years of Chanchzhoeh/Changzhuoe), Ergali Ger’s Koma, Andrei Rubanov’s Стыдные подвиги (Shameful Feats/Exploits… I’m still not sure…), and Marina Stepnova’s Женщины Лазаря (The Women of Lazarus/Lazarus’s Women).

Disclaimers and Disclosures: The usual. I received a review copy of St. Petersburg Noir from Akashic Books, thank you very much! I have met and chatted with Julia Goumen, one of the book’s editors, on numerous occasions. I enjoyed meeting Alexander Snegirev, whom I’d known online for a couple years, at BookExpo America in June… I promised him I’d be honest in my assessment of “The Internal Enemy.” And, of course, I was!

Image Credit: Photo of St. Petersburg from uun, via sxc.hu. 

Monday Miscellany: Zakhar Prilepin’s Literary Lists

I love lists—particularly when they catalogue contemporary Russian fiction—so wanted to be sure to post two lists of Zakhar Prilepin’s favorite books and stories from the noughties before I forget their existence.

Both lists appear online and both are taken from Prilepin’s new book, Книгочёт. There’s an interesting mix here: several writers I’d never heard of, a clump of books that didn’t grab me, some unread items on my shelf, and writers I’ve enjoyed very much. Several books and stories have even been translated. The lists are long, so I’ll keep the commentary short… but I’m always happy to hear recommendations!

Novels first:

• Aleksei Ivanov’s Блуда и МУДО (I’ve seen the title rendered as Cheap Porn). Waiting on my shelf... I’m a little scared of this one because of high expectations. Like Prilepin, I thought Ivanov’s Geographer was good (previous post) but not great.
• Aleksandr Kuznetsov-Tulianin’s Язычник (The Heathen or The Pagan)—Kuznetsov-Tulianin is a new name for me. Журнальный зал calls this an ethnographic novel.
• Mikhail Gigolashvili’s Чёртово колесо (The Devil’s Wheel)—One of my own big, big favorites (previous post). I just love this book.
• Vladimir “Adol’fych” Nesterenko’s Огненное погребение (literally something like Fiery Burial)—Another new name for me. Crime.
• Mikhail Shishkin’s Письмовник (Letter-Book)—Letter-Book will be out in Andrew Bromfield’s English translation in 2013 (previous post). Won the 2011 Big Book.
• Aleksandr Garros and Aleksei Evdokimov’s [Голово]ломка (Headcrusher)—2003 NatsBest winner. Also on my shelf; it never seems to appeal to me. Available in Andrew Bromfield’s translation.
• Andrei Rubanov’s Сажайте, и вырастет! (Do Time Get Time)—Andrew Bromfield translated Do Time Get Time and recommended Rubanov; alas, my usual book sites and stores never seem to have this particular book.
• Sergei Samsonov’s Аномалия Камлаева (The Kamlaev Anomaly)—I’ve only read Samsonov’s Oxygen Limit, which I thought was flawed (previous post), but Anomaly sounds better.
• Aleksandr Terekhov’s Каменный мост (The Stone Bridge)—Coming out soon from Glagoslav in Simon Patterson’s translation. Another nonfavorite, though several friends loved it.
• Dmitrii Bykov’s trilogy of Оправдание (Justification), Орфография (Orthography), and Остромов, или Ученик чародея (Ostromov, Or the Sorcerer’s Apprentice)—Though I couldn’t get through either Justification or Ostromov, which won the 2011 NatsBest, I swear I will try Orthography. Too many of you have recommended it.

The stories and novellas sound even better to me:

• Mikhail Tarkovskii’s “Гостиница «Океан»” (“The Hotel ‘Ocean’”)—This story is in Tarkovskii’s collection that won the Yasnaya Polyana award in 2010.
• Sergei Shargunov’s Ура! (Hurrah!)—On the shelf; a small book.
• Olga Slavnikova’s “Басилевс” (“Basileus”)—In the Read Russia! anthology, translated by Andrew Bromfield. About a cat; the beginning looks great.
• German Sadulaev’s Я чеченец! (I Am a Chechen!)—Available in Anna Gunin’s English translation.
• Marina Stepnova’s “Бедная Антуанетточка” (“Poor Little Antoinette”)
• Dmitrii Danilov’s “Чёрный и зелёный” (“Black and Green”)—On my reader… hmm, maybe I’ll read this next. July 25 update: I’m thoroughly enjoying  “Black and Green”; the title refers to tea. 
• Roman Senchin’s “Конец сезона” (“The End of the Season”)
• Mikhail Elizarov’s “Госпиталь” (“The Hospital”)
• Il’dar Abuziarvov’s “Троллейбус, идущий на Восток” (“Trolleybus Going East”)
• Maia Kucherskaia’s “Кукушка” (“The Cuckoo”)

Up Next: St. Petersburg Noir, a story by Alexander Snegirev, and Maria Galina’s Mole Crickets, which I enjoyed quite a bit.

Disclaimers: The usual. Many of the writers on these lists were at BookExpo America last month. 

Potpourri: Astvatsaturov and Shargunov, Rossica Awards

Back at last: it’s been quite a month of May! This week I have quick—and rather awkward, since their genres aren’t my usual reading—summaries of books by two writers who will be in New York soon for Read Russia and BookExpo America events, plus aging news on two awards, plus a bit about upcoming posts…

First the books... Andrei Astvatsaturov’s Люди в голом (People in the Nude), labelled a novel, is a book of what I’d call vignettes—some feel especially essayistic and/or autobiographical—that Astvatsaturov links with the motif of nudity, psychological and physical. I only read Part One, which I loved for its humorously biting accounts of childhood and its absurdities. Little Andrei Astvatsaturov, for example, isn’t allowed to use a local swimming pool because he talks with a friend, though the pool lady tells his mother it’s because he’s not strong and athletic enough. The friend who lent me People in the Nude especially liked a passage where Andrei and another friend communicate, wordlessly, during a field trip to a Lenin museum: the friend moves his shoulder and mouths “хрусть, хрусть” (“crack, crack”), referencing their interest in skeletons, which arose out of some poetry, drawing, and the idea of skeletons climbing the stairs to Lenin… trust us, it’s funnier and more wonderful than I can make it sound here. (I Googled because I was curious to see if anyone else liked that passage: it’s quoted here in Власть.)

Economical communication is Astvatsaturov’s strength as a writer, too: his portrayals of being a kid—playing at home alone, say, and taking a phone message—are brief but feel richly (arche)typical, with a combination of could-be-anywhere themes plus details, like involving imported beer cans in play, that feel distinctly Soviet-era. I gave the home alone dialogue to my first-year Russian students: the language was simple enough that they could read and enjoy some real Russian. (Bonus: They loved the book’s cover!) I’ll read Part Two later, if I can renew my book loan… it feels different from childhood, beginning with reflections on writing then moving on to a scene where a literary “dama,” smoking a cigarette, tells Andrei, “У вас не проза, Аствацатуров... а огрызки из отрывок” (literally “You don’t have prose, Astvatsaturov… but bits of excerpts.”) True enough, but his blend of invention and apparent autobiography were funny enough that I laughed out loud. Many times.

Reading Sergei Shargunov’s Книга без фотографий (A Book Without Photographs) immediately after People in the Nude certainly emphasized stylistic differences: where Astvatsaturov’s leisurely descriptions blend real life and invention, Shargunov composes a terser, more straightforward memoir that methodically barrels through episodes in his life, linking them through photographs and photography. Shargunov also covers childhood and young adulthood, beginning as the child of a priest and not joining the Pioneers, then winning the Debut Prize, becoming a political activist, and visiting political hot spots, including Chechnya, as a journalist. I thought the quick pace suited the material well, given Shargunov’s writings about politics, including the October 1993 Events, his attempt at elected office, and mentions of where he’s not allowed to photograph. A Book Without Photographs reads easily, as a perceptive personal history of the late Soviet and early post-Soviet eras. I enjoyed Shargunov’s combination of toughness and honesty, which—again!—contrasts with Astvatsaturov, whose book also feels very honest, though People in the Nude has more of a feel of irony and vulnerability than toughness.

Rossica Awards. Better late than never on this information! Academia Rossica announced last week that John Elsworth won the 2012 Rossica Translation Prize for his translation of Andrei Bely’s Petersburg, and Gregory Afinogenov won the Rossica Young Translators Award for his translation of excerpts of Viktor Pelevin’s S.N.U.F.F. Congratulations to both.

What’s Coming Next: A guest post from Olga Bukhina about books for children and teenagers written by writers who usually write for adults. Her post is especially topical since two of the writers she chose—Dmitry Bykov and Boris Minaev—will be in New York next week. Award information: the Big Book short list is coming very soon, and the National Bestseller winner will be announced on June 3. Then Zakhar Prilepin’s Black Monkey. I’ll be in New York for a week, attending Read Russia events and BookExpo America… let me know if you’ll be there, too!

Disclaimers: The usual. And I am working on Read Russia.

Back to Classics: Two of Gogol's Petersburg Stories

The Writer: Nikolai Gogol’

Dates: The story “Невский Проспект” (“Nevsky Prospect”) was published in 1835. “The Nose” was published in 1836.

Why they’re important: I’ll forgo the scholarly and methodical in favor of a selfish big-picture summary that fits my current reading: “Nevsky Prospect” and “The Nose” are part of a cycle of Gogol’s stories based in St. Petersburg that contribute to the city’s mythos. (I’m appropriating the word “mythos” from Antonina Bouis’s translation of Solomon Volkov’s St. Petersburg.) Gogol contributes to a curious procession of Petersburg prose and poetry—which includes Pushkin in the early years and (I suspect) continues to the present day—that describes a city with dualistic dreaminess, devilish figures, apparently inanimate objects that come to life, and other strange occurrences. “The Overcoat” (previous post) is still my favorite of Gogol’s Petersburg stories.

Some basic writings about the stories: I’ve particularly enjoyed reading chunks of Dina Khapaeva’s Кошмар: литература и жизнь (Nightmare: Literature and Life), an inviting book that takes an appropriately nightmare-driven look at Gogol’s stories. I also appreciate Vladimir Nabokov’s mentions of Russian nose expressions, plus a discussion in Gogol’ of the nose-conscious writer, dying, with “hideous black clusters of chaetopod worms sucking at his nostrils.” And I still enjoy Gary Saul Morson’s article “‘Absolute nonsense’”—Gogol’s tales,” from The New Criterion, which calls “The Nose” “totally absurd.”

Another appreciation: Victor Terras’s statement in A History of Russian Literature that “’The Nose’ is a piece of virtuosic writing. Still the vast scholarly attention it has received seems excessive.” I dearly love “The Nose”—I’ve read it many times over the years—but, as an individual with a rather long nose that’s highly sensitive to pollen, down, and dust, I have to say that sometimes an annoying nose is just an annoying nose. And sometimes I wish mine would disappear.

ИМХО/IMHO: First, a bit of context: I read “Nevsky Prospect” and “The Nose” to begin what I envisioned as a brief St. Petersburg reading spree: Gogol, Bely’s Petersburg, and then a contemporary Petersburg novel… but then I started wondering why I hadn’t begun with Pushkin’s “Queen of Spades,” which I’ve always loved, and why I hadn’t considered rereading something from Dostoevsky—maybe Crime and Punishment or The Double?—before Bely. The more I read and reread, the more connections I make, and reading Volkov’s St. Petersburg only adds to the fun. Meaning: I’ll probably focus a lot of this year’s reading on fiction based in St. Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad… though much of my spring reading will center on writers coming to BookExpo America in June.

Onward! I picked up Gogol’s “Nevsky Prospect” because the first page of Bely’s Petersburg mentioned Nevsky Prospect, the main street in St. Petersburg. Accordingly, my focus on Nevsky and Petersburg, as literary settings, frames my thoughts on the story. The story begins by telling the reader that there’s nothing better than Nevsky—at least not in St. Petersburg—and Gogol quickly establishes it as a place where people promenade and forget about whatever needs to be done. Though a part of everyday life, Nevsky is also apart from everyday life. At the end of the story, the reader is instructed not to believe Nevsky, it’s all a (day)dream and a deception, and a demon lights the lamps to show everything in a false light. [Edit: This is not a rank-and-file demon: it's "сам демон," the demon himself, meaning the Devil.]

Gogol’s sandwich of a story has two substantive subplots that begin as one line: two men walking down the street espy women that they follow. [Warning: spoilers follow...] An artist follows a woman to a house of ill repute and dreams of saving her, and an officer follows a woman to her home, where she lives with her husband, a German craftsman named Schiller, who has a friend named Hoffman(n). Cultural references, anyone?

I found the artist thread particularly interesting, with its fuzzy combination of reality, dreams, and opium use: the poor man finds himself in a fog, drawn by beauty and glad for a миг (an instant) of happiness, but his life becomes a topsy-turvy mess of sleepy days and alert nights. The officer thread offers a fight that reminded me a bit much of Gogol’s Ukraine-based stories, but a nose-threatening scene was a plus. Most striking: I was surprised at how uncomfortable and uneasy, even queasy, I felt after reading “Nevsky Prospect” at night: everything felt grotesque and distorted thanks to Gogol’s mishmash of the grotesque and the romantic plus that demon lamplighter who feels like an evil emcee for his city, a place where any twisted thing might happen. Be careful what you wish for.

A monument to the nose
in question

As for “The Nose,” well, it’s the pure absurdity that’s always appealed to me: a story that begins with a barber finding a nose in a loaf of fresh breakfast bread is my kind of story. Gogol continues by introducing the reader to a certain Mr. Kovalev, former possessor of the nose, who later locates his nose as it walks the street, in uniform and with eyebrows. Of course the fact (or not?) that The Nose prays adds further appeal.

Though “The Nose” is funnier and less ominous than “Nevsky Prospect,” the two stories share plenty. It should come as no surprise that Mr. Kovalev is given to strolling Nevsky, in a clean and starched collar. Later in the story he says that the devil played a trick on him, though a bit later still he’s not sure whether he’s been dreaming. Or perhaps drank vodka instead of water. Like “Nevsky Prospect,” “The Nose” also includes references to dreams, reality, and event-obscuring fog. The narrator also tacks on a confused summary of events, not quite sure himself what was true and what was invented but concluding that these things can happen, albeit rarely. Sweet dreams!

P.S. I enjoyed looking at artist Mikhail Bychkov’s illustrations for “Nevsky Prospect.”

P.P.S. Mapping St. Petersburg has two maps, with helpful tags, for Gogol's Petersburg Tales, here. 

Level for non-native readers of Russian: 4.0/5.0.

Up Next: Andrei Bely’s Petersburg. Leonid Iuzefovich’s Князь ветра (Prince of the Wind), the last of Iuzefovich’s three Petersburg detective novels: this one fits with Bely because there’s a Mongolian connection. I’ll also report on Volkov’s St. Petersburg at some time: I’m reading it slowly and enjoying it very much. I’d love to hear readers’ recommendations of novels written by contemporary writers that take place in St. Petersburg, Petrograd, or Leningrad. I may also put together a brief post about some of Max Frey’s “Echo” stories, which (surprise!) blend reality and dreams. I’ve read four or five of the stories in the last year or so, and they’ve come in handy lately as filler reading when I’m overloaded on the intense wordplay of Petersburg.

Favorite Russian Writers A to Я: Fazil Iskander

Finally, a favorite writer for the letter И! I’ve had a collection of Fazil’ Iskander’s stories on my shelf since the ‘90s but never seem to want to pick it up... But Iskander’s Детство Чика (Chik’s Childhood) drew me in right away because its stories are connected by characters: a boy named Chik who’s finding his place in the world, his addled Uncle Kolya whose fishing tackle lacks a hook, and a group of neighborhood boys and girls.

I read three of the pieces in the book and particularly enjoyed the longest (of course!), Ночь и день Чика (Chik’s Night and Day), in which Chik has trouble sleeping at night – he thinks about fears, like scorpions – and then goes on an expedition with his friends the next day to harvest pine sap to make into chewing gum. Iskander’s writing is simple without being simplistic, and his observations about childhood create in Chik a vivid portrait of a boy who can be generous with other children, including a child teased for his disability, but sharp in his judgments. When Chik thinks about adult sneakiness, he reminds me of a young, Abkhazian Holden Caulfield.

I think what I enjoy most about the Chik stories is that Iskander presents a balance of information about Chik’s life and surroundings, including references to Chik’s knowledge of sociopolitical problems of the Stalin-era, like the arrest of a neighbor girl’s father and talk of wreckers, together with the childish joy of the pine sap adventure. That outing is fraught with hazards, too, like a band of neighborhood boys and a biting dog. In our era of play dates and safety, I’m sure many parents would disapprove of kids starting an outdoor fire to boil their pine sap! I should mention that I also loved the portrayal of Chik as a proud child actor – Chik does not lack in self-confidence – who gets demoted from a lead role to a nonspeaking role in “Чик и Пушкин” (“Chik and Pushkin”).

I’m setting Chik aside for now, saving the rest of the stories to read another time. By the way, according to Wikipedia, at least eight volumes of Iskander’s work have been translated into English.

As for other И/I writers… I enjoy Il’f and Petrov, particularly The Golden Calf (previous post), but they’ll never be favorites. And I thought many passages in Aleksandr Ilichevskii’s Matisse (previous post) were very good but the book didn’t quite held together for me. Ilichevskii’s Persian is on my shelf waiting (or weighting, since it’s thick?) for a second try. I’m hoping Ilichevskii’s listing on the Academia Rossica Web site means he’s one of the 40 (!) or so writers who will be at the London Book Fair in April.

I always enjoy recommendations on my alphabet favorites posts, so look forward to reading comments!

Up Next: Mikhail Gigolashvili’s Толмач (The Interpreter), which I enjoyed very much; I may need to add Gigolashvili to my Г/G favorites page. Then Olga Slavnikova’s Лёгкая голова (which I think I’ll call Light Headed, at least for now), a curious book about a brand manager at a chocolate company who is approached by government agents with a strange proposal.

Image credit: Abkhazian commemorative coin celebrating Iskander’s eightieth birthday, from Bank of Abkhazia and Sephia karta, via Wikipedia.

Awards, Awards, Awards, January 2011 Edition

The end of the week brought announcements on several Russian literary awards:

The 2011 NOSE Award went to Vladimir Sorokin for Метель (The Blizzard). A jury and experts publicly debated three finalists – The Blizzard, Pavel Nerler’s The Word and “Deed”, and Viktor Pelevin’s T – but lenta.ru reported that viewers chose the winner because the vote was tied after the jury and experts voted. Though I’m not a big fan of The Blizzard (previous post), I think its many literary references give it a certain homey appeal. I posted brief descriptions of NOSE Award longlisters here.

The Yury Kazakov Prize for best short story of the year went to Maksim Osipov for “Москва-Петрозаводск” (“Moscow-Petrozavodsk”), published in the journal Знамя. Osipov’s collection, Грех жаловаться (which I like thinking of as Can’t Complain), which looks like it mixes fiction and nonfiction, has been nominated for other awards, including the afore-mentioned NOSE Award. Other shortlisters for the Kazakov prize were Iurii Buida, Alisa Ganieva, Artur Kudashev, and German Sadulaev. Links to their stories are on OpenSpace.ru here.

Finally, the Belkin Prize announced the shortlist for its annual award, which recognizes the best повесть of the year. A brief digression since the “povest’” category is a little tricky: a loose translation of my Ozhegov dictionary definition calls a povest’ a narrative literary work that’s less complicated than a novel. When I write about povesti, I usually call them short novels or novellas. For reference, Sorokin’s Blizzard is a povest’ but his Oprichnik book is a novel, at least according to the books themselves. Related words include повествование/povestvovanie, which is storytelling, narrative, or narration.

So… the Belkin nominees are Anna Nemzer for Плен (Captivity), Sergei Krasil’nikov for Critical Strike (love those English titles!), Afanasii Mamedov for У мента была собака (The Cop Had a Dog), Ivan Naumov for Мальчик с саблей (The Boy with the Sabre), and Alisa Ganieva (Gulla Khirachev) for Салам тебе, Долгат! (Salaam, Dolgat!). The only writer I’ve read thus far is Mamedov, whose Фрау Шрам (Frau Scar) I enjoyed last fall (previous post). As you can see from all the links, the shortlisted works are all available online in literary journals... this is where my new electronic reader will come in very handy!

Happy New Year! & Reading Highlights from 2010

Happy new year! С Новым годом! I hope 2011 brings you lots of fun and intriguing Russian fiction, whether you read in English or Russian. Before the year ends, I thought I’d mention some 2010 favorites and a few reading intentions – not to be mistaken for goals or resolutions – for 2011:

Most enjoyably readable long novel: Based on reviews and awards nominations, I expected to like Mikhail Gigolashvili’s Чертово колесо (The Devil’s Wheel), but I wasn’t prepared for the intensity of the book or the skill with which Gigolashvili brings dozens of characters to life while describing withdrawal from drugs and the Soviet way of life. (previous post) Bonus: Ad Marginem, which published The Devil’s Wheel, sent a link to a story by Gigolashvili as a holiday gift. (No, I haven’t read it yet…)

Favorite first-person narrative: With Клоцвог (Klotsvog), Margarita Khemlin does a wonderful job putting the reader inside the head of a character with all sorts of unpleasant life experiences. Khemlin has a tremendous ability to use simple language to create complex situations and characters. I’ve translated one of her short stories and hope to find it a good home in 2011. (previous post)

Favorite чернуха (dark/naturalistic realism): Roman Senchin’s Елтышевы (The Yeltyshevs), a horribly sad and realistic depiction of a failed family, is so beautifully and simply told that I asked about translating it... I’m working on it… (previous post)

Best nonfiction: I’m still recovering from Drawings from the Gulag, written and drawn by Danzig Baldaev. With its graphic visual and written descriptions of Gulag abuses, the book is very difficult to read but I think Baldaev’s perspective is important. Yes, I admit I only read one book of nonfiction this year but this one carries so much emotion and information that I know it would have been notable even if I’d read dozens. (previous post)

Favorite translated book: I did something unusual this year: I read a book, Moscow Noir, in Russian-English translation because I couldn’t wait for the collection of originals to appear in Russian. The translations read well, and the book was dark, dark, dark, as promised. Okay, I confess this is another category with no real competition since Drawings from the Gulag is bilingual. But the book was good, and the editors, Natalia Smirnova and Julia Goumen, did a great job compiling it. (previous post)

What might be coming in 2011: Hmm, the Sh writers seem to lead: I’ve been delaying my Shklovsky mini-marathon for far too long, and I’ve been staring at several of Mikhail Shishkin’s books for months. I also have Viacheslav Shishkov’s Угрюм-река, which I’ll call Gloom River in English, if only because it sounds like “Moon River”… Finally, I’m particularly looking forward to reading Iurii Buida after finally being able to buy one of his books, after several years of on-and-off attempts.

A big thanks to everyone for all your visits, comments, and e-mail messages in 2010! It’s been a fun year of reading, blogging, and hearing from so many of you. I look forward to more reading and book talk in 2011 -- happy new year!

Disclosures: I received Drawings from the Gulag and Moscow Noir from their publishers, Fuel and Akashic, respectively.

New year stamp image from Mariluna, via Wikipedia.

Bitter Truth or Sweet Lie? Sorokin’s Sugar Kremlin

Which do you prefer: bitter truths or sweet lies? The characters in the stories of Vladimir Sorokin’s Сахарный Кремль (The Sugar Kremlin) have lives with a little bit of sugary sweetness and lots of real-life bitterness. Sugar Kremlin takes place in an authoritarian Russia, circa 2028, and Sorokin links the stories in his book by placing a sugar model of the Kremlin in each sketch.

Like Sorokin’s День опричника (apparently to be translated by FSG as A Day in the Life of an Oprichnik) (previous post), Sugar Kremlin combines futurology with a return to the oprichnina, religious rules and rites, and archaic language. Oprichnik is narrated by an oprichnik who also appears in one story of the newer book, but Sugar Kremlin spreads the action over 15 stories with diverse characters who experience awful things: caning, prostitution, and other indignities. According to Sorokin’s literary agent, Galina Dursthoff, Sorokin calls the characters a “Greek choir.”

Of course so many stories in a 340-page book with large print and lots of white space means there’s not much room to develop the singers’ characters, but that’s not Sorokin’s purpose anyway. The book is concept stuff, and much of it retraces familiar ground from previous Sorokin books: back-to-the-future language, secretions, sex, mind-altering drugs, folk tale motifs, linguistic breakdown, and a story named after a Sorokin novel (Очередь/The Line). There’s even a novel method for prostate massage.

I see the point of most of the stories – young prostitutes serving an oprichnik or a dwarf passing gas in the presence of a certain image seem obvious – but Sorokin’s accounts of bodily functions have lost the ability to shock, surprise, or otherwise make me react beyond a shrug. I’ve only read several of his books – Ice, Oprichnik, The Blizzard, Sugar Kremlin, and a few stories – but Sugar Kremlin felt like another day at the office, a rehashing of old tropes. One reader on ozon.ru wondered (as did I) if Sorokin threw together Sugar Kremlin to fulfill a book contract. Time Out Moscow said the book felt like the outtakes that appear on a director’s cut DVD.

The sweet lie side of the story is, of course, the sugar Kremlins, which first appear as a gift to children at Christmas, given at Red Square in the presence of the sovereign himself. The Kremlins appear in the subsequent stories, often in unusual ways (okay, like during sex), giving the book an adult “Where’s Waldo?” flair. People suck on their sugar Kremlin towers, infusing a few moments of pleasantry into lives filled with rural drudgery, forced labor, and interrogations.

Sugar Kremlin read quickly so I did finish it. I don’t have what I’d call favorite stories but two of the first pieces – about Marfa, a girl who gets sent out on a shopping expedition during the winter holidays, and then an interrogator who tells a story about a (furnace) poker – were among the most interesting, though that may be partly because my patience wore down as I read the book. One other: I thought the story about the dwarf, who performs for high-level officials, had more depth than most. Even taken together, though, Sugar Kremlin felt cursory and reductive, considering the themes Sorokin borrows from other books.

What’s most frustrating is that I liked the sugar Kremlins as a device, but it felt like Sorokin was forcing his Greek chorus to recite his old material again, as a reshuffled reprise. I wish he’d let some of his characters bust out with something newer that would have added more depth to his concepts.

Translation watch: Sugar Kremlin has been translated into German and rights have been acquired for several other languages, though not English.

Level for nonnative readers of Russian: 4/5, quite difficult because of archaisms.

Up next: Two detective novels by Leonid Yuzefovich, and Nikolai Maslov’s graphic novel Siberia. I’ll be starting a Big Book finalist mini-binge (three books) soon. [Edit: Oops, that's two Big Book finalists and one Booker longlister...]

Photo credit: Jade Gordon via sxc.hu.

Finding Happiness in Zaionchkovskii’s Happiness

I’m happy I didn’t know much about Oleg Zaionchkovskii’s Счастье возможно: Роман нашего времени (Happiness Is Possible: A Novel of Our Time) before I bought it. Had I known this Big Book award finalist consists of loosely linked short stories, I might have skipped it. Several of you have recommended Zaionchkovskii to me but my stubborn love of long-haul fiction means twenty-four stories in three hundred pages with largish print doesn’t sound like my kind of happiness.

Had I known more about the book and not bought it, I would have missed out on a beautifully indescribable collection of pieces about, yes, happiness. And life in general (of course), death (of course), love (of course), and living with a dog named Phil (a new twist on the happiness theme). Zaionchkovskii’s stories describe everyday occurrences in the life of a divorced Russian writer who often visits with his ex-wife and her husband. (Ouch!) We learn about voices heard through kitchen vents, a fishing trip with rain and cows, a funeral, newlywed housing, and the smell of a sewage treatment plant. Each story has its own small-scale narrative arc but the stories combine to create a meta-arc that gives the book a conclusion.

I think it’s safe to say the Novel of Our Time portion of the book’s title alludes to Mikhail Lermontov’s Герой нашего времени (Hero of Our Time) (previous post), another novel-in-short-stories. Zaionchkovskii’s book is more unified than Lermontov’s, though, employing just one first-person narrator, a writer who occasionally incorporates his fictional characters into stories about his own life.

The air of metafiction is mercifully minimalist and muted in Happiness: though it’s clear the writer in the book is writing about himself (and perhaps even incorporating aspects of his creator’s life?), the narrative voice is so unpretentiously conversational and friendly that I never felt I was being pomo-ed to a pulp. And because the book creates such a detailed portrait of the narrator using colloquial language and humblingly mundane happenings, I almost felt he truly was talking to me, not some anonymous reader, when he reached out using the second person.

Zaionchkovskii handles the temporal aspect of of Our Time nicely, too: Happiness Is Possible depicts contemporary Russian life with a blend of dark and quiet humor, wistfulness, and a combination of involvement and detachment. Plenty of details from post-Soviet Russia are here: how people go to a funeral, a pricey-sounding SUV, sleeping with the realtor, and the coincidences of Одноклассники, Classmates, a Russian site like Facebook. There are even memorable minor characters, such as an escalator lady from the Moscow Metro (ah, memories!) and a vodka-drinking cow herder, plus an appearance by the ubiquitous Christmas tree air freshener.

The fun of Happiness Is Possible wasn’t that I sometimes finished reading stories with a smile on my face – though that happened more than once – but that I read an intimate picture of a character who continually adapts, usually with success, to the conditions around him, no matter how absurd they are. And then there’s the book’s tone, which avoids cynicism but has just enough of an edge to prevent the book and the happiness it depicts from sinking into sugar or cheese. The power of the calm, cautious optimism in Zaionchkovskii’s book is that it made me happy because it is neither overbearing nor empty.

Level for non-native readers of Russian: 2.5 or 3/5. Happiness Is Possible read very easily and enjoyably for me because it’s written in fairly conversational Russian, though readers without experience living in Russia may find some of the vocabulary difficult.

Up next: Fate has been sending me lots of short(er) fiction lately… Two short novels from Vladimir Sorokin: День опричника (A Day in the Life of an Oprichnik, as FSG is evidently calling the English-language translation), which I liked a lot and won’t attempt to summarize here, and Метель (The Blizzard), which I’m just starting. I’m also enjoying Moscow Noir, an anthology of English translations of Russian stories that Akashic Books sent to me after Book Expo America (previous post).

War Stories for Victory Day: Another Grekova Novella & a Sorokin Short Story

With so many news articles about this year’s Victory Day parade in Moscow, I’ve been thinking a lot about World War 2 and Russian fiction related to the war. I hadn’t realized until this week how many novels with war themes I’ve read in the last several years. I wrote a Victory Day post two years ago (here) and will add to my list of favorites at the end of this entry.

I just finished reading two pieces about the war: Irina Grekova’s 1969 novella Маленький Гарусов (Little Garusov) and Vladimir Sorokin’s short story “Кисет” (“The Tobacco Pouch”), from a collection dated 1979-1984. Little Garusov tells the story of a boy orphaned during the war who never quite grows, physically or emotionally. Garusov has a similar feel to the two other Grekova novellas (here and here) that I’ve read: clear, simple language, straightforward narrative, and a combination of light and heavy details that make the piece feel like life.

Though I agree with Helena Goscilo’s criticism (in this detailed introduction to Cathy Porter’s translation of Grekova’s Вдовий пароход (The Ship of Widows)) that Garusov meanders, I still found it an interesting portrait of the short- and long-term effects of the war on children. As a small child in wartime, Garusov often acts like an adult: he catches a crow and brings it to his mother for soup then, later, after she disappears and he’s sent to an orphanage that’s evacuated for the duration, he articulately convinces authorities to send him and his orphanage mates back to Leningrad. He wants to find his mother.

As an adult, Garusov marries and divorces, falls for “other” women, often feeling pity for them and lending money he doesn’t have. He can’t find happiness. He doesn’t know when he was born. His life is pretty empty. And sad. Garusov reminded me a lot of Liudmila Ulitskaya’s Искренне ваш Шурик (Sincerely Yours, Shurik), also about a youngish man who can’t quite seem to find his own life. Shurik was my favorite Ulitskaya novel until I read her Даниэль Штайн, переводчик (Daniel Stein, Translator) (previous post), another book with World War 2 themes.

Today I read Vladimir Sorokin’s “Tobacco Pouch” thanks to a recommendation from readers Languagehat and Alexander/Sashura; Sashura mentioned the story in a comment to this Languagehat post about Elif Batuman’s The Possessed. “The Tobacco Pouch” begins with a narrator, who loves the Russian forest, going to wait for sunrise in the woods. I’ve only read a bit of Sorokin – Лёд (Ice) (previous post) and a few stories, including “Чёрная лошадь с белым глазом” (“Black Horse with a White Eye”) (mentioned here) – but the idyllic, even kitschy, start of “Tobacco Pouch” made me wonder what sinister twist awaited in the woods.

I didn’t have to wait long: several pages in, a veteran with a chest full of medals appears. He’s out collecting plants and he carries a tobacco pouch given to him by a woman when he was a soldier. Then comes the twist: the sunrise lover asks the veteran to tell about the tobacco pouch, and the veteran’s speech eventually self-destructs (I borrowed that word from a small chunk of this interesting Russian essay about Sorokin) as he tells about his life after Victory Day in Berlin. “The Tobacco Pouch” reminded me a little of Gogol’s “Записки сумашедшего” (“Diary of a Madman”), where the narrator loses more and more of his mind as the story progresses.

One especially interesting aspect of the story: Sashura mentioned “Кисет” in a comment on an earlier Languagehat post, calling lily of the valley (ландыш), which the veteran gathers, a clue to the story’s meaning. Lily of the valley is the plant in the online version of the story but in my book, the veteran collects подснежники, snowdrops. The discrepancy got me Googling, and I found that both plants contain compounds used to improve memory: galantamine, in snowdrops, is used to treat Alzheimer’s disease, and lily of the valley, according to Wikipedia, contains of compounds for memory and the heart. [Edit: Both plants are also considered poisonous.] I’m glad Sashura mentioned the plants. Though I was suspicious enough to circle the word подснежники as I read, I didn’t link it to the linguistic breakdown and fragmented memories. “The Tobacco Pouch” didn’t become an instant favorite and I’m still mulling it over but it’s an interesting take on memory and, I think, the odd things that happen when we wander into literal, metaphorical, historical, and folkloric forests.

As for recommendations… Beyond the pieces I mentioned in my 2008 Victory Day post, I particularly recommend these books with World War 2-related themes:

• Liudmila Ulitskaya’s Daniel Stein (previous post)
• Vasillii Grossman’s Life and Fate (previous post)
• Irina Grekova’s Ship of Widows (previous post)
• Il’ia Boiashov’s The Tank Driver or “White Tiger” (previous post)

Books about the war on my “to read” shelf include:

• Leonid Girshovich’s «Вий,» вокальный цикл Шуберта на слова Гоголя (“Viy,” Schubert’s Songs to Gogol’s Lyrics)
• Emmanuil Kazakevich’s Звезда (The Star)

I’d love to hear recommendations for other war-related books or stories.