Fafajockling

 Wish I had it sooner Sooner in life. I was obsessed with Gogol, Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Bulgakov as a teen. This would have been another corridor to investigate, but I don't have the same sentimental pull as I do with those authors, like the verve to read an obscure Russian author is not the same after the big dogs: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, et cetera. These stories are imaginative, and full of style to be sure, so I would say go ahead and know Leskov's main works. Yet between Chekhov and Tolstoy, there is some amount of moralizing that always killed my buzz, maybe I detect a little of that here too. I am still continuing to read Leskov in different translations and phases of his work--NYRB has a recent offering that includes Robert Chandler, whose efforts with Platonov are of the utmost echelon. The Enchanted Wanderer was decent, Lady MacBeth didn't hit me too strong, but Russian prose from this period is always welcome on a dark night--it reads like a friend. Why not hav...

  Edition Decree: Solid Honors Done to Middling Work of Authors (review copy from publisher) Censored, obstructed Soviet tomes can be hard to come by--you have an author you love, and you know there are books left to read... but they haven't been translated, or translated in full. The sorrow!... So it was great news to hear of this Strugatsky book released in new, uncut form. This edition is more extensive than other editions by page number, although it was hard for me to discern what all didn't make it through the censors. The afterword denotes certain changes. The story itself is not my favorite Strugatsky-- I think "Dead Mountaineer's Inn" is their tightest, most atmospheric, profound, and entertaining read. Even "Roadside Picnic" did not become a book I would reread almost annually like Dead Mountaineer... and perhaps that will be the case with "The Inhabited Island". It is an adventure story, told with great Strugatsky effect: A f...

  A classic in disreputable motley The first thing I thought was, "This paperback is HUGE." It's the size of a Bible. My War and Peace isn't nearly this big. Then... that cover! I don't usually care about the cover, but I don't want to be seen reading this book--it looks like it was designed as a 25c birthday card originally, with a naked boy on a horse and a clipart star in the middle. Then, the pages! You can see the opposite-facing text through each page. Printer paper? Man. As eastern Europeans say, "it's a pity" because the text is a masterpiece, and I chose this edition based on a lot of research about the translation, and which one has the whole text. I'm a little surprised... a work like this, and no one is stepping up to make an authoritative edition?... Get Pevear and Volkhonsky to translate this one!

  Influences In the Introduction to my version of The Iliad, Tolstoy is said to have claimed it as the highest achievement of storytelling. The analogies that run rampant through The Iliad are used in Tolstoy's style too... “Like a gambler who begins to win at cards, and instead of attributing this to the luck of his hands, instead believes he has discovered a winning method...” and so on. War and Peace is full of the Iliad . And For Whom the Bell Tolls is full of War and Peace . And sprigs of Vonnegut's style grow there too. Not only is Tolstoy a fan of “And so on,” he also sums up his book at the end with two pages of pure Vonnegut style: The tone is deadpan, every reason for the Napoleonic wars is a fallacy, and at the end there is a shrug about the inexplicable, arbitrary path of everything that has happened. Pierre is even a good reflection of Billy Pilgrim as he walks through battle scenes in his white suit, staring and seeming lost in thought, even developi...

  I never liked Nabokov, thought he was pompous and hyper-erudite. In this book he seems to have something to say! If you love Gogol, read this book. You will weep. If you love Nabokov, this book will make you love Gogol. And that is the proper thing to do, believe me. It has Nabokov's failings... at times the reader will wonder if Nabokov is going to stop describing the place he is writing from and get back to Gogol! But that's what you pay for with Nabokov, it has very amusing moments about it. It also sets out to wax humorously on Russian culture at length: but this is actually very useful for lovers of Russian literature who are not Russian. Truly great. Nabokov makes some questionable statements about who should like Gogol's work, some very elitist statements. But do not worry. Gogol is definitely for everybody. Read this book if you have enjoyed Gogol's work. But it would help to read most of Gogol first, and love it thoroughly if you want to be mo...