A Taste of Imperial Russian Literature

As I helped compile the listing of Imperial Russian Literature for the Classics Circuit a few months ago (found here), I found my TBR list growing exponentially: there are so many authors I want to read that I just don’t know when I’ll get to them all. Through my searches at the library and at Amazon.com, I discovered a volume by Penguin Viking: The Portable Nineteenth-Century Russian Reader. It was just what I was looking for: stories, novellas, and poems from twenty different Imperial Russian writers.

I intended to read the entire volume for the Circuit (about 600 pages), but I’m finding that summer living has made reading time scarce. Even reading half the volume, though, makes for quite a long post here, so I hope you don’t mind. I read the authors I had never read before and share my thoughts below: Aleksandr Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Lermontov, Sergey Akaskov, Karolina Pavlova, and Ivan Goncharov. Some of them are writers that I intend to revisit. Other writers were a good read, but I’ll probably not revisit them.

According to Merriam Webster, superfluous means “exceeding what is sufficient or necessary: extra; not needed: unnecessary.” As I read the collection of stories, poems, and novellas, I couldn’t help thinking of that word. Ivan Turgenev wrote the novella “The Diary of a Superfluous Man” in 1850, which focused on one of the gentry who lived a rather aimless life. I haven’t read the novella (it is not in my Reader), but I read Mel u’s post about it early in the Classics Circuit Tour. As I read my selections, I kept thinking about how each story or poem seemed to discuss one of these “unnecessary” people in Russian society. Reading Russian literature in that light is quite depressing, yet the stories are, for the most part, wonderfully drawn together. Continue reading »

Great Short Stories by American Women + Thoughts on A Few Other Great Stories

I adopted May as A Short Story a Day in May (which was also, apparently, made “official” by someone important I’d never heard of). I started off on a roll: I read a short story every day for almost three weeks. Then, by the last week of the month, I realized that I was honestly bored with reading a short story every day. I wasn’t finding the right ones, I guess. I am thinking that for me, short stories are best appreciated a few here and there, not a huge number in one month.

The first part of the month was taken up by reading a Dover Thrift anthology of stories by American Women. Edited by Candace Ward, the volume had thirteen stories, one of which I skipped because I couldn’t get into it. (That story was “Life in the Iron-Mills” by Rebecca Harding Davis. The blurb about it compared it to Emile Zola, and that was enough to turn me against it. It also started quite slowly.) The anthology has (mostly) public domain works in it; I’ve found an online link where available. Continue reading »

Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

Sometimes I just need something light. Something that makes me chuckle. I’ve been reading a lot of old classics (which I love) and nonfiction (which fascinates me). But when I went to start another portion of my painting project, I needed something light and funny. I couldn’t concentrate on serious when I was doing a chore I wanted to procrastinate.

P.G. Wodehouse’s collection of short stories about Bertie Wooster and his butler Jeeves was simply perfect. It was my first foray into the world of Bertie and his witty butler, and these stories made me crave more.

The best part of the Jeeves stories is the interaction between the two. Bertie is a wealthy British bachelor who thinks quite highly of himself. He is ridiculous. Jeeves is, quite simply, a perfect servant and a genius. Jeeves takes control of situations and use things to his advantage all the while Bertie thinks he’s in charge.

Carry On, Jeeves has ten stories, including one about the first day Jeeves entered into Bertie’s services. A few of them take place in New York, but others are in England and Europe. Jeeves saves the day in all of them, in his own style. Bertie, of course, is ridiculous.

Much thanks for my library’s e-audiobook website. The version I listened to was wonderfully narrated by Martin Jarvis. I now know I have a perfect go-to when I need an audiobook like this!

What is your favorite Bertie and Jeeves story? I’m ready for more!

Reading in Spanish (Neruda’s Poetry and La casa en Mango Street by Cisneros)

Pablo Neruda’s early poetry (specifically, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair) does not have much to do with Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street. Neruda was a Chilean who wrote love poetry (in Spanish) in the early 1900s at the age of 20. Hispanic-American Sandra Cisneros wrote in the 1980s a short volume (in English) of connected short stories about a Hispanic girl in Chicago. But I read both these works in Spanish (the Cisneros in translation) this month, and so the tenuous relationship between them is the language I read them in. Continue reading »

The Arabian Nights II, trans. by Husain Haddawy

After I finished reading Husain Haddawy’s translation of The Arabian Nights (reviewed here), I still felt unfulfilled. I turned to The Arabian Nights II to get Haddawy’s translation of some of the traditional stories. In the end, I now have a better appreciation for the first volume of stories: those first stories were by far superior to these. Continue reading »

The John Cheever Audio Collection

I really like audiobooks sometimes because it gives a book a new edge. I absolutely loved listening to a selection of John Cheever’s stories via audiobook. The John Cheever Audio Collection was very well done.

As I listened to the stories, I kept recalling my time reading the short stories of Chekhov and Maupassant last year. Cheever’s stories reminded me of theirs, but it’s been so long since I read Chekhov and Maupassant that I couldn’t figure out exactly why. Maybe it’s because Cheever, like the others, focuses on normal people in regular, realistic situations.

Of course, Cheever stories take place in 1950s and 1960s suburban New York, among the upper-middle class society. His stories try to determine what would be the natural result of a given situation, and they often felt sad in the end.

After I put down some of these thoughts, I found that Wikipedia claims Cheever is “the Chekhov of the suburbs.” At least I’m right on that! His stories did remind me more of Maupassant’s stories, but still, the title fits him. Continue reading »

The Arabian Nights, translated by Husain Haddawy

It’s bawdy. It’s erotic. It may be inappropriate for young minds. It’s irreverent, especially considering a strict Islamic world such as the 1500s when they were written. And yet, The Arabian Nights has historically been an immensely popular collection of stories.

As The New Lifetime Reading Plan reminds me, these were one of the first “best-sellers,” the popular fiction of centuries past. I read the tales to gain a better understanding of a traditional literature.

It’s easy to see the appeal.  The stories remind me of the Grimm brothers’ tales in that magical things take extreme directions. But while Grimms’ tales had morals and were told in the guise of children’s tales, The Arabian Nights tell plain crude stories that cater to the basest of instincts: sex, betrayal, alcohol, and thievery to name just a few. But beyond the magical elements and the crudity, the tales themselves claim a higher place as they emphasize the import of story-telling in general. Continue reading »

Beauty and the Beast + The Complete Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault

The Once Upon a Time III Challenge has a “Short Story Weekend” mini-challenge, so I thought I’d visit some fairy tales. To my surprise, the copy of Charles Perrault’s Complete Fairy Tales that I found was less than 200 pages and written for children, so I breezed through all of them very quickly. Many of Perrault’s stories are retellings of other’s stories. My favorite was “Beauty and the Beast.” Continue reading »

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino was a book that confused me from beginning to end, and yet I am glad I read it. Calvino was trying to do something creatively strange, and I think I missed it, but the strangeness was a bit rewarding in the end. All that said, I am struggling to say something coherent about the book. Continue reading »

Stories by Tommaso Landolfi

I’m somewhat at a loss of what to say about Gogol’s Wife and Other Stories by Tommaso Landolfi.

In some respects, Landolfi’s stories reminded of Borges’ Fictions: they have elements the bizarre. I didn’t enjoy reading Borges (thoughts here), but I did sense a genius and power behind the writing. Landolfi’s writing is likewise laudable, although I wonder once again what the genius behind the stories actually is. I think it is beyond me. Continue reading »