Recent Reading

I have just started a new book - 'Dead Souls' by Gogol. For some reason all Russian authors (and I seem to read a lot of them) give their books deeply depressing titles which can be quite off putting since the novels themselves are often gems. The back of my penguin edition of 'Dead Souls' includes the following comment about Gogol:

'Over the next ten years, many of them spent travelling in Europe, Gogol's obsession (with the novel) intensified, eventually driving him to madness, religious mania and death.... it raises the fundamental question of an author's involvement in his work, of how far a creative artist's outlook on life can impinge on the lives of his heroes without leading, as in Gogol's case, to insanity and suicide'

I thought I should mention the other books I have been reading since Christmas. All follow the Russian theme...

1. Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment -
This is the best Dostoyevsky I have read - It really keeps you turning the pages and is a cogent and detailed examination of the human conscience, its effect on life and its Theological connections. This is a good place to start on Dostoyevsky.

2. Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov -
Like Crime and Punishment this uses a moral dilemma to expose Dostoyevsky's take on the human (and in particular the Russian) condition. It does so through the prism of a group of brothers embroiled in a dispute with their father. I rate this novel to be almost as profound as Crime and Punishment - there is something very raw about Dostoyevsky's storytelling which I find most gripping. He is obsessed with the idea that the Russian People stumble when they loose sight of God.

3. Dostoyevsky - The Devils
I have just finished this one, so can remember a little more... Like the others it starts slowly. For about a third of the novel it is a real struggle to keep reading as he takes a long time building the characters before anything significant happens. However, by now I have come to realize that it is always worth it in the end because when major events do take place one understands them far better having established a relationship with the characters. This novel was Dostoyevsky's last. Many of the events in it are based on his experiences - one of the main characters is an old style Russian novelist who is portrayed as prodigiously arrogant and snooty - this is a characterisation of Dostoyevsky's arch rival Turgenev. The events connected to the essential story in the novel - that of an underground communist cell and its effect on the narrator's town - is grounded on the activities of similar cells which were exposed in a Russian trial shortly before the novel was written. It is masterfully written, is seen by many as a prophesy of what was to come and is again an intriguing (though less focused and certainly less well structured) examination of Russian morality. Definitely worth a read.


4 - Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead
I struggled a little with this one. It is Dostoyevsky's own account of his time in a Siberian Prison camp. It is fantastically detailed and gives an excellent picture of his experience. This is both its greatest asset and its biggest drawback. Let me warn you - it gets extremely monotonous! I understand that this is merely a reflection of the monotony of prison life, and the book should not be compared to the author's novels, but it seems to me that Solzheinitzyn had a much better idea in his (roughly) equivalent account of prison life - 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'. As the title suggests, Solzehenitzyn just picked a day, and explained it in still greater detail than Dostoyevsky. By confining himself to one day, Solzhenizyn introduces a structure to the book which makes it easier to read as well as giving a sense of the minutely pre-ordained structure that exists for inmates - something which Dostoyevsky tries to explain but fails to convey owing to his habit of jumping from one little tale to another. Read 'The House of The Dead' for a detailed and thorough account of one man's experience in Siberia. Don't expect it to be gripping.

5. Dostoyevsky - Letters from the Underworld
Fabulous short stories with the same oomph which makes Dostoyevsky's novels so gripping. These are remarkably brutal and insightful examinations of life through Dostoyevsky's eyes. His great skill is in painting brutal pictures and leaving it to the reader to decipher and make moral judgments. Worth a read.

6. Tolstoy - Anna Karenin
A pleasant change for Dostoyevsky's brutal objectivism. This book is really fantastic. What I like most about it is the way in which Tolstoy so imagninatively builds up his characters such that the reader is variously infatuated or repelled by them. As the novel proceeded I saw glimmers of humanity in characters who I had grown to despise and cruelty in those I had felt at one with. Underlying it all is a search for the meaning of life and an experiment to determine whether the route taken by any of the characters would lead them to this meaning. At times deeply deeply depressing, the novel, like Dostoyvesky's, culminates by providing the main character with an understanding of the God he long sought.

7. Solzheinitzyn - The First Circle
This is a more modern take on the vast brooding examination of human nature that defines Russian literature. It revolves around a Stalinist prison for engineers and portrays the fear, despair and diminution experienced by those whose actions, words or thoughts were objected to by the Soviet regime. It is a historical text, a treatise on the human mind and a moving account of humanity in the teeth of a bureaucratic machine. Recommended.

8. Solzheinitsyn - One Day in the Life on Ivan Denisovitch
I have mentioned this already so wont ramble on too much - except to say that it trumps Dostoyevsky's equivalent by attempting only to provide us with a snapshot of life in a labour camp. The reader descends into a world in which prisoners spend hours thinking how they will hide bits of bread in their shirts; are de-humanized by absurd levels of discipline and regain their humanity and sense of purpose through the labour which they are forced to perform. If you haven't read it do so now!