SAAC BABEL: THE LONELY YEARS 1925-1939

by Isaac Babel ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 17, 1964

Isaac Babel is the best short story writer Russia has produced since Chekhov and Turgenev. ""My motto is authenticity,"" Babel said, ""That's why I write so little and so slowly."" Authenticity, however, was an animadversion of the Stalinists and by the late '30's Babel ""vanished."" Just how he met his end no one knows; his emigree daughter, in her introduction to this volume, believes it was through the full honors of a firing squad. Babel in the late '50's was ""rehabilitated."" The volume here contains 9 short stories, and a collection of letters, written to members of his family, from 1925-39; all of the material, with the exception of one story, has never before appeared in English. The fiction, while not vintage Babel, is interesting on three counts: two of the tales are chapters of a projected novel dealing with collectivization, four are representative of Babel's early Maupassant style, and all, to varying degrees, contain that curiously charming blend of naturalism, lyricism and black comedy Babel made his own. It is good to have them. The letters are heartbreaking. A record of Babel's success, decline and fall, they present snapshots of a man (and a period) living sunny with expectation yet riddled with doubt and a sense of impending doom. By the mid-'30's, his marriage disintegrating--his wife and daughter had now permanently settled in Paris-- the ""purge"" on and the censors at his elbow, these epistles become almost mute with trivia. Babel was a man of great talent and apparently of great courage. Upon his arrest he showed no alarm, even smiled, and then went off to Lubyanka prison.

Pub Date: July 17, 1964

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: arrar, Straus & Co.

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1964

Categories: FICTION