by Viktor Shklovsky ; translated by Valeriya Yermishova ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 21, 2017
Readers with a background in formalism and its successors will find this of interest, though Bulgakov, Sholokhov, and...
Slender, allusive novel of clerical foibles by Russian/Soviet novelist Shklovsky (1893-1984).
Gavriil Dobrynin is born into the Orthodox Church—literally, his father a priest, both grandfathers priests. Social mobility being what it was in the age of Catherine the Great, Gavriil might have done worse, though the churchly world he falls into is full of politics and intrigue; his introduction is a coup against an archimandrite who “was an enemy of God and should be squealed on under the first and second articles,” as one of his denouncers, an altar boy, has it. The first article, explains Shklovsky (The Hamburg Score, 2017, etc.), concerns slanders against God, the second slanders against the state; either one brings pain on the heads of those found guilty of violations. In this sort-of biography, novelized with invented dialogue and episodes, Gavriil falls under the tutelage of a bishop named “Kirill Florinsky, or Fliorinsky, as he whimsically called himself,” who’s a little more frivolous than his office might tolerate—though he’s no weakling and not afraid to throw a punch. As the story progresses, the master outfoxes the student, and then the student the master; fortunes wax and wane, though Gavriil soon learns that ambitions go far when matched with wine and fireworks. There’s some enjoyable cat and mouse here, but in the end the story is a touch arid, written as if to conform either to the censor or the requirements of the reigning literary theory. At its best, though, Shklovsky’s short novel serves up some subtly funny, suggestively subversive resonances that might remind the reader of his contemporary Mikhail Bulgakov. Had the edition included good notes and an introduction, these resonances and how the book fits into Shklovsky’s broad-ranging body of work might have been made more comprehensible to readers new to the writer or, for that matter, to literature of the Soviet era.
Readers with a background in formalism and its successors will find this of interest, though Bulgakov, Sholokhov, and Pasternak remain the cornerstone writers of the era for nonspecialist readers.Pub Date: July 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62897-174-3
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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by Viktor Shklovsky & translated by Richard Sheldon
by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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by Donna Tartt
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by Donna Tartt
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by John Steinbeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 26, 1936
Steinbeck is a genius and an original.
Steinbeck refuses to allow himself to be pigeonholed.
This is as completely different from Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle as they are from each other. Only in his complete understanding of the proletarian mentality does he sustain a connecting link though this is assuredly not a "proletarian novel." It is oddly absorbing this picture of the strange friendship between the strong man and the giant with the mind of a not-quite-bright child. Driven from job to job by the failure of the giant child to fit into the social pattern, they finally find in a ranch what they feel their chance to achieve a homely dream they have built. But once again, society defeats them. There's a simplicity, a directness, a poignancy in the story that gives it a singular power, difficult to define. Steinbeck is a genius and an original.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 1936
ISBN: 0140177396
Page Count: 83
Publisher: Covici, Friede
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1936
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by John Steinbeck & edited by Thomas E. Barden
BOOK REVIEW
by John Steinbeck & edited by Robert DeMott
BOOK REVIEW
by John Steinbeck & edited by Susan Shillinglaw & Jackson J. Benson
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