Book Review - Diary of a Madman and Other Stories by by Gogol

 Diary of a Madman and Other Stories by Gogol, translated with an introduction by Ronald Wilks

Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972                                                            ISBN 0140442731

Nothing is new in this world. The Surrealists burst onto the world scene in the 1920s as something new and different, and yet I've just read a marvelous collection of surrealist stories that were written one hundred years earlier. Kafka too certainly owes something to the madness of Gogol - I thought of him as I dipped my toe into the ocean of words created by this icon of Russian literature.

I say "madness of Gogol" advisedly - he did in the end go mad with religious mania and starve himself to death - for there are definite signs in the stories collected in this volume of incipient madness. The Diary of a Madman in particular describes a descent into madness, but written in such a way that the reader almost slips into madness with him - Gogol writes of the stifling life of a civil servant in such a way that we see that it could very easily drive one mad, as it locks power into toadys and martinets who take their own failures out on those beneath them in the tightly woven structure of the day (explained succinctly and well by Ronald Wilks in his introduction and notes).

From The Diary we move in this edition to The Nose, and the reader moves from having a descent into madness described to being immersed in complete madness. The story of a man who wakes up to find his nose missing, and then to chase it around St. Petersburg as it masquerades as a high-ranking civil servant is funny and disturbing at the same time. Gogol once again pokes fun at the absurdities of society, but there is no hint in the story that the main premise is absurd at all. The reader is waiting for some sort of punchline, but will be disappointed.

The final three stories in this edition sit on somewhat firmer ground, being more straightforward stories of Russian society and mores (although two of them are actually set in Ukraine from where Gogol hailed). In The Overcoat we see the poverty and hopelessness of those of the lower strata. The final two stories poke fun at the pettiness of the "gentlemanly" class of former soldiers, with their smallholdings and serfs.

Some of the beauty of Gogol is in his descriptive writing (well-translated I think here by Wilks), his mock innocent tone highlighting some of the absurdities he's writing about. His seriousness when describing the most absurd turns of events, for example in The Nose, shifts the reader's moorings and drags them into the swirling maelstrom of the world he manages to create in only a few pages.

I am never on firm ground with Russian literature - it always takes me out of my comfort zone. This book was no different: an insight into a different world, a different way of thinking, and very entertaining. Recommended.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

 We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, translated by Bernard Guilbert Guerney, introduction by Michael Glenny

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977 (first published 1924 in English in the USA)

ISBN 0140035109

I've been aware of this novel for some time, as it's often mentioned in conjunction with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four as a work that rails against tyranny of the many over the one. Unlike Orwell, Zamyatin was actually a victim of Soviet madness, eventually driven to exile from Russia largely because of this book, which was deemed by the authorities to be dangerous. Mostly abandoned by his fellow writers, Zamyatin took the extraordinary measure of writing directly to Stalin to plead for his literature and his life (the contents of that letter are reproduced in the excellent introduction to this edition). Although We was written in Russia in 1920, it was first published in an English translation in New York in 1924, and wasn't published in Russia until 1988 (although some Russian editions were published in the USA before then). George Orwell did indeed read the book - the French translation, which was published in 1928.

There can be little doubt that Orwell drew some of his inspiration for Nineteen Eighty-Four from We, but Zamyatin is more allegorical, and more lyrical than Orwell. While Orwell was directly attacking the Soviet style of government and repression, Zamyatin, to me at least, seems to go more directly to the point of showing how enforced conformity destroys an individual. He also, I expect from his experience of the Russian Revolution, shows how a small cadre of people who don't believe in the current authority can actually trigger a convulsion by merely opening the eyes of those around them.

The book is written as a series of entries into the journal of D-503, who is the builder of "The Integral", a ship that is to travel to other worlds where they will subjugate "unknown creatures to the beneficent yoke of reason - creatures inhabiting other planets, perhaps still in the savage state of freedom. Should they fail to understand that we are bringing them a mathematically infallible happiness, it will be our duty to compel them to be happy."

Set well into the future, We depicts a society where all humans are known by a number rather than a name, have no parents or family ties, and whose lives are regulated by a Taylorite  "Table of Hours" which allocate time, food is to be chewed a certain number of times and so-on. Any deviation from the norms laid down by the Benefactor are punished, and all are regulated by the Guardians - a kind of secret police.

D-503 is a productive and obedient member of this society, doing all that is required of him, including his regular scheduled sessions of sex with his ticketed partner O-90. That is until he meets E-330, who changes his life. She does things she shouldn't, she openly scorns the One State and all that it encompasses. She takes D-503 beyond the "Green Wall" into the natural world (the One State and its environs are all made of glass), and involves him in a plot to hijack The Integral, which is part of her plan to bring down the One State.

Zamyatin describes D-503's confusion as all that he holds as true and right is demolished by E-330, even as he finds his love (obsession?) for her makes him follow along. This book is the story of the destruction of a society from within, but also a story of obsessive love, and of the breakdown of an individual. It is also a classically themed dystopian SciFi novel.

Thematically, We focuses on the idea of happiness. In the One State, happiness is conformity and having every moment planned for. In this way what we would see as the normal human emotions are gradually whittled away. There is a section that refers back to Genesis, and points out that Adam and Eve had a choice: "happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative..." Emotions, dreams, fantasy and even the idea of having a soul are considered sickness in Zamyatin's fictional world. These are the things that led mankind to virtual destruction before the One State regulated everything. Zamyatin also shows us how propaganda can work on human conception - D-503 believes he is happy because he is always being told that he is. How would he know any different?

E-330 shows D-503 that conformity brings a calm to proceedings, but not true happiness. In his love for her, he sees that the emotional - individual - life can give meaning, higher joy, and, yes, fear and confusion. I think this aspect of the novel is what the Bolsheviks were most afraid of - they were indeed trying to build a society where the one was sacrificed to the many. Zamyatin shows that while this may work for a time, the human impulse to be ourselves can never be quashed forever, and that a revolution may come even at a time when it seems impossible.

While I think that We is not as thematically well-developed as Nineteen Eighty-Four, it is more enjoyable to read. The sense of confusion felt by D-503 flows through to the reader - we are drawn on, waiting to see what's going to happen. Many of the things that do happen are confusing to us as well - it's not clear where the plot is heading at times, D-503 is inarticulate at important moments in the book (Zamyatin is often coy about whether D-503 says things to other characters, or merely thinks them), and there is often much confusion during moments of action. Which, to be fair, gives a good account of how a revolution might look and feel to one living through it, or even indeed to one taking part.

I won't reveal what happens at the end of the book in this review, but I will recommend We to those who not only like political commentary in their fiction, but also to anyone who enjoys a good story.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Corfu by Robert Dessaix

 Corfu: a novel by Robert Dessaix

Sydney: Picador, 2001                                                    ISBN 033036278X

I found this a strange book. A book without a story, but about stories. A book about love, but with little love in it. It is a book set in Greece, but not about Greece. I spent much of the time when reading this book wondering where it would go - in the end, I'm not sure it went anywhere. And yet I read it to the finish.

The narrator of Corfu is an actor who works in a small company rehearsing Chekhov (The Cherry Orchard) in London, where he comes into contact with William, a loose-limbed, happy-go-lucky set designer. There is a frisson between them, or so our narrator thinks. William and our hero (an appropriate term I think, as there is a connexion between our protagonist and Odysseus, as is touched on throughout the book) circle around each other, with our hero unable to understand the take-it-as-it comes attitude of William.

Our hero leaves William in a hotel room in Rome. Unable to come to terms with his feelings, he flees to Corfu, where he rents the house of Kester Berwick, an expatriate Australian actor who is in Athens for reasons that our hero never finds out. He soon becomes fascinated with Berwick, through reading his clippings and manuscripts, and talking to the other expats about him. He can never pin down Berwick's true character - views of him vary from charlatan to guru. Our hero is disturbed when he finds a photograph of Berwick with William...

He learns that Berwick led a life of loss, losing lovers to time and chance and the wheels of history. Meanwhile he hears that William is on his way to Corfu, and so he flees again, this time to Lesbos, where he encounters a group of witches trying to get in touch with the other side. Eventually he returns to Corfu where he meets with William again, and they consummate their relationship.

Our hero decides to put on a production of Uncle Vanya, using locals as the actors. He and William decide to go back together to Adelaide (where both of them, and Berwick, hail from), until, on the night of the performance, William says he's not going. An epilogue, set five years later, describes how Berwick and quite a few other characters have died, and that our hero has never heard from William again.

If this seems a thin and unsatisfying story, it's because it is a thin and unsatisfying story. It's hard to have sympathy for our hero, as he seems to veer between fear, shame and paranoia about William. Much of the novel is our hero's thoughts on Chekhov, Homer, the former Empress of Austria, C.P. Cavafy, among others. At times it seemed to me that this was intellectual posturing, but as I read further that feeling faded a little, although I still struggled to see how Chekhov fitted in with, let alone should have been such a major part of, this book (Dessaix has written extensively on Russian literature, and completed a PhD on the subject).

Dessaix muses in this book on the themes of life and love. Our hero has an epiphany when rehearsing Uncle Vanya, that the ordinariness of life is just as, if not more, important as the dramatic moments. Our hero too struggles with the idea of love, with the idea of giving oneself to someone, without knowing where that might lead. As he begins to think that he can do that with William, William leaves him, and "something inside went dead". 

That seems to be what happened to Kester as well, ending up on Corfu to live out his life without wants (because wanting is dangerous perhaps?). I was disappointed to find out, after I had finished this novel, that Kester Berwick is a real person - I feel it is another failure of imagination in this book.

There is no doubt this novel is well written, and that Dessaix is a man of learning, but I found that the "soul" of this book - the something inside - was, for me, dead. I don't feel that I've come to the end of this book knowing more than I did before I started it - about myself, or the world. And that's a shame.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Master and Margarita by Mickhail Bulgakov

 The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated from the Russian by Mirra Ginsburg

London: Picador Classics, 1989  (first published 1966 in Russian, 1967 in English) 

ISBN 0330307401

Wow! It's taken me more than twenty years after first hearing of this novel to finally get around to reading it and I can't decide if my reaction is one of "it was worth the wait", or "why did I wait so long?" Both statements are true, and I can see why this book is popular with all readers, not just literary types: it's a rollicking story, as well as a book that contains much meaning.

I suppose the ultimate question is - what is this book about? Well like all classics The Master and Margarita is about life and death: how we live and what we believe. The main narrative is high farce - Satan comes to Moscow with his cronies to cause mischief and to find a Margarita to be queen of his full-moon ball. Preying on the natural vices of the people who encounter him, he not only causes mayhem with his magic show, but also manages to find his queen. Running alongside this story is Bulgakov's retelling of the final hours of Jesus, from the viewpoint of Pontius Pilate.

As with all great works, this brief recitation of the narrative is to sell this book short. The translator notes in her introduction that the tone throughout the book shifts with the subject matter (something I think she has replicated well in her translation). When we are "dealing with the Devil" the tone is very fluid: moving quickly from farce to fear, from humour to horror. When we read about the Master and Margarita we feel the tenderness of the love they have for one another. And when we read Pilate's story we are touched by grandeur, and the longing of a guilty man who wishes to be healed.

We have to ask ourselves the question of why Bulgakov ties these stories together... it is a question that I think has many potential answers, but here are my thoughts. Quite clearly there is a level of satire directed at Soviet society of the thirties in particular (when this book was written), but which is equally applicable to any society at any time. Those who lack basic goodness are pilloried, as is the corporatized nature of society. The treatment of the Arts - Literature especially - is shown for what it is: those of lesser talent that "toe the party line" get further ahead than those who follow their talent to wherever it might take them.

The character of Satan-Woland of course uses these weaknesses of human character to cause strife: Bulgakov has much fun with these scenes but often gives the reader a sharp prick of conscience when a farcical scene ends in tragedy. The dissonance of Koroviev and Behemoth making light of someone being dismembered by a streetcar brings us face-to-face with the horror of evil - drawn from small evils to greater evil, and how one can quickly become the other. I wonder if Bulgakov was not also showing the reader how a society that loses its beliefs loses the core of its being, and becomes prey to not only the little evils, but the big ones as well.

The Jesus story is a counter to this. While we have no idea what is happening as the Moscow narrative unfurls before us, we are all know what is happening in first-century Jerusalem, even if this version is from a different viewpoint: God is sacrificing himself for us. In Pilate we see a man searching for the love and forgiveness of God, coming to an understanding that to follow God and be at one with him should be the goal of life. These Pilate sections are in sharp contrast to Woland's antics, and ultimately throw the shallowness of evil into high relief - very clever writing.

And The Master and Margarita? Perhaps I understand this section of the novel less than the others. Certainly it's a love story, and it could be that Margarita's willingness to sell herself to Satan for the sake of her Master is a sign that true love can conquer any trial. Personally I can't quite reconcile Margarita's enjoyment of her time as a witch and her final fate to be with the Master for eternity, with her embracing of Woland. Perhaps Bulgakov is showing us that in the face of true love even evil is powerless? I'm not sure it really works - for me, at least.

That aside, The Master and Margarita is an absolute romp: Bulgakov has had a lot of fun writing this book, both in his imagination, and playing with the mores of his time, while still grappling with the big question of God, and his place in our lives. No doubt  a classic - my one regret taking so long to get it under my belt.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev, translated by Rosemary Edmonds

Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1965                                          ISBN 0140441476

Those very few who regularly read my reviews know that I have a difficult relationship with Russian literature. Quite often my lasting impression of reading works from Russia is just how different a place it is, and was, from where and who I am. So, while I often appreciate Russian works that I read, just as often they don't move me at a deep level.

I'm pleased to state that is not the case with Fathers and Sons, a book that I both enjoyed reading for its style, and that moved me with its narrative. Written in 1861 at a time of great upheaval in Russian society, Turgenev's subject is a perennial one - the clash of generations, of new ideas with the old, and the choices that people make in their lives.

In Bazarov, Turgenev has created a character that predicts much of Russian history to come. One can't help but think of Lenin when reading Bazarov's theories on humanity, Russians, the nobility and the state of serfs. He is referred to as the "nihilist" throughout the book, with good reason. His mindset is to destroy the current state of things, without having a clear idea of why he is doing so. He spurns society as it is, and human nature as well, which is why he is so confounded when he falls in love with Anna Sergeyevna, and this conflict in the end is the death of him. He was so determined to change the fate of Russia, and so many thought that he would, and yet his death at the end of the novel, as the result of a careless act in dissecting a dead peasant, is for no purpose, and before he could fulfil any of his promise, such as it was.

His disciple, Arkady, who is full of youthful bluster, realises that the path of the revolutionary is not for him, and marries Katya, Anna Sergeyevna's sister. His journey in the book contrasts with Bazarov, finding happiness and fulfilment, and the promise of adding to humanity through children and his activities in improving his family farm.

Arkady's father Nikolai Petrovich, and his uncle Pavel Petrovich, represent the older generation, as do Bazarov's parents Vassily Ivanych and Arina Vlassyevna. Both Nikolai and Pavel consider themselves liberal, but are shocked by the way Bazarov rejects all aspects of society as it currently stands. Nikolai represents those of the upper classes that are trying to do the right thing, and is bewildered by Bazarov's rejection of the arts. However, he is resigned to the coming age, and to the Bazarovs of this world. Pavel, who is truly aristocratic in nature and lifestyle, is horrified and disgusted by Bazarov and all he represents. His duel with Bazarov is surely representative of the change occurring in society: Pavel challenges Bazarov, who accepts because he knows it's the only way to solve the acrimony between them. Bazarov wins, Pavel accepts that honour has been satisfied, but is now diminished. Nikolai and Pavel also represent the two sides of aristocracy - those that try and work to make the world a better place, and those that fritter away their lives in luxury and affectation.

Bazarov's parents represent the middle-class of Russia, if one can use such a term....an ex-army doctor and his wife. People of the land, but not working it themselves, not rich but not poor, one step above superstition, and deeply religious. An embarrassment to Bazarov, but the heart and soul of the Russian countryside. They worship their son, without understanding him at all. In fact Bazarov does not have a normal relationship with anyone in this novel. He prides himself on his understanding of the peasant class, and the way he can interact with them, but "did not for a moment suspect that in their eyes he was after all nothing but a sort of buffoon."

Does Turgenev fall on one side or the other in this battle of old and new? I think he sees both sides, but he does value the human relationships that come from an ordered society, while not dismissing the need for change. Turgenev's writing is wonderful: delicate descriptions of nature interspersed with observations on human nature and social issues, with a well developed plot interweaving his character's adventures in life.

Highly Recommended

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell