A superb work of Soviet-era Russian literature in a welcome, well-annotated new translation.
A splendidly subversive tale of the Russian Revolution and civil war from the great laureate of the working class.
It’s astounding that Stalin, after reading Platonov and scrawling “Bastard” on one page, allowed him to escape the Gulag. Platonov’s town of Chevengur slumbers on Russia’s high steppes, where crops fail and peasants leave their farms to seek work in the cities and mines, while a few holdovers resort to “eating raw grass, clay, and bark.” Into this region, ripe for revolution, is born the Christlike Sasha Dvanov, whose father has committed suicide just to see what the afterlife is like. God appears in Platonov’s vivid novel; so does Lenin, and so does a revolutionary Don Quixote who worships the late Bolshevik icon Rosa Luxemburg, on whose behalf he swears vengeance for her assassination. This Kopionkin, whose name means “spear,” is a man of action, while Sasha speaks of big dreams: “Cultured plants will make the earth brighter and more clearly visible from other planets,” he instructs a commissar named, yes, Fyodor Dostoevsky. “And then, the circulation of moisture will increase. The sky will become bluer and more transparent!” Communism isn’t born on the land quite so seamlessly. Instead, civil war breaks out, Kopionkin riding out to meet the enemy on a Rocinante named “Strength of the Proletariat,” a horse that, he growls, has “more revolutionary consciousness than any of you.” People starve, careful plans disintegrate, Bolshevik leaders admit to never having read Marx, and the masses falter: “The communism of Chevengur was defenseless during these dark steppe hours, since people had temporarily curtailed their convictions, allowing the power of sleep to heal the exhaustion occasioned by their inner life of the previous day.” All are all too human in the face of this strange new ideology, which, Platonov daringly makes clear, is as much religious as political.
A superb work of Soviet-era Russian literature in a welcome, well-annotated new translation.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781681377681
Page Count: 640
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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