Sleepwalker in a Fog

by Tatyana Tolstaya

By "the most original, tactile, luminous voice in Russian prose today" (Joseph Brodsky), Sleepwalker in a Fog is a collection of seven stories and a novella set in contemporary Russia. Here is Denisov, who fears his greatest accomplishment in life will be the treatise he wrote and tore up. He is betrothed to Lora, an incessant talker who dreams of having a fluffy tail. We also read of Natasha, who searches Leningrad and her memory for her lost love; of Dmitry Ilich's elaborate seduction of Olga Mikhailovna; and more. In the tradition of such writers as Gogol and Chekhov, Tatyana Tolstaya transforms ordinary lives into something magical and strange.

Translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell

Genres: Short Stories, Russia, Fiction, Russian Literature, Literature, Literary Fiction, European Literature

204 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Tatyana Tolstaya (Татьяна Толстая) was born in Leningrad, U.S.S.R. As the great-grandniece of the Russian author Leo Tolstoy and the granddaughter of Alexei Tolstoy, Tolstaya comes from a distinguished literary family; but, according to Marta Mestrovic's interview in Publishers Weekly with the author, she hates ‘‘being discussed as a relative of someone.’’

Still, Tolstaya's background is undeniably one of culture and education. Her father was a physics professor who taught her two languages, and her maternal grandfather was a well-known translator.

Reviews

[L.S. Popovich · Rating 4 out of 5]

This second collection by Tolstaya is a brief, inconsequential, but enchanting volume, reminiscent of Cat Valente's Deathless, or similar quirky, literary, bold tales, congealed together by the old fashioned setting and the unfixed narration. On the whole, it was not focussed enough to move me, but entertained me all the way through. Extremely naive characters create a pervasive humorous absurdity, but the stories seemed to conceal very few larger truths, rather recounting mysterious encounters with details of daily life. The vibrant prose and scintillating imagery are comparable to Kelly Link, and Tolstaya does not appear to be overly concerned with politics or satire, except in a broad sense, as in satire of the human race as a whole. The stories are fairly universal, rather than distinctly Russian. Not straightforward at all, in fact the convolutions are both intriguing and aggravating. Apropos of nothing, she will fly off on wild tangents.

Ridiculous concepts briefly explored, characters constantly interrupting the author's train of thought with their darned socks or sauce pans or samovars. A real chaotic mess without plot or logic to stick in the memory. However, it is sprinkled with poetry and gems of enjoyable montage. Rereadable but inimitable. Nothing really to summarize that would sound coherent. I struggle to put my finger on what makes these stories tick. Like Andrey Bely, the small events represent larger premises, but the author is careful not to draw too much attention to any one thing. It is a potpourri of ideas, likely to induce spontaneous combustion of your expectations.

[Brittany Picardi Ruiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Russian literature has always been about ethics. I really can't find any other universal feature that makes Russian prose, both classical and modern. Command of language? Incredible as it is in the works of Russian classics, it's not unique among the world literatures, and anyway is mostly lost in translations. Universal comprehensibility? Not at all; unlike Shakespearean plays that are set in some vague pan-European context, Russian novels are always tightly bound to Russia's very own religion, mentality, and history that are scarcely known in the West. What remains, and what really sets Russian literature apart, is its moral imperative---the impossibility for a Russian writer to show any disdain or ridicule towards those dispossessed, fragile, or helpless. Deep thrilling compassion and frantic pursuit of justice are characteristic of both the Russian classic novels of 19th century and the modern short stories by Tatyana Tolstaya.
"Breathing" is perhaps the best one-word description of Tolstaya's prose. It's not the suffocated gasping of Dostoyevsky, not the gentle crystalline air of Chekhov, not even the powerful storm of consciousness of Leo Tolstoy (whose great-grandniece is Tolstaya). Winds, airs, puffs are transfusing the fabric of these delicate pieces of prose; words and images are streaming, curling, twisting in long yet weightless sentences. Tolstaya's winds smell like sea, like childhood, like love; she makes us remember that the word "spirit" is derived from the Latin stem meaning "air." Reading this book is like breathing freely outdoors after endless hours in a stuffy room

[Emeric Damian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I turn to this book for inspiration. It does something to my brain; it churns my consciousness, pushing something from the depths up to the surface.
What is it that I find in this book? I don't really know. You should try it for your self. Perhaps it will spin a web of lucidity where confusion once lived, maybe it will fog your reality with a dose of surrealism.
Should I mention that I've loaned it to a friend some months ago and have yet to get it back. Hmm.

[Chase · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are very few contemporary writers that embody the spirit of Gogol or Bulgakov with such an ease or natural lyricism as Tatyana Tolstaya. The first thing one becomes enraptured by is her voice, the prose literally flows off the page. Even in translation this feat is palpable and extraordinary. There’s many a moment in her stories when the narrative itself is of least importance, kneeling in the face of her voice and the wonderfully surreal imagery she’s able to scour from depths of our collective melancholia and nightmares. The imagery is infused with a near unbearable sadness and sense of nostalgia, the things that recede into the past, the things once beautiful and alive, now left in crumbling ruination; this is the sensorial hinterland of Tatyana’s fractured worlds. Though like Julio Cortazar, another writer with magikal powers, there are often times where these stories drown between the weight of their own trappings, where the narrative becomes muddled beyond repair or comprehension…

With that said, Sleepwalker in a Fog is the second collection of short stories I’ve read by Tolstaya, the other being On the Golden Porch...Both of these volumes have been collected in one unified work called White Walls published by the fine folks at NYRB. I would suggest you pick that version up if you’re so intrigued. As it presents a much broader palette of work, especially as the stories in Sleepwalker seems to be of a much more transitory and experimental nature, as compared to those found in the previous volume. Thus with the two together I think you’d have a near perfect and complimentary tomb of stories.

But enough philandering lets dig in. Though unlike that collection of shorts by Cortazar I reviewed a couple weeks back, none of the stories here are unreadable on the whole, and none attain perfection, on the whole. Rather the stories read like slipstreams (sleepingwalking etc har-har) where they evolve into some of the most bone curdling passages I’ve read all year and at points they become near incomprehensible mush. The final story, Limpop, had me confused at the start, nearly in tears with its beauty by the middle, and skim reading it in frustration by the end. I can’t even begin to work out a narrative. Yet like Cortazar, where Tatyana excels is when she keeps the narrative simple, and the voice intact. This gives her a solid foundation in which to erect her haunting cathedrals of prose, so to speak.

My favorite story in the collection, Heavenly Flame, again is a rather simple one. About a terminally ill and elderly man who visits a couple in their country dacha in the evenings, and chats with them about inane conspiracies. One evening another man visits the couple and accuses the elderly man of being a low-life vagrant without any kind of evidence. Gradually the couple starts to cool to the elderly man’s presence (which they once found endearing and sweet) and come to detest him (in a passive aggressive manner). The old man senses that his relationship with the couple, whose friendship he cherished, is now rapidly deteriorating. And slowly he starts to lose his will to live. He then leaves their home for their last night together before a major operation, and is presumably killed the next day. It’s a short that strikes at the very heart of the beastliness of human relations, and the irrational and petty ways in which we come to despise one another, and how blind we are to the finality death in context of our relations with others. It’s one powerful and noxious black-hole of a story, replete again with gorgeous prose.

Though this collection is uneven in its quality. I recommend everyone seek out works by Tolstaya. She is one of the world’s most innovative and greatest writers. Even if this collection leaves ya feeling like you're somnambulist in an ambulance.

4/5

Also here's a wonderful interview with Tolstaya where she talks about literature's role in dealing with depression, dreams, physics, a near death experience, and reincarnation

https://youtu.be/bnsVoG99dIk?t=1

[Sallan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My rating is more a 4.5, but I enjoyed some of the stories much more than others.

[Tracy Reilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good I left it with my professora doch....

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tolstaja slaagt erin een magische sfeer te scheppen in haar verhalen over alledaagse dingen. Mooie vertaling door Anne Stoffel.

[Ella Henn · Rating 4 out of 5]

i’m still chewing on this between 3 and 4 for me. Some aspects of her writing (maximalist, surreal, hyperbolic, really long rambling beautiful sentences that twist and turn) reminded me of orlando (my first/only virginia woolf that i adored). All in all it felt special and original, at least compared to what i normally read. The final novella completely lost my interest, i didn’t feel like her style of writing lent itself to a longer narrative. Someone else please read this so i can talk about it with you!!!

[lethe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laatste regels van het wat mij betreft mooiste verhaal, "Zie, de maan...":

De lift ging steeds vaker kapot. Goede thee was zeldzaam geworden. Wist u al dat het morgen kouder wordt? Hoor die wind eens gieren. En Natasja liep naar het raam en luisterde, en er was niets maar dan ook niets te horen, behalve dan het voorbijrazen van het leven.

[Nathanimal · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title story is one of my all time faves. The others are good too. She reminds me of Gogol and Chekhov whilst still remaining herself. Great sense of humor. Great lambent, stream-of-consciousness style. Dreaminess, a plus.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you haven't read Tolstaya, you really need to. Now.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful hallucinogenic stories by a distant relative of Leo Tolstoy. I think they technically classify it as "impressionistic."

[Tally · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of these stories are gold, others I could barely get through and so the rating is an average.
I read these out of order starting with #7 as they are all stand alone but in the book they follow this order:

1. Sleepwalker in a Fog (1 star)
2. Serafim (2.5 stars)
3. The Moon Came Out (N/A)
4. Night (3.5 stars)
5. Heavenly Flame (N/A)
6. Most Beloved (5 stars)
7. The Poet & The Muse (5 stars *favourite)
8. Limpopo (1 star)

I recommend #7, #6, #4, and #2

[Quinnformel · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection of stories, funny and lyrical. But I couldn’t help but feel like many of the stories were somewhat pointless. They might be meant to be snapshots of life, and in that regard they were great, well-described and inventive. But it seemed to me to lack any overarching themes, which left the book feeling somewhat unfinished.

[Paul Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it although not the title story. The wistful fatefulness of Most Beloved stirs the emotions deeply but the final story, Limpopo is a chaotic, comic classic. The appearance of the Colonel near the end of the story put me in mind of Jason Isaac's portrayal of Marshal Zhukov in Armando Ianucci's Death of Stalin; priceless.

[Rowen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like… objectively this was good but holy cow am I glad I’m done reading it

[Vel Veeter]

This book truly, like her other collection truly is an experience. Her stories are not a whole lot like other writers’, except for one very clear connection point. The stories range from the narration of the death of a town and its people, to a grumpy angel who doesn’t really want to be bothered.

My favorite story in this collection is the only one I will talk about: “The Poet and the Muse” starts off: “Nina was a marvelous woman, an ordinary woman, a doctor, and it goes without saying that she had her right to personal happiness like everyone else. Of this she was well aware. Nearing the age of thirty-five after a lengthy period of joyless trial and error–not even worth talking about–she knew precisely what she needed: a wild, true love, with tears, bouquets, midnight phone vigils, nocturnal taxi chases, fateful obstacles, betrayals, and forgiveness. She needed a–you know–an animal passion, dark windy nights with streetlamps aglow. She needed to perform a heroine’s classical feat as if it were a mere trifle: to wear out seven pairs of iron boots, break seven iron staffs in two, devour seven loaves of iron bread, and receive in supreme reward not some golden rose or snow-white pedestal but a burned-out match or a crumpled ball of a bus ticket–a crumb from the banquet table where the radiant king, her heart’s desire, had feasted. Well, of course, quite a few women need pretty much the same thing, so in this sense Nina was, as has already been said, a perfectly ordinary woman, a marvelous woman, a doctor.”

That’s the opening of a story that then goes on for 15 more pages.

Others of her stories in this collection as not very memorable or they’re so atmospheric and impressionistic that they don’t fully leave their mark with me. But they’re all very Russian.

I think her closest influence is likely Nabokov. In her pacing, her tone, and her voice there’s a kind ecstatic reverie that bleeds through and reminds me of so much of his writing. And like Nabokov, she can’t not seem to allow the stories to just BE, that is, without a heavy heavy dose of narrator control and influence. You almost never don’t hear her talking through her stories. And they live and die on this point.

[Isabel (kittiwake) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aunt Zina, Lyonechka's aunt, not yet suspecting what a dirty trick her her nephew was planning to play on her and her well-being, said to Judy, "Chin up, daughter. Life is hard on everyone." But her husband, Uncle Zhenya, whose diplomatic career was taking off - and who was expecting appointment to the corner of the African continent opposite Judy's at any moment, as it so happened - did not approve of contact with the foreign citizen, even though she was homeless. As the hour of the final paperwork on his appointment grew nearer, he became more strict and vigilant, so as not to take a false step in any direction.Thus, he forbade Aunt Zina to subscribe to Novyi Mir, remembering that its poisonous aura had not yet evaporated; he crossed all suspiciously surnamed acquaintances out of his address book, and hesitating, even crossed out a certain Nurmukhammedov (which he bitterly regretted later, when, straining his eyes, he held the page up to the light in an attempt to restore the telephone number, since the guy turned out to be nothing but a car repair swindler); and in the last, crisis-fraught week, he even smashed all the jars of imported food in the house and threw them in the incinerator, including the Bulgarian apple jam, and was already eyeing products from the other republics, but Aunt Zina protected the beet horseradish with her body.

A book of short stories first published in 1991, and presumably set during the last years of the USSR. The Russians of the stories are used to queues, shortages, and bureaucratic red tape, and mostly live in communal flats, although some have dachas that they can escape to in the summer. There is a touch of the grotesque and gothic in most of these stories, but only "Serafim" is truly a fantasy story (and even there the protagonist may be mad rather than the ethereal creature that he sees himself as being). My favourites were the title story and "Limpopo".

[Vera · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25 stars.

[Red Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

No clear memory of reading these short stories, but I did jot this down, so hope that it will pass for a review:

"If our souls are usually constructed like a kind of dark labyrinth - so that any feeling running in at one end comes out the other all rumpled and disheveled, squinting in the bright light and most likely wanting to run back inside - then Zhenechka's soul was built rather like a smooth pipe, with none of those back streets, dead ends, secret places, or, God forbid, trick mirrors."

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lyrical and imaginative prose.


Amusing excerpt:

"She bought herself a third fur coat, went to work, and right away she felt the atmosphere tense up. It's just plain envy, and it's not even clear why they have such base feelings; after all, like Ruzanna says, it's not like she bought the fur coat for herself, she really bought it for others, to raise the aesthetic level of the landscape. Ruzanna herself can't see anything from inside the coat anyway, but it makes things more interesting for everyone on the outside, there's more variety for the soul. And for free too. I mean, it's almost like an art show, like the Mona Lisa or Galzunov; for that they push and shove and wait in humongous lines for five hours and have to pay their hard earned rubles to boot. But here Ruzanna spends her own money and presto -- and art delivered to your door. And they're unhappy about it. It is just crass ignorance."

[Quinn Slobodian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The view of the Soviet Union from the tattered-couch napper, the balcony smoker. Tolstaya lets the ideas and descriptions rumple over one another like sheets shoved into the corner of a bed. There are slow men in the folds and African would-be veterinarians without papers and vexed women watching the poets they love for their pure hearts wasting their pure hearts on others.

[Katrinka · Rating 4 out of 5]

A couple of the short stories in this collection are amazing-- and none disappoint. Tolstaya can move from almost factual description to magical imaginings (?-- unfortunately, I have no better way to elaborate, since "magical realism" just doesn't fit) with no problem at all.

[Jim Elkins · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tremendous promise in some stores. A ferocious beginning, with as much irritated energy per page as the best Henry Miller. But the energy is highest when she starts. After the opening scenes, the stories wander and flag.

[Jenni Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sleepwalker in a fog is one of the best, most hauntingly original short stories I have ever read. Her prose is wandering and hypnotic. Her descriptions are apt, original and refreshing. Very inspiring piece.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrific fun, interesting stories which call to mind the Bulgakovs, Gogols and other such masters of the unique Russian literary tradition.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing stories with a clear, pointed voice and point of view; love the title, love the book.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7275613@...

[Megan Geissler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightfully amusing.