Chuck’s
Comments
(group member since May 28, 2014)
Chuck’s
comments
from the NYRB Classics group.
Showing 1-17 of 17
This was just an awful read compared to Life and Fate. This isn't even his writing I suspect. The work on the censor's hand is so apparent. If you've never read Life and Fate - it's essential. This was terrible. Grossman is best when he stays closer to his friend Platonov IMO.
I am. But more so I am a fan of well written lit. I read mostly fiction - but I have love for silent film, art history, music history. Admittedly - NYRB has been most instrumental in expanding my experience in great historical reads. The baseball writings of Ring Lardner, James T. Farrell's books...I love reading about my home city of Chicago.
I recently read Ehle's Trail of Tears as well - so great. Stammering Century from Seldes was a trip also. Cheers!
This is a great read. Szerb's other works of historical fiction might have a limited appeal but people that dig this might want to check out his collection of short stories - Love in a Bottle.
The letters are short - very quick read - but an essential bookend to the experience IMO. Sorry if I seem pushy.
I will repeat a comment - read parts of The Road when you finish....you must read his letter to his mother...IMO it should be appended to Life and Fate regardless of redundancy.You are right to feel glad for checking this one off the list. A big read indeed.
Good to hear I was of service.Consider reading the Road and Everything Flows - what he didn't do in Life and Fate - he did in these works. The Road especially - when you read his letter to his mother it will really tie it all together. Also consider some Platonov - he is instrumental in the development of Grossman's style. Foundation Pit is a powerful read - the prose is stunning. All Platonov is great IMO - but do not start with Happy Moscow.
Your insights are spot on IMO and I think when you read The Road and Everything Flows (both MUCH shorter and more directed) you'll see why Life and Fate was constructed the way it was.
If you or anyone needs some post-read levity that also helps clarify the times and responses to this work - check out some Zoschenko - he is a social critic and humorist who wrote short stories - seek out Bees and People - I think I've seen it online. Also Voinovich - he's the reason we have this book - his Fur Hat is HILARIOUS and paints a telling portrait of the aftermath of these events in a pleasantly oblique way.
Again - nice to share some dialog with fellow readers.
Nearing completion and Fate as protagonist has taken a central position as was expected. It is interesting to think about the fate of man as juxtaposed to the fate of man's machines. Throughout the book the personification of the tools of war ties man inexorably to the products of man. It's easy to see why Krzhizhanovsky, Shalomov, Platonov and Grossman animated machines to sentient beings and like watchmakers left to negotiate parallel fates. All three writers held hope that mastery of such forms would free man from the horrors only to witness the opposite. In Lend-lease - Shalomov tells of a US gifted tractor employed chiefly to dig and bury man. Platonov wrote, "“He walked around all the useless things in the courtyard and touched them with his hands; for some reason, he wished that these would remember him, and love him. But he didn't believe they would. From childhood memories he knew how strange and sad it is after a long absence to see a familiar place again, for these unmoving objects have no memory and do not recognize the stirrings of a stranger's heart.”It was absolutely horrifying to read Grossman discuss man's inability, at the time, to filter salt out of seawater - a skill now well within our grasp. So what now then? Splitting the atom is no longer a challenge and if you share Grossman's ideology that man's ultimate failure to master that which they create (clearly illustrated in Viktor's relationship with his daughter), only doom awaits. I can only imagine what effect this book might have had during the peak of the cold-wars...and with the increasing tension that defines current US/Russian relations it's not hard to hear the threnodic bells that Grossman sounded as the trains unloaded ringing with increasing clarity.
But as Grossman indicates, why shouldn't this be? Nature operates the same way, eggs are broken, nettles fall and sting and it's only burning that releases the seeds that forests require. To me mind, he reminds me, as man, that peace isn't easy or natural but it is human. Peace as counter to Fascism requires courage and often combat.
Honest and prescient, I think it's absolutely incorrect to claim this book as the ultimate triumph of the Russian literature of its time. In terms of prose or narration - Grossman is miles behind Platonov and light years behind Chekhov. Grossman never comes close to the narrative prowess of superiors like Turgenev and Chekhov. His insights are in no way superior to Tolstoy and his sense of social humor can't approach the masterful peaks of Zoschenko or Voinovich. However, this is possibly more important than all of those names apart from Tolstoy. This is a story that can't be told enough and no attentive reader will have wasted their time. If there is one element of this work that does transcend its peers - it's in the understanding of the relationship between a mother and her son or all sons.
And as expected, upon conclusion of David I ran in the house and hugged my children. As expected, Grossman saved his most poetic, musical and thus Platonov-like prose for this most chilling section. He walks that line between stoic narrator and passionate survivor with great tact.
1. Skylark - Kosztolanyi2. The Long Ships - Bengston
3. Urn Burial - Sir Thomas Browne
4. Soul of Wood - Lind
5. Foundation Pit - Platonov
6. The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll - Mutis
7. Snows of Yesteryear - Rezzori
8. The Book of Ebenerzer Le Page - Edwards
9. Renard's Nature Stories
10. The Road, Life and Fate - Grossman
* also Stoner, Sinbad (although there's MUCH better Krudy out there, same with Dery - Nikki is great but Love is better to me at least), everything Platonov, all Queneau, Karinthy, Ride a Cockhorse, Envy, Tennants of Moonbloom, Turtle Diary, parts of Krzhizhanovsky, Valles - The Child...
Chapter 15 on the nature of "good" is awesome stuff. "Be good" always had an insidious ring to me, now it's a threnody. Good is teleological, kindness is aleatory...seems to make clear sense in Grossman's terms. It's a common theme in Russian books I guess, the influence of the east. Grin's writing works like this as well...never too far from a consciousness of Buddhist though.
Extremely tame. I know nothing that compares to the horror of Treblinka, Kolyma Tales or Ledig's Payback. Treblinka will reduce most people to quivering in horror.
The Road is a mandatory accompaniment to Life and Fate IMO. Kolyma Tales is grim and bleak, like Platonov with none of the crepuscular beauty that oozes off the page - I love Platonov - as did Grossman. Grossman sort of "goes Platonov" in sections of The Road - he could be quite lyrical when he chose to do so. Most known from the Road is Hell of Treblinka which along side Kolyma Tales is the most harrowing exposition of human cruelty I've read outside of Albert Fish's biography.
Your polaroid example is perfect. It reads like Laibach covering Kodachrome. It's hard for me to read this without getting The Road, Ledig's Payback and Shalamov's Kolyma Tales out of my head. Although this book is nowhere near as stark as Shalamov - nothing can be - or as visceral as Ledig - also not possible - I think it's quite interesting that fate or fatelessness (in Kertesz's term) seems to be the heart of the narrative - conditions are magnified over individuals - absolutely opposite of Tibor Dery's technique as read in Nikki, portraying the horrors of war by focusing on personal development and letting the conditions calcify in response to personal interactions. I've just finished the 1st part and I'll agree that the narrative is a bit...uh...gauzy at times. It's as if the book is recharging after the intensity of the sections that served as autobiographical relief. I'm bracing myself for the next time I meet David...ugh.
"What constitutes the character of a nation—I believe—is the character of many individual human beings; every national character is, in essence, simply human nature. Every nation in the world, therefore, has much in common with every other nation in the world."I think this quote from An Armenian Sketchbook helps explain why Grossman chose to introduce over 150 characters with detail that develops with increasing clarity as the book progresses. I have not seen any lack of detail in his settings, sure he's not going to walk you though the woods like Turgenev but when he chooses to expound on nature his prose is as eloquent as it needs to be, for me at least.
Again - the letter his mother writes to him in Life and Fate is answered in The Road and IMO should have been included as an afterward in Life and Fate - the pieces are inseparable IMO.
A bit late to the group but I should get up to pace soon. I've read Everything Flows and The Road and have been waiting for the time to read this - that time is now. I really love all the Grossman I've read so far and rank him only below Platonov among his contemporaries. On about page 100 now and I'm not sure I've read a more touching episode than the mother writing to her son...of course we know this is Grossman reconciling his unresolved agony of his mother's loss. I strongly suggest that other readers check out his letter to his mother that appears in The Road as the companion piece to this section. I'm not familiar with a more visceral and touching telling of the love between a mother and her son than this. Grossman's prose is a bit restrained here but appropriately so. Check out the later passages in The Road where he takes a more musical, hence more Platonov-like lyrical tone. Grossman CAN write that way - but I understand his restraint in getting his voice of the way in such passages. This is a man writing for a generation and a threatened race as we all know. A stunning book for certain.
