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STALIN'S SCRIBE

Name: STALIN'S SCRIBE
Author: Brian J. Boeck
ISBN: 978-1-68177-874-7

LITERATURE, AMBITION, AND SURVIVAL: THE LIFE OF MIKHAIL SHOLOKHOV

by Brian J. Boeck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 5, 2019

Boeck displays his wide range of knowledge of the Soviet Union and delivers an insightful, gripping, squirm-inducing...

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Biography of Mikhail Sholokhov (1905-1984), winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in literature and a favorite of Joseph Stalin.

In his second book, Boeck (Russian and Soviet History/DePaul Univ.; Imperial Boundaries: Cossack Communities and Empire-Building in the Age of Peter the Great, 2009) works hard—and mostly successfully—“to reconcile the bold, uncompromising, and sympathetic Sholokhov…with the vindictive, mean-spirited man described in many accounts of late Soviet history.” Sholokhov was an obscure 21-year-old short story writer when he wrote his classic novel, And Quiet Flows the Don. Appearing serially in literary magazines from 1926 to 1940, the narrative tells the story of a Cossack family whose hero fights in World War I and the Russian Revolution. The first two volumes were bestsellers, but in 1930, his editor regarded further installments as insufficiently pro-revolutionary. Sholokhov refused to make changes but agreed to visit Maxim Gorky, the nation’s literary idol, to discuss the matter. To his amazement, the meeting included Stalin. Grilled on the controversy, Sholokhov satisfied Stalin, who considered himself a patron of the arts. He not only approved publication, but gave the author his personal secretary’s phone number. Almost immediately, Sholokhov witnessed Stalin’s murderous collectivization campaign and famine followed by the Terror, which devoured many colleagues. He appealed to Stalin, who freed several friends and sent food to his home district. Like naïve patriots throughout history, Sholokhov considered his ruler blameless but betrayed by evil underlings, and he remained a protégé, producing fawning speeches and writing that he struggled to repress after Stalin’s death. By the 1960s, he enjoyed international celebrity but wrote little of consequence, and his privileged status and literary conservatism did not endear him to the younger generation.

Boeck displays his wide range of knowledge of the Soviet Union and delivers an insightful, gripping, squirm-inducing portrait of a great author who loyally served his government—perhaps too loyally.

Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-68177-874-7

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Pegasus

Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.