by Nikolai Gogol ; translated by Susanne Fusso ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2020
Admirers of Gogol and his odd sensibilities will devour this excellent gathering.
A new translation of nine Gogol stories, some of them among his best known.
Gogol is indisputably, as translator Fusso notes, “one of the greatest writers in the Russian language,” and, because of his rich, sometimes arcane vocabulary, one of the most untranslatable. She acquits herself admirably in this collection, which brings out Gogol’s playfulness and eccentricity. One of the stories, for instance, is “Viy,” one of his Mirgorod cycle, populated by Cossack characters—to say nothing of a witch who, beaten to death by a seminarian, exacts a terrible vengeance that might have been scripted in a 1950s vampire film: “He turned his eyes away and then turned toward the coffin in horror. She got up…she was walking around the church with her eyes closed, constantly stretching out her arms as if trying to catch someone.” “The Overcoat,” a sardonic masterpiece, addresses the travails of a bureaucrat so badly paid that he can’t afford the titular garment and is robbed of it when he does finally manage to buy it, catching his death of the St. Petersburg winter cold but then going on to exact vengeance of his own. That story is less bizarre than the one that gives this collection its name: A barber finds a nose that belongs to one of his customers, depriving its erstwhile owner of his sense of smell: “The room that was accommodating this whole company was small, and the air in it was extremely dense, but Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov could not catch the scent, because he had covered himself with a kerchief and because his nose itself was located in God knows what locality.” Compared to the errant nose, Mikhail Bulgakov’s gun-toting cat is as normal as Russian snow. An added virtue of this first-rate collection is the inclusion of “Rome,” a long story not often anthologized, in which the plot is thin but the imagery extraordinary, whether describing the beautiful Annunziata—“Everything about her recalls those ancient times when marble came to life and sculptors’ chisels gleamed”—or a sunset over the Alban Hills.
Admirers of Gogol and his odd sensibilities will devour this excellent gathering.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-231-19069-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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by Nikolai Gogol & translated by Hugh Alpin
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by Richard Wright ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 20, 2021
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
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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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Alison Espach ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 30, 2024
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
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