People aren't being made to leave but a lot of them are leaving because it's too much hassle to stay. They have to pay money to get a visa to stay and so they are saying they will leave instead as too much hassle. This is the general viewpoint of EU workers in general.
Great you say, more jobs for the English. But now the businesses have to pay a higher wager and/or increase their costs which are passed down to us. Now we have to pay more, but we aren't getting any extra money and due to austerity it's even worse.
So, this is a bit of a shameless plug, but also relevant. My wife won an award for her fictionalized/fantasy account of the writing of TMaM, and it illuminates the context for the work. You might enjoy it.
They're not really 'tiny clues' - this thread makes it sound like this stuff is some set of subtle veiled hints and allusions. It's certainly possible to miss if one is unfamiliar with the historical context and it's worth getting a well-annotated edition but it's hardly the intent of the author - there are lots of places where it's quite explicit and overt. The book itself could not be published when it was written and when it was originally published, many of the more obvious references to repression were edited out.
I happen to be reading the novel at the moment, so it was easy to find an example. In this fragment, the master recounts the last time that he saw his loved one. The sentences are spread over 3-4 pages:
“This was at dusk, in mid-October. And she left. [...] A quarter of an hour after she left me, there came a knock at my window [...] Yes, and so in mid-January, at night, in the same coat but with the buttons torn off, I was huddled with cold in my little yard.”
Just like that, three months have vanished. Those missing buttons are the only indication of where he spent those lost months: it was customary to remove belts, shoelaces and buttons from those held for questioning by the secret police.
That's a wonderful example and no, they aren't. To a contemporary Soviet reader (or a modern one with a bit more context), it's crystal clear who the 'they' knocking on the window in the middle of the night are. In fact, such readers would have a pretty good idea where things are headed the moment the new 'friend' Mogarich appears and is described. And after the knock but before the buttons, our knowingly winking omniscient narrator suddenly disappears, stops being omniscient and refuses to tell us what happened! The buttons are a nice detail at the tail end on which to hang an explanatory footnote, perhaps, but not some hidden clue, left in there for readers to suddenly slap their forehead and say 'Aha!'.
It's a multilayered work and, stylistically, Bulgakov is often a circumspect narrator. But the repression bits are not some particularly deeply hidden layer at all. You're barely a few pages in when Ivan suggests Kant be sent to the Solovki, one of the OG Gulags. The very title of the first chapter is a reference to the paranoia and legitimate fears of the period.
Yes, I agree that they were not intentionally hidden by Bulgakov. Maybe instead of "clues" it would be more accurate to describe them as things that a modern non-Russian reader might not pick up unless some additional context is provided.
It occurs to me that you hit on one of Bulgakov's juxtapositions right in your first comment which can be a handy cue when there isn't a footnote -
"vanish one after the other as if by magic"
When the narrator suddenly feigns ignorance, is vague, evokes unclear, possibly supernatural forces at play - he's generally talking about things like the state terror or other entirely humanly-wrought events and matters.
When he talks about the actual supernatural - the devil and his retinue - he has no trouble at all following them around and describing their actions and their consequences precisely.
HN is so dour and moody at times, many positive articles' top comment is someone expressing cynicism or dragging creators down. Jokes and levity are mostly banned (though looking at reddit I can understand why). The insightful/thoughtful conversations you can have are good, but the atmosphere is not the best 9/10 times.
it's a hard problem. I keep on HN because I want to keep an eye out for technology that interests me, and to check out people's cool side projects. But then that's maybe 1/20 posts and in other posts I end up just getting drawn in and dragged down by petty emotions and conflict. If there were a way to filter the latest posts down to just things I'm interested in and get that in a newsletter I might do it, but then how do I accurately describe what I'm interested in without seeing it first? I think it just requires the self-discipline to ignore and move past posts you know won't bring any benefit.
I'm just a random, anonymous, internet person, but I hope that you feel better Pete. Remember that the way you feel now is just a snapshot in time, and that things will almost certainly get better from here.
>That's why those platforms are so toxic. It's overrun with news media employees and spammed content.
4Chan isn't exactly overrun with spammers and it's the same toxic cespool that Reddit is (granted Reddit has better manners and at least pretends to emulate civil conversation). I don't think the news sites spamming their articles is more than a minor contributing factor.
English-native speakers have a strong affinity for irony in humor, so any sharp combination of that with bleak hopelessness is 'black humor,' aka 'gallows humor,' and will be quite popular with those who enjoy that flavor in their laughter.
Well I think not having news might be better than watching Tv news or something, I’m not sure if choosing this is actually good in comparison to reading a reasonably good news source that’s not freaking out about trivialities all the time. And I say this as someone who is fairly out of the loop with many day current events / headlines and relies on other people to hear about like eg upcoming weather events or something
Yes, certainly. I wasn't very clear, but my meaning was that there's a certain Western/American concept of "Russian Literature" as being exclusively long, philosophical, realistic, and depressing - as though The Brothers Karamazov and Anna Karenina are the prototype for everything else.
But it's obviously not true; reducing Russian-language literature to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Solzhenitsyn is insulting crude. (And even Dostoevsky can be funny!) Bulgakov and Pasternak are at least recognized, but reduced to one work each. Zamyatin ought to be taught next to Orwell and Huxley, but he and a great many others are basically unknown. And all of that's before the conflation of Russian, Soviet, and Eastern Bloc work. Lem, Čapek, and so on aren't even Russian writers but get subsumed in the same category of thought.
It's a frustrating gap in American-read canon all around, and as a particular fan of sci-fi I think the focus on Russian 'literary' over 'genre' work has left a major hole in our perception of SF.
I agree! I highly recommend against reading academic interpretations/critiques of any book. I graduated summa cum laude with a degree in creative writing. Much of my college study was focused on literary criticisms and theory. As someone trained in the art, I believe taking a perfectly good novel and blowing it through the enema of Marxist, Postmodernist, or Feminist activism, for instance, is the best way to shit all over an author's work.
I've always considered chick the exact same as dude. It's just a synonym for girl/lady. If used improperly it can be offensive, but then I'd argue any sentence you can think of where it's used improperly you could replace "chick" with pretty much any synonym for girl/lady and it'd still be offensive.
That's also how I got to read Crime and Punishment twice: in Russian, when I was in school in Ukraine, and then in English, at a high school in Brooklyn the very next year. Had a blast both times, really.
Our AP English teacher that quarter was a six-foot-something metalhead whose name I, unfortunately, forgot. But his class is one of my warmest memories of those years. One time he took the whole class to a Russian restaurant (as an optional excursion, we paid for ourselves) just to give the kids a better immersion into the Russian culture (the school was right next to a Russian-speaking neighborhood anyway). Even for me, it was something that created a real-life context for the fictional work, and of course made it more exciting.
So I'd say - assigned reading is not necessarily the death knell for a work of art. It really does depend on the teacher. However, statistically, it probably kills it for most people, so in the very least, there's no point in having a nationwide standard.
Which brings me back to OP's point: the problem isn't just that there's assigned reading in ex-USSR countries, it's that everyone has the same assigned reading. That has a devastating effect, I think. At least in the US, even if a book is destroyed in the classroom, there are decent chances that most of the students won't be affected because they'll have different assigned reading.
There is an obvious attempt by the author to make the novel fun. It works - it is impossible for me to read this novel without guffawing multiple times.
Most people will describe a book that makes them laugh out loud as "fun", regardless of whether they observe the darker undertones.
"Fun" also doesn't need to be funny - there are many scenes of spectacular awe and wonder (like in the final chapter!) that are extremely fun.
One-Storied America, unlike the other two books which are (humorous) fiction, is a travelogue of Soviet writers visiting the USA in the 30's. It's a fascinating account, and some editions include the photographs taken by one of the authors.
The thing that struck me the most is that many trivial observations they made about US in the same ones I made when I immigrated in the 90's. I'm talking mostly about everyday things: giant parking lots, drug stores that sell mostly not drugs, trucks that hold multiple new cars, fast food, etc. Amazing how little has changed and how old the modern everyday American way of life is.
Wouldn't call "The Little Golden Calf" overlooked (not by Russian speakers, at least); and yes, after reading it, I wondered how it ever passed censorship back in the days.
The movie[1] is also great. Shot in black and white, it adds to the solemnity amid the humor.
32 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 79.9 ms ] threadGreat you say, more jobs for the English. But now the businesses have to pay a higher wager and/or increase their costs which are passed down to us. Now we have to pay more, but we aren't getting any extra money and due to austerity it's even worse.
http://centerforfiction.org/awards/the-first-novel-prize/201...
https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/01/the-...
“This was at dusk, in mid-October. And she left. [...] A quarter of an hour after she left me, there came a knock at my window [...] Yes, and so in mid-January, at night, in the same coat but with the buttons torn off, I was huddled with cold in my little yard.”
Just like that, three months have vanished. Those missing buttons are the only indication of where he spent those lost months: it was customary to remove belts, shoelaces and buttons from those held for questioning by the secret police.
That's a wonderful example and no, they aren't. To a contemporary Soviet reader (or a modern one with a bit more context), it's crystal clear who the 'they' knocking on the window in the middle of the night are. In fact, such readers would have a pretty good idea where things are headed the moment the new 'friend' Mogarich appears and is described. And after the knock but before the buttons, our knowingly winking omniscient narrator suddenly disappears, stops being omniscient and refuses to tell us what happened! The buttons are a nice detail at the tail end on which to hang an explanatory footnote, perhaps, but not some hidden clue, left in there for readers to suddenly slap their forehead and say 'Aha!'.
It's a multilayered work and, stylistically, Bulgakov is often a circumspect narrator. But the repression bits are not some particularly deeply hidden layer at all. You're barely a few pages in when Ivan suggests Kant be sent to the Solovki, one of the OG Gulags. The very title of the first chapter is a reference to the paranoia and legitimate fears of the period.
"vanish one after the other as if by magic"
When the narrator suddenly feigns ignorance, is vague, evokes unclear, possibly supernatural forces at play - he's generally talking about things like the state terror or other entirely humanly-wrought events and matters.
When he talks about the actual supernatural - the devil and his retinue - he has no trouble at all following them around and describing their actions and their consequences precisely.
4Chan isn't exactly overrun with spammers and it's the same toxic cespool that Reddit is (granted Reddit has better manners and at least pretends to emulate civil conversation). I don't think the news sites spamming their articles is more than a minor contributing factor.
But it's obviously not true; reducing Russian-language literature to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Solzhenitsyn is insulting crude. (And even Dostoevsky can be funny!) Bulgakov and Pasternak are at least recognized, but reduced to one work each. Zamyatin ought to be taught next to Orwell and Huxley, but he and a great many others are basically unknown. And all of that's before the conflation of Russian, Soviet, and Eastern Bloc work. Lem, Čapek, and so on aren't even Russian writers but get subsumed in the same category of thought.
It's a frustrating gap in American-read canon all around, and as a particular fan of sci-fi I think the focus on Russian 'literary' over 'genre' work has left a major hole in our perception of SF.
in case anyone has the same issues I did finding it.
That's also how I got to read Crime and Punishment twice: in Russian, when I was in school in Ukraine, and then in English, at a high school in Brooklyn the very next year. Had a blast both times, really.
Our AP English teacher that quarter was a six-foot-something metalhead whose name I, unfortunately, forgot. But his class is one of my warmest memories of those years. One time he took the whole class to a Russian restaurant (as an optional excursion, we paid for ourselves) just to give the kids a better immersion into the Russian culture (the school was right next to a Russian-speaking neighborhood anyway). Even for me, it was something that created a real-life context for the fictional work, and of course made it more exciting.
So I'd say - assigned reading is not necessarily the death knell for a work of art. It really does depend on the teacher. However, statistically, it probably kills it for most people, so in the very least, there's no point in having a nationwide standard.
Which brings me back to OP's point: the problem isn't just that there's assigned reading in ex-USSR countries, it's that everyone has the same assigned reading. That has a devastating effect, I think. At least in the US, even if a book is destroyed in the classroom, there are decent chances that most of the students won't be affected because they'll have different assigned reading.
Most people will describe a book that makes them laugh out loud as "fun", regardless of whether they observe the darker undertones.
"Fun" also doesn't need to be funny - there are many scenes of spectacular awe and wonder (like in the final chapter!) that are extremely fun.
The thing that struck me the most is that many trivial observations they made about US in the same ones I made when I immigrated in the 90's. I'm talking mostly about everyday things: giant parking lots, drug stores that sell mostly not drugs, trucks that hold multiple new cars, fast food, etc. Amazing how little has changed and how old the modern everyday American way of life is.
The movie[1] is also great. Shot in black and white, it adds to the solemnity amid the humor.
[1]https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%97%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D1%82...