UNHOLY STORIES: Short Stories (Prose Series 72)
Contents:
Many of the questions in this interview were answered via correspondence. She felt that only by writing out her replies could she say precisely what she wished to, without possibility of misunderstanding or misquotation. Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books. It may be the case that we all must write many books in order to achieve a few lasting ones—just as a young writer or poet might have to write hundreds of poems before writing his first significant one.
Afterward, of course, as the years pass, it's possible to become more detached, more critical. I really don't know what to say. I note and can to some extent sympathize with the objurgatory tone of certain critics, who feel that I write too much because, quite wrongly, they believe they ought to have read most of my books before attempting to criticize a recently published one.
Yet each book is a world unto itself and must stand alone, and it should not matter whether a book is a writer's first, or tenth, or fiftieth. About your critics—do you read them, usually? Have you ever learned anything from a book review or an essay on your work? Sometimes I read reviews, and without exception I will read critical essays that are sent to me. The critical essays are interesting on their own terms. Of course, it's a pleasure simply to discover that someone has read and responded to one's work; being understood, and being praised, is beyond expectation most of the time.
The average review is a quickly written piece not meant to be definitive. So it would be misguided for a writer to read such reviews attentively. All writers without exception find themselves clapperclawed from time to time; I think the experience provided one survives it is wonderfully liberating: After the first death there is no other. A writer who has published as many books as I have has developed, of necessity, a hide like a rhino's, while inside there dwells a frail, hopeful butterfly of a spirit.
Have you ever dictated into a machine? No, oddly enough I've written my last several novels in longhand first. It alarms me to remember. Admiring the sky is one of his main leitmotifs, while another part of his lyrics was devoted to love. Zamyatin was actually Russia's first dystopian writer, and "We" depicts an apparently ideal world where the Single State has suppressed freedom in the name of happiness.
From the Archive, Issue 152
Considering that the revolution was only four years old at this point, Zamyatin was certainly amongst the very first dissidents. Alexey Ivanov from Perm, is one of the most popular and prolific authors in Russia today. Ulitskaya is one of Russia's most influential, intellectual and major contemporary writers.
Each of her novels is a long-awaiting event by dozens of critical works. Her most famous novels are "The Kukotsky Enigma," which is about an obstetrician who has a mystical gift; and "Daniel Stein, Interpreter" about a Jew who became a Catholic priest, and which was a bestseller that won Russia's main literary prize, The Big Book. In her last novel, "Yakov's Ladder," she investigates the story of her grandfather who was exiled in Stalin's times. Ulitskaya is a contemporary liberal dissident who criticizes powerful elites. Because of her activity she was even doused with green dye.
A girl from a peasant family falls in love with the nobleman, Erast, who turns out to be engaged to another woman. After a love affair he leaves Liza and she … Sorry, no spoilers here! A successful diplomat, talented composer and pianist, Alexander Griboyedov is most known for his play in verse, "Woe from Wit. He heads to the home of his beloved Sophia, only to learn that she has preferred another suitor. It is a conflict between progressive views and rigid, conservative views whose proponents are concentrated in Moscow. The name of Sergei Dovlatov is a synonym for the ridiculous absurdities of Soviet life.
He depicts workdays as a journalist facing numerous funny situations and drinking lots of alcohol. As the years passed these stories came to be seen as a brilliant chronicle of Soviet days, arousing laughter to the point of crying. Since he is still relevant, Saltykov-Shchedrin deserves prominent mention. Although Russia has changed political systems twice since Saltykov-Shchedrin, his words are as relevant now as then - official corruption remains the scourge of modern Russia.
The Czar and his ministers were shown as city mayors, and the imagined town in question, Glupov, became a symbol for the regime. The mystery of Erofeyev's main work, "Moscow-Petushki," is a riddle without an answer. The storyline seems simple. In , a drunken man boards a commuter train on his way to see his beloved.
He has a bit more to drink while on the train; he raves, he jokes, and he talks to fellow passengers. But then he is stabbed. That, essentially, is the whole story. Erofeev lived another 30 years after finishing his masterpiece, but he wrote very little during all that time. To the man in the street, it is little more than the foul-mouthed ravings of an alcoholic. To outcasts and nonconformists, it is an ode to their creed. To critics, it is the first example of Russian postmodernism. To people in the middle of a spiritual journey, it is an important religious text. To them, the moral of the story was that it is better to end up drunk in a ditch than to lead a false Soviet lifestyle that is imbued with the ideology of slavery and lacking any freedom.
Though listed among the great classic 19th century authors, Leskov has somehow been lost in translation. Another of his great works, "Left-Hander," depicts the mysterious Russian soul and a readiness to serve and make records. This writer gave a birth to what Russia now considers its national symbol of laziness — Ilya Oblomov. Even after Ilya falls in love with a wonderful woman he is too amorphous for any action. Portrait of Vasily Zhukovsky by I. Zhukovsky could be called the father of Romanticism in Russian poetry.
We'll take a risk and put this contemporary writer in the middle of classical giants, but we believe he won't disappoint you. A scholar specializing in medieval Russian history and literature, Vodolazkin is one of the top-selling authors today. He was also a student of the legendary academic, Dmitry Likhachov, and was interested in the refraction of time and space. His most popular novel, "Laurus," tells the story of a medieval saint traveling around ancient Rus. He remembers the previous era and sees the differences between modern St. Petersburg and life in the past. As Russia's most important playwright after Chekhov , Ostrovsky exerted a major influence on the development of Russian theater.
His most famous plays are "The Storm," and "Without a Dowry". Many of his verse and phrases are now idioms, and he also created a system of using animals to symbolize human characteristics. Bunin is another Russian Nobel Prize winner for literature, awarded in "for the strict artistry with which he has carried on the classical Russian traditions in prose writing. The work was not published in the USSR until perestroika because it was filled with hatred towards the Bolsheviks and disillusionment with the revolution. Bunin himself considered his short story anthology, "Dark Avenues," to be one of his best works.
This work has two parallel plots: Bulgakov is full of humor and satire, and another of his popular works is "The Dog's Heart. She was one of the brightest poets of the Russian Silver Age, whose life straddles two very different worlds: She had to flee Russia after the Revolution because she was disillusioned and alienated by the brutal new reality.
Tsvetaeva married Sergei Efron but had a love affair with Sofiya Parnok, and an epistolary affair with Pasternak and Rilke. She committed suicide just as the Second World War began and when her husband and other daughter were arrested. Here is a poet who suffered much under Soviet rule - banned, then exiled and then killed somewhere on the way to Sakhalin.
Mandelstam made his poetic debut with "Stone," a collection of poems. He was a part of the literary community of acmeists, which included Akhmatova and Gumilev. He studied in the Sorbonne and Heidelberg University, and his poems were full of European spirit and allusions to Ancient Greece. In the s, Mandelstam's anti-Soviet position became too blatant and he was almost totally banned from publishing.
In , he wrote an anti-Stalinist epigram, which contains the famous line, "We live, not feeling the country beneath us. In , he was sentenced to five years in a labor camp. Somewhere on the way to the Russian Far East, he died. The exact burial place and the circumstances of his death are still unknown. As the ultimate Russian poet who conquered the capital's audiences - this guy deserves this position. I am your only singer and herald," he wrote. Yesenin praised in his poetry the picturesque landscapes of his Motherland, with its fields, birch trees, golden rye and endless spaces.
He personified the image of a peasant poet, and became a dandy, living in St. Still, he missed his native village in the Ryazan Region, considered himself an heir to Pushkin, and was also a poet of love with numerous women to whom he dedicated his poems. Yesenin also earned notoriety as a troublemaker. He was closely involved with the literary scene and often teased other poets. His best-known literary duels were with another famous poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky. Mayakovsky was one of the major Russian poets of the first half of the 20th century and a leading member of the futurist movement.
He praised the Revolution and Soviet regime, and his poems, which are marked by their rebellious spirit and unconventional broken rhythm, are still popular. He invented new words, randomly placing them within sentences, while the lines of his poems form symbolic visual representations in their own right. In , he left the Soviet Union and went to the U. He continued writing poems in Russian and in English, but in the U.
Born into an upper class St. Petersburg family, Nabokov would be mad if he knew that we put him so low, not even in the top ten. But he is the one to blame - he shouldn't have left us for the U. At the age of 20, Nabokov left Russia with his family because his father was a politician who stood against the Bolsheviks. Nabokov later studied in Cambridge, where he wrote poems and translated "Alice in Wonderland" into Russian. When living in Berlin he published eight novels in Russian. Nabokov is also famous for his obsession for collecting butterflies, and he made several discoveries in entomology.
This author is so complicated that we just kneel and put him in 14th place. Censored and suppressed during his lifetime, Platonov is now seen as a creative beacon of Soviet literature. Critics consider him one of Russia's greatest prose writers, and in his early works of the s, such as "Chevengur," Platonov dreamed of a utopian future where electricity transforms human nature. The bleak satirical story describes a group of early Soviet workers trying to dig the foundation for a grand building that will never be built. He died from tuberculosis, infected by his son who had returned home from a prison camp.
Can you imagine a pop star of the early 20th century who all youth obsessed over? That was Alexander Blok, the first and main Russian poet of his time. His "Verses about the Beautiful Lady" is the quintessence of Russian Symbolism, of which he was one of the main creators and followers. In the early years of the Revolution, Blok actively supported the new rulers, and he praised the new regime in his poem, "The Twelve," but then he became disappointed in the Bolsheviks, and started drinking alcohol and stopped writing poems.
She managed to write a lyrical anthem for all those Soviet women who awaited their jailed men in long and hopeless lines. This elegant muse of Modigliani, was even nominated for the Nobel Prize. Opening our top-ten of the absolutely freaking greatest writers, Pasternak is one of the few Russian Nobel Prize literature winners recognized "for his important achievement both in contemporary lyrical poetry and in the field of the great Russian epic tradition.
The novel had to be smuggled out of the country to the West and was first published in Italy in Archival material recently declassified by the CIA confirms its role in publishing this anti-Soviet novel. In , Pasternak was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature, which he was forced to decline under pressure from the authorities. That's why he deserves a place in our top ten absolutely greatest Russian writers.
Sholokhov received a Nobel Prize in Literature "for the artistic power and integrity with which, in his epic of the Don, he has given expression to a historic phase in the life of the Russian people. Controversially putting Maxim Gorky higher than some of 19th century's classic writers, we admit that he is a huge, almost giant figure for the 20th century. He was the main writer of the early Soviet Union, and despite the fact that the Nobel Prize committee made a political decision to give the prize for literature to Bunin, we put Gorky higher.
For bringing Russian literature to all the world's theatrical stages, we put Chekhov on seventh position. But Chekhov is also the author of brilliant short but comprehensive stories. In his concise works he reflects many of humanity's problems, and in Chekhov visited Sakhalin Island and wrote a non-fiction book about its prison and the life of the locals. By the way, during his entire life Chekhov was a practicing doctor. For being romantically killed in a duel, we put this poet in sixth place. He is one of the main Russian classical verse composers, second to Alexander Pushkin.
Nevertheless, he learned how to win the hearts of women with his brilliant erudition, imaginative thinking and eloquence. He created hundreds of brilliant poems, whose main topics are the aspiration to freedom, a tiredness of life and a lack of pure love. While not as well known internationally as Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev nevertheless ends up in the same group with them as a classic novelist of the 19th century, and actually the scale of his tragism is about equal.
His most famous novel, "Fathers and Sons," is about new waves of political philosophy, such as nihilism and emancipation. He was the first to highlight the eternal problem of misunderstanding between parents and their children. This writer probably deserves even a higher ranking because he is a rare example of wit and satire, a writer with a brilliant sense of humor!
Included in all school and university literary programs, he is one of the greatest Russian classical writers. He was born on the territory of modern-day Ukraine, and according to legend his family originates from Cossacks. That's why he devoted two collections of stories "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka," and "Mirgorod" to Ukraine and Cossacks. Three of these stories - "Night before Christmas," "Viy" and "Taras Bulba" are among his most famous. Another period of Gogol's art is devoted to St. Petersburg - such as "Nevsky Prospekt," "The Overcoat," "Nose," and "Portrait," which depict the lives of ordinary citizens who face mystic troubles.
Gogol is also author of the brilliant play, "The Government Inspector," a comedy about Russia, its corruption and human nature. The quintessence of Gogol's work is a poem in prose - "Dead Souls" — which is about a man who travels around a small city and buys serfs that are dead but whose death hasn't yet been registered by the authorities. Apparently owning many serfs, on paper only , he wanted to pretend to be more important than he really was. We know that all people are divided into those who love Tolstoy and those who love Dostoyevsky. But we put him in third place because he lived less than Tolstoy and managed to write less than Tolstoy and didn't have such an army of fans during his lifetime.
Dostoyevsky is one of the most renowned Russian authors worldwide alongside Tolstoy. His novel "Crime and Punishment" is probably something that everyone has heard of and maybe even read part of. He is a chronicler of St. Petersburg, which in his vision is a dark city of poor people. For his role in a banned letter by the Russian critic Vissarion Belinsky to the writer Nikolai Gogol, Dostoevsky was sentenced to exile in Siberia. With this experience he wrote a non-fiction book, "Notes from a Dead House. In many ways, Strangers on a Train is a much more satisfying work than Crime and Punishment.
In broad strokes, both detail the guilt-wracked protagonists after each committed murder. Guy Haines was browbeaten into committing murder, which seemed a questionable plot point. But what struck me as eminently believable was the way in which Guy's mind grew distraught, even as his life continued apace. I think it seems in vogue to write about murder as if any one of us can commit it. From my reading, Highsmith took the opposite thesis. People who kill are a little bit off. Charles Bruno is the son of a rich man; he's indolent and insolent. He is a little bit too close to his mother, and he probably harbors homosexual tendencies it's not weird now, but in the 50's, it was.
He certainly has a strong sense of the fantastical. He feels that Guy is the only person who can understand him and that they can escape together and recount their crime. Guy and Bruno meet on a train. They talk, and Bruno senses some hint of tension in Guy. Guy has a wife whom he wishes to divorce - the very reason for the train trip - and Bruno has a father who apparently is an ogre. Bruno suggests what is the perfect crime, and has become a detective genre cliche. Bruno would kill Miriam, Guy's soon to be ex-wife and Guy would kill Bruno's father. The perfect crime, as the killers would have no obvious links to the victims, amounting to a random murder.
Guy is disturbed and appalled by Bruno; I think he senses something is off-kilter about Bruno. Needless to say, Bruno is crazy, and decides to force matters and kills Miriam. Part of this might be because Bruno hates women. He says he hates his father because the father is an adulterer. But it turns out that Bruno's mom gives as good as she gets, having her own stable of men to toy with.
Even so, Zoshchenko was somewhat a favorite of the Soviet elite who viewed his satire in ideological terms - as a denunciation of "Philistinism" and the "birthmarks of the old world. What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books. She is a confirmed cat lover and recently took in two more kittens at the Princeton house. Before reading this book I didn't really know what a micro fiction was, judging by its name I assumed it would be a short fiction story. Look for the Kindle MatchBook icon on print and Kindle book detail pages of qualifying books.
As another hint as to the fact that Bruno lives in his own head, he tells Guy that his mother is an example of the purity of women. Other evidence to show that Bruno is mentally unstable is that Bruno cannot leave Guy alone. He needs to drop hints to the detective who is following him. He involves himself in Guy's life. In other words, establishing the connections that make it much easier to to link the two men.
What was interesting to me is how Highsmith handled Guy's eventual descent into his own madness and commits murder. It is as if the motive is for Guy to shut Bruno up. Not necessarily to avoid being framed for a murder he didn't commit, or that he wished to indulge in an animal behavior, but to kill so that Bruno would stop bothering him. Guy is portrayed as a depressed individual. He can't take joy in his success.
Her characters stumble into the light, clutching their existential problems. Their stories float up like dark episodes from the subconscious. Twelve stories so. Unholy Stories (Prose Series 72) [CAROLE DAVID, NORA ALLEYN] on Amazon. com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Carole David Unholy Stories Her.
He is divorcing Miriam because she cheated on him, often. There is the element that Guy feels ill-used and played for a fool. He can't be happy with his new girlfriend. He cannot confide in her, certainly not the murder but also very few other things. It doesn't take too much to disrupt Guy's life, because he is already on the edge. He couldn't be happy with his life before the murder, and he lets guilt take over after the murder. That is the one thing Guy can do extremely well - play martyr. But I thought the best part of the novel was in how it slowly developed that others began to notice Guy's odd behavior.
It was a neat trick to portray it subtly, where others begin to see that something is not quite right with Guy. This is true especially in how Guy's fiance notices that Guy goes from depression to something wilder. In similar fashion, Highsmith's short stories, in the collection The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith, show that she has little sympathy for humankind. Although there is a collection of character sketches that paint women in a terrible light Little Tales of Misogyny , in truth, no one came off looking too sympathetic.
That's not true; the collection opens up with a number of stories about animals that commit murder. Highsmith portrays these murderers as eminently justified.
Micro Fiction: An Anthology of Fifty Really Short Stories
Everyone else is selfish, ugly, and dark. We see murder committed in cold blood, as an afterthought, for the joy of it, and from negligence and indifference. It's impressive that, to my eyes, the stories are distinctive enough such that they don't seem repetitive. My favorite story is "The Romantic". It is about a secretary who gets stood up on a date. Eventually, she starts going on made-up dates, where she sits and enjoys her time at a bar.
She imagines the men she is waiting for. Knowing that these men will never show up, she feels liberated and happy.
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She comes to realize that she very much prefers these pretend dates. So much so that when she is asked to go out on a date, she stands her date up. Her imagination gives her more satisfaction then men and perhaps even other companions. While it isn't quite the slamming of the door in Ibsen's "The Doll House", I think it is a strong statement to make: Fuck them; I don't need them. Mar 09, Marcia rated it did not like it. Read about half of the book before deciding to give up on it.
The purpose of the stories seemed to be to demonstrate how much the author hated people. May 08, Maria rated it really liked it Shelves: The stories are divided into sections, the first of which is entitled "Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder". It is a series of grisly murders of humans by animals.
It is quite interesting at first, the animals are often very sympathetic and it gives a different perspective to the news stories about vicious animal killings. To be perfectly frank, I didn't understand the premise and for the first half a page, thought Chorus Girl was a person rather than an elephant. It's surprising how many diff The stories are divided into sections, the first of which is entitled "Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder".
It's surprising how many different perspectives Ms. Highsmith came up with. However, I think the first section is about 6 stories too long and become rather obvious by the end. One delicious element of all of the stories in the book is that you know that they will end badly. Someone will virtually always be killed or, if not, the protagonist will be unhappy or happy in circumstances that are typically unhappy. One very charming thing about Ms. Highsmith's writing is that she sets her stories in a wide variety of places in space and time. She is either very well traveled, or read, or imaginative, or some combination of all of the above.
The only major downside to this book is that it is so heavy to carry around particularly in library binding. On closer inspection, it seems that each part in this book can be found in individual printings which is probably the smartest way to go about it. Ripley", I like the movie but never read the book. It is apparently the first of four Ripley books. She also wrote "Strangers on a Train".
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I can see how her atmospheric prose would lend itself to film adaptations. And I must admit that working on a terror play while reading this collection immediately made me think that a night of one acts on the theme of animal murder could be quite entertaining. To be clear, I'm basing my rating on approximately half of the book as I did not read the rest. The first section of stories are from an animals view point, I only read one of them before deciding that these were not my kind of stories. I don't and never have liked stories told by animals.
Based on the section title describing beastly murders, I assume all of them include murder. The second set of stories are about misogyny and for the most part are super short, two pages long for the majority o To be clear, I'm basing my rating on approximately half of the book as I did not read the rest. The second set of stories are about misogyny and for the most part are super short, two pages long for the majority of them. I liked these better, they were sarcastic and pointed.
I also find it impressive that such elegant stories can be written with such a limited amount of space. The next part are stories that I'm not sure how to categorize, I didn't like these ones much. Most of the characters were unlikeable because they were insufferable or inept. Woodrow Wilson's Necktie was the best of them. By the time I got to the end of that part I was tired of the stories and thought it was time to put down the book, so the last two sets I did not read any of.
I think that Highsmith is a very talented writer, stories like Slowly, Slowly in the Wind and The Prude are fascinating looks into the human psyche. I could imagine real people acting like this but in the end, they just couldn't hold my attention. Maybe it would be better to take these stories in smaller doses, rather than a large collection like this one. Nov 10, Brian rated it really liked it Shelves: I started this book and got about halfway through it before Bangkok flooded and I had to evacuate.
The book was just to heavy to pack so I left it behind. Now I'm dry and I finished. Highsmith writes stories that are real. You may call them macabre, disturbing, haunting, but they are real exception: A book filled with eerily depressing stories has to be read in doses. I I started this book and got about halfway through it before Bangkok flooded and I had to evacuate. I would generally read a story. And take a walk or sweep the floor. The last section with the whimsical title of 'Mermaids on the Golf Course' especially left me feeling uneasy and depressed.
The stories in this section ended all pretty much the same way