Today I descended into the University of Chicago's Seminary Coop bookstore to check out new titles in Russian history and related subjects. Although I feel some guilt, I never buy much of anything at the bookstore: new books are just too expensive, and the plethora of choices overwhelms my decision-making faculties anyhow. I read outdated history--all in English--and even that task overtakes me. There's just too much out there. But looking at recent titles is even more intimidating. There are so many wonderful Russian history books being released each year, plus some classics that get re-translated or just re-published.
When I visit the Russian history collection at the Seminary bookstore, I feel very clandestine. All I really want to do is take a furtive photo of a few key shelves so I can remember what should go on my Christmas list next year. Feeling like a spy, I struggle to try to memorize everything before I leave the building but, sadly, I remember very little moments later. I do recall an entire row of Sheila Fitzpatrick books, Walter Benjamin's Moscow Diary, a relatively new Boym book called the Future of Nostalgia, books by gulag survivors, academic treatises on Soviet memoirs, Blum's book on Russian serfs and peasants, books on Soviet women, something on post-Soviet consumer fantasies, something else on the once-forbidden landscape of the Soviet Union, stuff on Herzen and Trotsky, a collection of Isaiah Berlin essays on the Soviet experiment, etc.
Somebody give me a cool thousand dollars and I'll carry that whole damned section of shiny new hard cover Soviet masterpieces up the cold, dank Seminary Coop steps to freedom.
Showing posts with label Boym. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boym. Show all posts
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Poshlost
There are of course better and worse examples of the kind of Russian intellectual fluff to which I’ve referred in the previous post. I think Imagining Nabokov: Russia between Art and Politics is one of the better sorts of intellectual fluff pieces. Notwithstanding the author’s heavy-handed biographical presence in the book, she does have a real thesis: that Nabokov’s books are especially relevant to contemporary, crisis-laden, post-Soviet Russia. As the author notes, Nabokov, once banned from publication in Russia, is now enjoying a major resurgence in popularity among Russia’s younger reading audiences.
The author believes that this popularity stems from Nabokov’s radical break from Russian literary tradition. For Nabokov was a post-modern author rather than a modern one, and, more importantly, Nabokov believed in the priority of the personal over the collective, as well as the possibility of achieving happiness, a very un-traditional Russian literary theme. (Incidentally, the book recalls Lesley Chamberlain’s intellectual history of the Russian Diaspora, which includes Nabokov and his father. Here, Chamberlain points out that many exiled Russian intellectuals were religious thinkers who were crafting a highly individualistic response to modernity called personalism.)
In one section of Imagining Nabokov, the author discusses the traditional Russian concept of the banal, or poshlost, which was odious to most major Russian authors. Better to suffer or do evil than to wallow in the un-dramatic or ordinary. She says Nabokov recognized the pitfalls of such contempt for poshlost. Lolita’s tragedy is not that she lived an ordinary life before she met Humbert. Her tragedy is that Humbert robbed her of this bland but worthwhile life. The interesting thing about this book is that its blend of literary criticism and diary resulted from the rich imagination of Nikita Khrushchev’s granddaughter, Nina Khruschcheva.
The granddaughter of a man accused of mass murder in the Ukraine has surely thought deeply about the superiority of ordinary life when weighed against the heroic but bloody acts of state socialism. If only Ukrainian peasants had been left to enjoy their boring lives rather than starved to death or transported in the pursuit of a Bolshevik Utopia. Incidentally, Boym’s Common Places , which approaches Khruschcheva’s theme about the role of banality in Russian culture from another angle, is also worth reading.
The author believes that this popularity stems from Nabokov’s radical break from Russian literary tradition. For Nabokov was a post-modern author rather than a modern one, and, more importantly, Nabokov believed in the priority of the personal over the collective, as well as the possibility of achieving happiness, a very un-traditional Russian literary theme. (Incidentally, the book recalls Lesley Chamberlain’s intellectual history of the Russian Diaspora, which includes Nabokov and his father. Here, Chamberlain points out that many exiled Russian intellectuals were religious thinkers who were crafting a highly individualistic response to modernity called personalism.)
In one section of Imagining Nabokov, the author discusses the traditional Russian concept of the banal, or poshlost, which was odious to most major Russian authors. Better to suffer or do evil than to wallow in the un-dramatic or ordinary. She says Nabokov recognized the pitfalls of such contempt for poshlost. Lolita’s tragedy is not that she lived an ordinary life before she met Humbert. Her tragedy is that Humbert robbed her of this bland but worthwhile life. The interesting thing about this book is that its blend of literary criticism and diary resulted from the rich imagination of Nikita Khrushchev’s granddaughter, Nina Khruschcheva.
The granddaughter of a man accused of mass murder in the Ukraine has surely thought deeply about the superiority of ordinary life when weighed against the heroic but bloody acts of state socialism. If only Ukrainian peasants had been left to enjoy their boring lives rather than starved to death or transported in the pursuit of a Bolshevik Utopia. Incidentally, Boym’s Common Places , which approaches Khruschcheva’s theme about the role of banality in Russian culture from another angle, is also worth reading.
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