Contemporary Russian Prose
Carl & Proffer, Elléndea
Maital? Unfortunately, in Maital's scheme of things enlightened selfi n t e r e s t means l i t t l e more than agreeing with his call for mandatory wage-price controls. Only they, he argues,...
...It is possible that he had inhabited the capital even earlier, no one denies it, maybe even a number of years, there are plenty of blank spots on the city map, after all...
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...Yet how can Maital make this recommendation with any confidence, when he himself implies that influencing people's perceptions is a tricky and difficult business...
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...The situation, based upon the vexing and p e r s i s t e n t housing s h o r t a g e which plagues all Soviet city dwellers, is simple...
...I have offered the comparisons in a descriptive sense, not as critical evaluations...
...I like to report on the scene around me, or the little piece of the world as I see it, as it is in my time...
...The lengthy nature descriptions that fill these stories recall the Turgenev of A Sportman's Sketches...
...But simply because censorship and samizdat have become commonplaces is not to imply t h a t the t e r r i b l e s t i n g - - t h e horror and tragedy--of life in a totalitarian state has lessened over the years...
...Reading t h e s e two collections not only reminds you how good Smith was, it also points up the hamminess and p o r t e n t o u s n e s s of the rest of the field...
...of Trees race to beat the woodsman...
...These programs have [ ] worked for the Foretgn Servtce Corps to work - - our State Department [ ] [ ] --because that's exactly whom you'll be depends on them...
...and a great deal of modern Soviet h i s t o r y has been compressed into these opening paragraphs...
...J u s t try to find The Best of Red Smith, a 1962 collection of New York Herald Tribune s t o r i e s i l l u s t r a t e d by the incomparable Willard Mttllin, if you don't believe it...
...In Contemporary Russian Prose, the grayness is everywhere and has infected everything...
...Few people would perceive wage-price controls as fair, equitable, and nondiscriminatory...
...I f current inflation results mainty from people trying to avoid sacrifices which they feel o t h e r s are successfully evading, controls can work, provided they are perceived as fair, equitable, and nondiscriminatory...
...The thing about fashion, of comTse, is that it is mainly bad...
...If you can just accept it as entertainment, and write it as entertainment, then I think that's what spectator sports are meant to be...
...As the editors admit, t h e i r collection clearly i l l u s t r a t e s the situation...
...Perhaps it is b e t t e r to say t h a t never before have there been more overpraised badly done sports books...
...The people loved him, and the officials loved him--an extraordinary confluence of opinion...
...Collections Of columns are notoriously slow sellers (which is one reason publishers turn them down, doing a disservice to both writers who go for the s p r i n t i n s t e a d of the marathon, and r e a d e r s ) , and once they disappear from the shelves are not easy to locate...
...Where once s p o r t s books were reviewed only in the juvenile press, if at all, today sports literature is given big play in the critical p r e s s of the major dailies and newsmagazines...
...for only $89.95 i _ _9 pinnacle Dept...
...Only they, he argues, can control inflation...
...What Red Smith did, what he wanted to do and what he died doing, was write for newspapers...
...There it is, in a n u t s h e l l , Red Smith's secret...
...He did not live to see it finished, but, he saw it announced in the publisher's 34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1982...
...d. October 2, 1974) was more than a writer--he was a phenomenon...
...These are just little games that little boys can play, and it really isn't important to the future of civilization whether the Athletics or the Browns win...
...Red Smith wrote so many columns, and so many good columns, t h a t selecting the over 300 that make up these collections must have been a noisome t a s k . Yet it seems likely these will be the last collections to appear for some time, so you would do well to buy your copies while you still can...
...This is the trademark of the great nineteenth-century Russian realists and satirists, and is apparent from the opening moments of the first story in Contemporary Russian Prose, Vasily Aksenov's "The Steel Bird": It would appear that the hero of my tale appeared in Moscow in the spring of 1948, at any rate that is when he was first observed on Fornarnii Lane...
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...We have included here both 'country prose' (one of the dominant types of fiction in the USSR) and urban prose (Trifonov and Aksenov are q u i n t e s s e n t i a l Moscow writers...
...They r a g e d a g a i n s t i n j u s t i c e s . But now that the Soviets and their revolution have provided a single, interminable, droning answer, the quest has been reduced to nothing more t h a n a longing for a " t w e n t y - b y - s i x t e e n room on Profsoyuznaya Street...
...But to identify these links with past masters is not to say that the seven writers chosen by the Proffers are of comparable stature...
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...He was ~that rare thing: a newspaperman who actually loved his job, and who did not crave the paydays of big books...
...Everything in it was written in the USSR bY writers born and educated in the Soviet period...
...His secret, of course, was that he was a man who loved j o u r n a l i s m , loved writing several times a week for daily newspapers...
...Yet the shelf of abominable s p o r t s books sags with the accumulated rot of 80 years or so...
...Even seasoned veterans who had marched from the Volga to the Spree were stunned...
...The results: Books, articles, and e s s a y s as i n t e r m i n a b l e as they are unmemorable cascade from the printing presses even as the Friends Joe Mysak is a writer living in New Jersey...
...For this reason I believe that the most i n t e r e s t i n g story in the collection, despite the Proffers' argument for the c e n t r a l i t y of Sasha Sokolov's "A School for Fools," is Yuri T r i f o n o v ' s "The Exchange...
...The Proffers believe t h a t , in t h e i r considerable v a r i e t y , t h e s e stories offer us a glimpse of the diversity of prose styles now being practiced in Russia...
...He directed it and starred in it, and the film was "one of the most effective tear-jerkers ever made...
...July 25, 1929...
...It is mentioned in almost every story and is i m p o r t a n t , if not quite so c e n t r a l , to s t o r i e s like "The Steel B i r d , " " L i f e in Windy Weather," and "Downstream...
...However, only the stories by Bitov, Shukshin, Trifonov, and Rasputin were actually published Robert Leiter has written for the New Republic, Commonweal, the American Scholar, and other journals...
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...Their nostrils were invaded by decay and foul weather, disintegration and putrefaction, by the twilight of civilization...
...I imagine that many readers will come to this volume, as I did, for information about how life is lived day by day in Russia...
...Indeed, in The Wealth of Nations Smith pitches his argument to disinterested legislators, asking them to refrain from being swayed by the protectionist arguments of merchants and manufacturers...
...Aksenov's story is a s a t i r e on Stalinist methods...
...Nor did he go after the power and prestige of the *The Breaks of the Game, Alfred A. Knopf...
...Smith never assumed t h a t people are always animated by s e l f - i n t e r e s t . Moreover, he took it for granted that some are not,' that their self-interest can take the form of a desire, say, for fame as a legislator r a t h e r than a desire for a b e t t e r material condition...
...I've always had the notion that people go to spectator sports to have fun and then they grab the paper to read about it and have fun again...
...CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN PROSE Edited by Carl and EUendea Proffer / Ardis Publishers $25.00 cloth, $9.50 paper Robert Leiter C a r l and Ellendea P r o f f e r , the e d i t o r s of Contemporary Russian Prose, have g a t h e r e d t o g e t h e r the work of seven w r i t e r s - - V a s i l y Aksenov, Vasily Shukshin, Sasha Sokolov, Yuri Trifonov, Andrei Bitov, Fazil Iskander, and Valentin Rasput i n - f e w of whom will be familiar to American readers...
...The evidence in Contemporary Russian Prose is far too slim to s u p p o r t such weighty pronouncements...
...There is realism and there is fantasy, even surrealism...
...Why so many i n t e l l e c t u a l s - - w h o are supposedly a thoughtful, intelligent, and well-read lot---continue to call for societies untainted by self-interest is difficult to fathom...
...in the USSR...
...Description and motivation are at a minimum and the plot has touches imported from the Worst of American g a n g s t e r movies of the t h i r t i e s . The editors inform us that they included the work in order to "convey some idea of what a Soviet bestseller is like...
...They buy the books, laud the legend, and otherwise pay his shade lip service...
...The steel bird, in all its implications, is one of those typically out-sized metaphors that are characteristic of the best of Russian literature...
...tLate Innings: A Baseball Companion, Simon and Schuster, $17.50...
...I've always tried to remember--and this is an old line--that sports isn't Armageddon...
...Foreigr L service way...
...The diff i c u l t i e s many of them have withstood in the struggle to publish their fiction have become the commonplaces of Soviet a r t i s t i c life since the Revolution...
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...The Aksenov story was published in Russian, but in the United States, twelve years after it was written...
...These are indisputably Soviet writers...
...Shukshin's two novels and one hundred and thirty'odd stories represent only One side of his talent...
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...S t i l l , the majority of the other writers represented are "Russian" in the sense that they employ the large themes--the pursuit of Truth or Meaning...
...And why do they often imply, as Maital does, that Adam Smith was hopelessly naive when he spoke of self-interest as a force for the common good...
...The smell conjured up something that not even the most desperate times had produced, that a normal person would never dream of, not even hell, something far worse...
...I respect a good reporter and I'd like to be called that...
...He said what he had to say in ten or twenty inches of copy, and he said it from t h r e e to seven days a week...
...There is a certain grayness to most of the great Russian novels and short stories, but it was p a r t of the search for meaning or truth, a quality of those interminable Russian winters...
...There is straightforward psychological realism (Trifonov), introspective realism (Bitov), retrospective realism (Rasputin), "and even epic realism (Iskander) with a touch of the nationalities...
...Some of the best was done by Red Smith, who died t h i s p a s t January...
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...One might say t h a t today t h e r e is more bad sports writing dignified by hard covers t h a t in former days would have mercifully p e r i s h e d with the day's papers...
...The steel bird does not die...
...This is hardly news...
...In addition, the least interesting of the stories, "Snowball Berry Red" by Vasily Shukshin, is the most Soviet...
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...And there is Sokolov, who doesn't fit any of the conventional c a t e g o r i e s . " For the Proffers, this great mix of styles is an indication of a " . . . h e a l t h y literature...
...The story has the sketchiness of a scenario...
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...It simply flies away and it may, in fact, return...
...The preoccupation with living space is ever present in the collection...
...He wants to write a book about the Yankees...
...The lines are drawn for a story as well defined and uncluttered as a Greek drama...
...What was no secret is t h a t Red Smith had a g r e a t deal of t a l e n t and style, as well as the stamina, to bring it off every day, or almost every day, for something like forty years...
...I'd like to be considered good and honest and reasonably accurate...
...They wonder aloud what his s e c r e t was, and continue to turn out t h e i r dreadful stuff...
...To Absent Friends From Red Smith is the author's last book...
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...Life has been d r a i n e d of color, reduced in size, like the search itself...
...Like other eighteenth-century thinkers who regarded s e l f - i n t e r e s t in a favorable light, Smith thought a nation could be strong and stable only if it were governed by wise leaders who would not try to stamp out self-interest so much as r e g u l a t e i t - - t h a t is, to p r e v e n t people in t h e i r pursuit of self-interest from engaging in activities that might undermine the health of the nation...
...Before I917 the characters in Russian / novels longed for solutions...
...You can be- exclusively so that you hear exactly how [ ] [ ] speakmg with all the confidence of a sea- each w(}rd should sound It won't be long [ ] [ ] soned traveler m a matter of weeks...
...Yearning f o r " a fundamental change in both psychology and morals," Maital--like all those who attack self-interest--would do well to ponder Hamilton's remark that "we may preach till we are tired of the theme, the necessity of disinterestedness in republics, without making a single proselyte...
...But all that can be accurately said of the story is that it is no better or worse than any of our bestsellers...
...of course...
...His premature death (heart attack) at the height of his fame was mourned by millions of fans...
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...There is an added point to be made h e r e . Much of the i n t e r e s t generated by these stories is extraliterary...
...As the Proffers tell us, " F o r Russians, Shukshin (b...
...The " h e r o " of the story is a man who is not r e a l l y a man but rather a steel bird, which gradually intimidates the residents of a Moscow apartment house, grows increasingly t y r a n n i c a l as time wears on, then js at last driven out...
...editor's chair...
...at the time of publication Aksenov still lived in Moscow, but since then he has emigrated...
...Everything in it is set in the USSR...
...Dimitriev's aggressive wife Lena sees a change to get a l a r g e r apartment by inviting her mother-in-law, whom she dislikes, to move in with them, exchanging both her old room and t h e i r s for a real a p a r t m e n t . L e n a ' s real motive, of course, is t h a t she knows t h a t her mother-in-law is dying, and will then leave them with an extra room in the apartment they could not get otherwise---Soviet law allotting space on the b a s i s of how many members there are in a family...
...The practitioners of such Beautiful Letters include, for example, David Halberstam, who spent time that may well have been productive following the Portland Trailblazers basketball team.* Or consider Roger Angell, whose wondrously spun tales might well fascinate baseball historians in 75 y e a r s - - f o r they are surely less t h a n compelling n o w . t I h e a r the ranks of the sports litte'rateurs will soon be joined by Gay T a l e s e , the painstaking nonfictioneer...
...And I like to do it in a way that gives the reader a little pleasure, a little entertainment...
...And in the work of w r i t e r s like Bitov and Rasputin we see an even stronger, if less adventurous, link to the past...
...Even if he wrote a stinker, as he put it, there would be the next day " t o r e c o v e r , " and do b e t t e r . In Smith's words (to Jerome Holtzman, who made it the valedictory piece in No Cheering in the Press Box, a collection of t a p e d i n t e r v i e w s with old-time sportswriters): "The guy I admire most in the world is a good reporter...
...pilgrims with fresh flowers still appear at his grave every day...
...His praises have been sung so loudly and by such a host t h a t perhaps even Smith has heard them by now...
...But what I find far more interesting is the choice of the word "Russian" in the title rather than the perhaps more exact word" Soviet...
...M a i t a l ' s call for wage-price controis is less irritating, however, than his animadversions against selfi n t e r e s t . When will writers stop making a bogeyman out of selfinterest, assuming that anyone who pursues his self-interest always pursues it--that he is never capable of sacrifice or altruism...
...We want documentation as much as good literature...
...14 Fornarnii as the hero walked past...
...The fact is t h a t s p o r t s w r i t i n g is f a s h i o n a b l e now...
...The part responsible for his celebrity status was his film work: a half dozen scripts, direction of six movies, and major roles in a dozen films...
...TO ABSENT FRIENDS FROM RED SMITH Red Smith / Atheneum Publishers / $17.95 THE RED SMITH READER Edited by Dave Anderson/Random House/$15.95 Joe Mysak Newspapermen know that some of the b e s t writing and some of the worst writing appears on the sports pages...
...Snowball Betry Red" is itself a prose t r e a t m e n t for a film which Shukshin made in 1974...
...A sharp smell of mold, of filthy damp underwear, a mouse-like small struck the folk crowded round the beer vendor r e LearrL Spanish i 3 and French the U.8...
...To a man, from the s p o r t s rep o r t e r s t o t h e sports w r i t e r s to the s p o r t s copy e d i t o r s , to the s p o r t s columnists and the sports authors of books, they all acknowledge the primacy of Red smith...
...The reporter has one of the toughest jobs in the world--getting as near the truth as possible is a terribly tough job...
...The only other quality common to these works-,especially those with urban settings--is the grayness of the lives described...
Vol. 15 • November 1982 • No. 11
