Re: Literature Talk: Russian & Non -Discuss/Review/Q&As
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Originally Posted by gRomoZeka
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Originally Posted by Johanna
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Yes, I read it when I was a about 15 or so.. I read it purely because I found out that it was explicitly banned from my schools' library.
That's really funny, because I read it when I was about 15 too, BUT because it was in our
school reading list. :lol:
I even had to retell in front of the class the story of Humbert and Lolita's first sexual intercourse (you know, to prove that I read the book). Tell me now, that Soviet schools were boring! :ROFL:
Haha, my school probably banned the book in the 1960s or so, and simply forgot to "un-ban" it later. There were lots of other books available with explicit scenes, perhaps that one was just the first to break a taboo. Nabokov was not covered at all in Litterature in school.
And yeah, it's becoming clear to me that things were not as laced up in the USSR as the rest of us thought! Hilarious that you actually made a presentation about that scene! Did you wear that old-fashioned style of school uniform that with an apron, that looks like it is from ca 1890, lol..? Funny contrast with the steamy scene from "Lolita" :D
I am embarrassed to admit that unlike both of you (Olya and Gromozeka) I completely missed the greatness of the book. Perhaps I was truly too young, or the wrong gender to really "get" it. But the language made no particular impression, the pace was slow and the plot didn't interest me..
Re: Literature Talk: Russian & Non -Discuss/Review/Q&As
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Originally Posted by Johanna
I am embarrassed to admit that unlike both of you (Olya and Gromozeka) I completely missed the greatness of the book. Perhaps I was truly too young, or the wrong gender to really "get" it. But the language made no particular impression, the pace was slow and the plot didn't interest me..
There's nothing wrong with not liking a book, even a classic one. Especially when the subject is rather controversal. :roll: I believe the language could not make an impression, because the words you read were not Nabokov's words, it was a translator's attempt to find a substitute. The more refined the prose, the harder it's to translate. It takes away all the magic. Also it depends on whether you can relate to the main characters (I could relate to Humbert, despite his.. er... shortcomings).
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Haha, my school probably banned the book in the 1960s or so, and simply forgot to "un-ban" it later. There were lots of other books available with explicit scenes, perhaps that one was just the first to break a taboo. Nabokov was not covered at all in Litterature in school.
And yeah, it's becoming clear to me that things were not as laced up in the USSR as the rest of us thought!
Oh, I don't want to mislead you. It WAS absolutely impossible to imagin this book in an "oldschool" Soviet school (say, in the 60s). But in late 80's-early 90's things became very lax, and we studied a lot of books which were banned or not approved at some point of history (Bulgakov, Orwell, Solzenitsin, Nabokov, etc.)
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Hilarious that you actually made a presentation about that scene! Did you wear that old-fashioned style of school uniform that with an apron, that looks like it is from ca 1890, lol..?
It'a pity, but no. :) As far as I remember we did not wear school uniforms in high school.
Re: Literature Talk: Russian & Non -Discuss/Review/Q&As
I saw this book (fiction) in the bookstore today and it caught my attention... Olya... one of the main characters is Olga and she is a person who masters multiple foreign languages!
There are also an interesting couple of lines in it that I want to know if anyone has read/heard before:
"Colour is life. It's how we bend light into laughs. And also shades of weeping."
The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_euX8iPKWqeM/S5...jpg?imgmax=800
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Originally Posted by About the book
In a crumbling apartment building in post-Soviet Russia, there's a ghost who won't keep quiet.
Mircha fell from the roof and was never properly buried, so he sticks around to heckle the living. His wife, Azade, supervises the porta-toilet in the courtyard while worrying over a gang of feral children. Olga, a translator/censor for a military newspaper, frets about Yuri, her army-veteran son who always wears an aviator’s helmet. And Yuri's girlfriend, Zoya, just wants to own some modern things. But then there is Tanya.
Tanya carries a notebook wherever she goes, recording her observations and her dreams, one of which is to become a flight attendant so she can escape her job the All-Russia All-Cosmopolitan Museum and soar through the clouds.
But when the director hears of a mysterious American group looking to fund art in Russia, he charges Tanya with luring the Americans to their museum-- which holds a fantastic and terrible collection of art knock-offs that have been created using the tools at hand, from foam to chewing gum, popsicle sticks to tomato juice. But while Tanya scrambles to save her dreams and her neighbors, she might be getting closer to finding love right in her own courtyard.
And so in Ochsner's fable-like, magical debut, we see the transcendence of imagination. As Colum McCann has said: "[Ochsner] manages... to capture our sundry human moments and make raw and unforgettable music of them.".
Re: Literature Talk: Russian & Non -Discuss/Review/Q&As
Babi Yar by Anatoli Kuznetsov. Бабий Яр. Анатолий Кузнецов. Updated version.
This book tells the experiences of an eleven or twelve year old boy in Kiev starting in September 1941. Kuznetsov reports the conditions of life in Kiev, and in his home through the end of occupation, with the return of Soviet forces. The author talks about his family, consisting of mother, father, maternal grandparents, and his cat Titus. Family history is included about the lives of parents and grandparents, some details going back to Tsarist times. The author gives childhood and family experiences during the famine and purge times in the 1930s. And so we learn that the father was a Russian from Харьков, a real Bolshevik, in Frunzes forces, in Крым. His mother was a school teacher from Київ.
The book is more well known for reporting eye witness accounts of survivors from Babi Yar. But for me, the personal stories of Anatoli and his family are equally important and very interesting. Kuznetsov’s style is sparing, and clear. The story is more important than literary niceties.
Kuznetsov also describes several points about conditions in Soviet times. For example ‘socialist realism’. A writer must tell what should have been, or what was desired, not what really is, or really happened. This kind of fantasy reality is actually familiar here in the west also, but there is no grand name for it, except perhaps ‘editorial control’. Stories are continually being ‘sanitized’. Kuznetsov says that his updated version is what he really intends to say.
Many parts of this book would be suitable for young adults and teenagers. Some parts should not be given to some one with heart trouble to read.
This book reminds me of so many stories that an old gentleman from Port Arthur Canada used to tell me. He was almost same age as Kuznetsov. Stories from the Depression in Canada, stories about his relatives from WW1 and before. Stories about his ancestors from England, his grandmother. Her brothers had been in a war in 1850s … Crimea.
Re: Literature Talk: Russian & Non -Discuss/Review/Q&As
I've just read the short story "Explorers we" by Philip K. Dick. The story is only about a half dozen pages and tells us about the return of spacemen from a space trip. Finding themselves back on the Earth they met quite a strange acceptance. At the end of the story we see that these spacemen are a sort of clones of the real ones mysteriously made up by the something extraterrestrial. The idea of extraterrestrial clones looks like that in "Solaris" by Stanislaw Lem which was discussed in the big film's thread. The difference is that in the Philip Dick's story we see the world from the clones' point of view. It is funny that both "Explores we" and "Solaris" were written by different authors at the same time.
Re: Literature Talk: Russian & Non -Discuss/Review/Q&As
I am reading the "Mars" trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson.
Actually I am not reading it really, I've got all three books, unabridged on my iPod.
It describes the founding of a first colony on Mars, and subsequent event, in a way that is apparently pretty scientifically correct (the author did TONS of research to support the book with proper science).
So it is a mix of science / fiction... politics and philosophy.
The mission consists of a group of Americans and Russians (largely) plus a few Europeans and a Japanese. The personalities of the main characters make the story more interesting.
I definitely recommend this series.
http://bluesuncorp.co.uk/files/artic...s/red-mars.jpg