Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) [Paperback]

Ivan Bunin (Author), David Richards (Translator), Sophie Lund (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin | Publication Date: September 1, 1992

A much neglected literary figure, Ivan Bunin is one of Russia's major writers and ranks with Tolstoy and Chekhov at the forefront of the Russian Realists. Drawing artistic inspiration from his personal experience, these powerful, evocative stories are set in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia of his youth, in the countries that he visited and in France, where he spent the last thirty years of his life. In the title story, for example, a family's tour of fashionable European resorts comes to an unexpected end; 'Late Hour' describes an old man's return to the little Russian town in the steppes that he has not seen since his early youth; while 'Mitya's Love' explores the darker emotional reverberations of sexual experience. Throughout his stories there is a sense of the precariousness of existence, an omnipresent awareness of the impermanence of human aspirations and achievements.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (1870 - 1953) was the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The texture of his poems and stories, sometimes referred to as "Bunin brocade", is one of the richest in the language. His last book of fiction, The Dark Avenues (1943), is arguably the most widely read 20th-century collection of short stories in Russia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (September 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140185526
• ISBN-13: 978-0140185522
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #206,917 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars no title, November 16, 2005

By 

C. L Wilson (Elmhurst, Illinois United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) (Paperback)

No wonder he won the Nobel Prize! Four hauntingly magnificent short stories, all but the third with death as the end. Or maybe not the end, but the raison d'etre of the story. "The Gentleman from San Francisco" almost half the book, translated rather badly, I suspect, in the version I read, by D. H. Lawrence; "Gentle Breathing", an incredibly subtle story; "Kasimir Stanislavatch", and "Son". In each, he takes the human tragedy and contrasts it with beautiful nature. His detail is remarkable. The stories are all short, plots not intricate or even eventful, but he manages to make each one simply live and breathe and have being. It rather reminds me of all Russian writers; they're all so tragic. What is it about being a Russian? And nobody remembers him as they do Chekhov, or Tolstoy. I wonder why. Perhaps his volume of writing was not large enough.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The ecstasy of being alive, May 7, 2009

By 

Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) (Paperback)

Ivan Bunin's one major message is Horace's Carpe Diem. You should `enjoy your life, because you're earlier dead than you think.' `Even today people still marvel above all else at death and refuse to accept it.'
One of the characters in this book expresses it also as follows: `I'm suffering from a fatal disease. And I assure you that I go on living as if there were nothing the matter.' (`At Sea, at Night')

How should you enjoy yourself? By the prime of love (`Late Hour'), and one of its ingredients, sex: `When you love someone no power on earth can make you believe that you may not be loved in return.' But this love can also be violent (`The Riverside Tavern').
Sex is enjoyed in furtive encounters with `the shamelessness of the purest innocence' (`Zoyka and Valeria'), lonely women on a journey (`Sunstroke', `Visiting Cards') or plain adultery (`The Caucasus'). Ivan Bunin's eroticism is outspoken. He enjoys all parts of the female body.

Those who cannot enjoy life, those who don't master the art of love, those who cannot accept that love sometimes dies (`Mitya's Love'), those who cannot overcome the death of a loved one and those who go to war (`A cold Mountain'), are doomed.
Also doomed are the `Modern Men' with their stupid arrogance, like `The Gentleman of San Francisco', who forgot to live.

The longest story in this bundle is `Mitya's Love', Bunin's version of Goethe's Werther combined with elements of Tolstoy's `The Devil'. Mitya is Bunin's anti-hero because he cannot overcome an unanswered love. However, the story is not totally convincing. It is too long and the introduction of the sexual element is rather forced.

This book is a very worthwhile read.

14 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing short stories, January 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) (Paperback)

Bunin is one of the most brilliant Russian writers of the early 20th century. His short stories express more in a couple of pages than most novels do in hundreds. It is poetry in prose.