Customer Reviews

Oblomov (Everyman's Library)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Oblomov was written just a couple of years before the abolition of serfdom in Russia, a time when the landowners were still clinging to feudal ways of making money but had been exposed to (and for the most part fascinated by) more modern ways of living their upper-class lives. The title character, like many other landowners, has for some time lived in Petersburg, away from his family estate, but unlike many others he finds himself very bored with society life. Instead, he prefers to remain in his bed, entertaining a handful of guests, mulling over but never putting to paper a plan to improve his estate, and, for him most pleasantly of all, daydreaming about his simple and idyllic childhood in the country. To any outside observer, he is pathetic in this state, where he can't even finish writing a letter, so his childhood friend Stolz tries to bring him out of his torpor. Stolz fails in persuading him that going to dinner parties and taking part in high-society backstabbing is any better than lying in bed, but he does manage to rouse him to some kind of action by introducing him to his friend Olga. Olga and Oblomov fall in love, with Olga dreaming of a permanently-changed Oblomov and Oblomov dreaming of a future growing old with Olga on Oblomov's family estate. Meanwhile, circumstances force Oblomov to move into a new apartment, where the landlady takes quite a liking to him but the landlady's brother, along with one of Oblomov's longtime houseguests, conspire to defraud Oblomov. This probably only summarizes about half of the novel, but saying much more would probably give away too much of the ending.

Despite the unattractiveness of Oblomov's preferred lifestyle, Goncharov manages to make Oblomov a very lovable character. The reader is brought into a fair amount of sympathy with Oblomov's nostalgia for his childhood and his innocent hopes for a peacefully happy future, and I for one was unable to blame Oblomov for wanting to stay in bed rather than put up with all the artifices and machinations of high society life. All the love affairs in the novel are mostly well put-together (though in the novel's final part Goncharov was a bit too long-winded about some of the characters' emotions), and although Oblomov receives by far the most attention, both Olga and Oblomov's servant Zahar are well- (and in the latter case quite amusingly-) drawn The main qualm I had about this book prior to reading it was that the prospect of spending 500 pages on a novel about a man who wants to do nothing but lie by himself in bed sounded a bit boring, but that turned out to be unfounded for a couple of reasons. First, Stolz and Olga do manage to get him out of bed and persuade him to take action on some fronts, even if his deeper inclinations still show throughout. Second, the first (150-page) part of the novel, which Oblomov does spend entirely in bed, surprisingly turned out for me to be the novel's most entertaining part.

There were some minor technical problems with the work (in particular I thought some of the changes of scene were quite awkward), but these did not take away at all from my enjoyment of the book. Oblomov is ultimately a tragic figure, and his flaw of inaction is very much tied up with the archaic feudal system in place in Russia at the time. However, this does not prevent those of us living 141 years in the future and many thousands of miles away from sympathizing with him and having a great deal of fun as more and more about this fascinating character is revealed.

You are best off buying the old Magarshack translation, published by Penguin Classics.

The new Pearl translation contains so many unnecessary typographical errors--comma disease, carriage returns that insert white lines in the middle of paragraphs more than once, quotation marks regularly lost track of--that the edition is too broken to use with pleasure.

Stylistically Pearl's done something different from Magarshack, "updating" the old-feeling language. This sometimes works well in dialogues between characters, but not so much in the voice of the narrator, in my opinion.

Oblomov, the main character of Ivan Goncharov's novel, is widely regarded as one of the finest literary examples of the backward-looking landed gentry of mid-nineteenth century Russia. His name has even entered the Russian language in the term "oblomovshchina", meaning backwardness, inertia. The unheroic hero Oblomov is also a very fine literary creation of a fully-fledged human being. He is a melancholy idealist, a dreamer whose temperament is such that he never begins to put his dreams into action. His tragedy is that he weighs the possible obstacles to his endeavors for such a long time that, finally, he never even starts to act.

Ivan Goncharov is at his best when he describes the mental processes of Oblomov that lead to his bumbling life. There is no better description of how the mind of a pessimistic person manipulates the perception of reality than in this book.

"The Saint of Sloth" is the title of a review written by the critic V.S. Pritchett for the New York Review of Books. It captures nicely the two main aspects of Oblomov's character. On the one hand, Oblomov is lazy, irresponsible, pessimistic, paralyzed, complacent, slothful; but on the other hand he is idealistic, true to himself, honest, child-like, innocent, saintly. He is ultimately a lovable human being. He does not lack wisdom, he lacks resolve.

As can be expected, Goncharov's book is not an action-packed thriller. On the first 50 or so pages, Oblomov barely manages to get out of his bed. A patient reader who keeps reading, however, is rewarded with a wonderfully realistic love story (including all the ups and downs), and many wise comments by the bachelor Goncharov on life, love, passion, duty and marriage.

Be forewarned: this edition is not the full shilling. At a mere 161 pages, it is not even a third of the actual novel. Nowhere does it indicate this to be the case, so if you purchase it without looking at the page count in the product description notes, you might be fooled, since all the customer reviews here are actually for other (complete) editions. I just returned it and ordered the Penguin Classics (Everyman's Library also has a fine but more expensive edition).

Because all reviews for various editions seem to be lumped together on a single page, I'd like to clarify as to exactly which edition I'm warning people away from:

Product Details
Paperback: 162 pages
Publisher: World Library Classics (August 22, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1557427739
ISBN-13: 978-1557427731
Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches

For a fan of Russian literature, this book is a necessary read. Goncharov explores the problems with nobility and the caste system in a way that none of his predecessors did. He does this while largely capturing the beauty of the Russian style of writing. He offers detailed characters that each represents a different archetype. He shows you several social environments and the place each held within the system as well as what purpose they served. And mostly he accomplishes all of this while telling a very humorous and ammusing story.

I did feel that he strayed for about 100 pages in the middle. The story got away from being a Russian piece of literature and turned into a Jane Austen romance of types. I love Jane Austen and have no problem with these plot types in general, but it felt misplaced in this particular novel. For this reason, I would suggest that if you are not a fan of Russian literature yet, you introduce yourself into its world with a different piece of work, of which there are MANY.

Tolstoy hailed Oblomov as a sublime work. Dostoevsky panned it as the work of a charlatan. Goncharov created one of the most intriguing characters in Russian literature. You might say Oblomov is the ultimate nihilist, but he doesn't know it. This is a man who has never grown up, until one day he meets a fine Russian beauty, and attempts to direct his life for the first time. The opening part of this book is first rate. Goncharov sets up his characters beautifully. "Oblomov's dream" is one of the finest pieces in Russian literature. But, like Oblomov himself, this book doesn't hold up well over the long haul. Goncharov's literary powers begin to diminish and the story becomes more diffuse without really illucidating the reader as to the lack of motivation in the character.

Fortunately, Oblomov is not without humor. The amusing relation between the protaganist and his manservant, Zahar, can be side-splitting at times. It is also quite poignant. As much as Oblomov seems to loathe his manservant, he can't bear to be without him. Zahar is the only link Oblomov has left to the family estate.

Oblomov does not stack up to the greats in Russian literature, but it is worthy of the second tier. However, it has been a book that has influenced later generations of writers, including Samuel Beckett, and has been made into a feature length movie by Nikita Mikhalkov.

This new translation of Oblomov by Stephen Pearl brings the work to life as never before. Don't buy the old Penguin translation or the new Schwartz translation, unless you want to get bogged down in stale or scholarly English. This translation is fresh and vivid and (the experts say) accurate. It won the 2008 Prize for Best Translation into English from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages.

In the Pearl translation, you will experience the wry humor of Goncharov. You will encounter Goncharov's amazingly drawn characters as if they were real people: the pathologically lethargic but lovable Oblomov; Zakhar, his loyal servant and Sancho Panza; Stolz, his super-organized, energetic, yet affectionate German friend; and the poignantly sweet Olga.

Don't miss the chance to devour this Russian classic in fresh, crunchy English. It's a great read!Oblomov

I received my copy of "Oblomov"(Classic Reprint) and was disgusted to find that this "translation" is actually a grossly abridged version of the work. It was NOT presented as such online and I was only alerted to this fact when I compared the size to a copy of a recently translated version of "Oblomov" that had many more words. Further research revealed the truth of the matter.
Buyer beware!

Think russian novels and you think War & Peace or The Brothers Karamazov. You should also think Oblomov.

Ever notice how different people can approach the same problem from different angles, how the most direct will assess the issue and on the basis of this assessment take the action which seems most appropriate dealing with the consequences of these actions as they arise?

Well this is not Oblomov. Oblomov is one of those people who see's a problem, considers it, investigates all possible consequences allows himself to be buried by anxiety real and imagined and then retreats to his nice warm bed hoping that the problem will go away.

The novel is about what happens when life issues Oblomov a call to action; can he throw off his malaise, his uncertainty and live a life that society would judge as normal or will he return to his old ways of comfortable sloth.

One of Goncharov's great achievements in this novel is to portrait Oblomov as a likable and in his own way wise man.

When you finish Tolstoy or Gogol, try Goncharov I doubt that you will be disappointed

This may just be one of the top 10 books, in the fine literature category, which was ever written by anyone, anywhere. Goncharov's (also occasionally spelled Gontcharov) focus was not to entertain... it was, rather, to tell a great story and let the chips fall where they might. He nailed it in Oblomov. If you like reading Mark Twain, John O'Hara, O. Henry, etc., you will love Oblomov. One rarely thinks of humor in conjunction with Russian literature -- more often, such great works are linked with misery. This is not the case in this instance. Oblomov is a tragi-comedy, a slice of life about a man who refuses to get off his sofa, and, he might have lived anywhere, then or now. Oblomov is timeless. Anyone interested in Social Science and/or relationships will find this lengthy work a treasure. Oblomov was Goncharov's Opus magnus -- he wrote a couple of other novels but this is the one to read. The protagonist, Oblomov, (emphasis on the final syllable) has a personal life-long valet/servant, Zhakar, who is my favorite fictional character of all time -- Zhakar is priceless. The story takes place (starting) in 1859, historically, just two years prior to the "freeing" of the Russian serfs and during the heyday of the Czars and of Russian nobility, whom, by all factual accounts, were a pretty useless and fickle bunch of souls. I have read three books a week for years, all genres, and this one is in my top 10. I cannot adequately express what a great book this is -- read it and you'll not be disappointed! A final note, this translation is a fluid read and spot-on. A literary treat and a piece of genius.