Customer Reviews

And Quiet Flows the Vodka: or When Pushkin Comes to Shove: The Curmudgeon's Guide to Russian Literature with the Devil's Dictionary of Received Ideas

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you swallow the hype, and go in expecting this book to on a level with "1066 and All That" you will be disappointed. "Chudo" has failed to absorb the lesson that "brevity is the soul of wit", a philosophy that helps make "1066 and All That" the wonderful book it is. There are certainly humorous moments in this book, but there are also long stretches that try too hard without every really getting funny. The "dictionary" at the end has far more duds than truly funny entries. If you love Russian literature you should probably take a look at this book, but don't expect to fall out of your chair laughing very often.

I'm sorry to rain on Gary Saul Morson's parade of academic pretentiousness, but I found the book misleading and troubling on many levels. It is a classic example of what has gone terribly wrong with Slavic Studies in our country. Morson, a distinguished teacher and scholar of Russian literature, has a brilliant mind, a fierce wit, and a tin ear for Russian art and history. That is why all of his books--including And Quiet Flows the Vodka (a cliched parody of Mikhail Sholokhov's classic novel, And Quiet Flows the Dawn)--tend to be extremely clever on an intellectual level, yet insensitive to the human concerns of Russian literature and the tragic spirit of Russian history. Professor Morson loves Russian literature because it has provided him with a career worth of material to teach us what Professor Morson thinks about the world; he does not seem to love Russian literature on its own terms, for what it tries to illuminate about Russian history or the human condition.

For his convictions Fyodor Dostoevsky spent 5 years in a Siberian prison camp. Leo Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church. Alexander Solzhenitsyn spent eight years as a political prisoner in the Gulag, and he was eventually exiled from his homeland by the Soviet government. The poet Nikolai Gumilev was executed before a firing squad for his anti-Soviet beliefs. Professor Morson, who is comfortably ensconced as a tenured professor at Northwestern University, has not, to my knowledge, put his professorship (or his life) on the line for his convictions. He probably cannot quite relate to the kind of spiritual courage demonstrated by the Russian artists he mocks. Still, his sense of decency and integrity might have compelled him at least to pay some tribute, however small, to this important dimension of the subject he "covers." Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov all had an ear for the ironic and comedic aspects in Russian life, no less than Professor Morson. But they were also great humanists, who tried to tell the whole truth about the world they described, and who courageously fought for what they believed to be right and just.

It is well-known fact that Professor Morson speaks Russian very poorly, and he relies almost exclusively on English translations for his books and articles about Russian literature. How deeply can he possibly feel the spirit of Russian literature, and how sincerely are his efforts to truly know Russia on its own terms, if he cannot be bothered, after nearly fifty years, to learn the language of his specialty? And now, at the pinnacle of his illustrious career, his first and only book for a general audience is a sly, derisive, self-aggrandizing romp through the painful wounds of Russian history, rather than a sincere effort to try to help Americans discover what is worth knowing about the country and the culture to which he has dedicated his life. Is this what a distinguished career as a professor of Russian Literature at a top American University amounts to?

I hope that Professor Morson will find time to learn Russian, to make his way to the country he claims to know, and to observe with his heart as well as his head what Russian history is all about. Until he does, he will remain a mediocre humorist and a source of continued misunderstanding about one of the world's most fascinating and important cultures.

I too am shocked and outraged that such a book was allowed to appear. Haven't we staffed all our Slavic Departments with ardent Russophiles, elbowing out everybody who babbled something about changing times? I thought we have wiped out once and for all the pernicious critics of things Russian, all those de Custines who, you know, were all homosexuals and probably worse. If I knew who the coward hiding under the pen name of Professor Chudo was, I would have denounced him to the FSK!

The long-suffering Russia received a slap in the face in this book. Invaded so many times, betrayed by her friends, this kind and gentle nation never fought a war (unless invaded), never hurt anyone, and it has always treated old people with respect. Moreover, the book fails to mention that in the eighteenth century, Russia already had great writers and more. Elena Petukhova

What higher calling can humor have than to deflate irrational self-importance? This book succeeds wonderfully at ridiculing not only the more dubious aspects of the Russian ideosyncracy (such as their fondness for liquor, autocracy, mental illness, and attempted suicide) but also the pretensions of contemporary American literary academics.

The chapters on the origins of Russian literature, on Dostoevsky, and on Tolstoy are among the funniest things I have ever read. Others chapters are less consistent, but the literate misanthropy and the impatience with irrationality that informs them makes the entire book both enjoyable and relevant.

I recommend this very highly.

This is an excellent book and a must read for anyone who loves parodies! I particularly liked Dostoevsky's unfinished novel, "Torture," which describes how I feel when I read any work by Dostoevsky. The glimpses of Russian intellectual history and culture are laugh-out-loud funny, and I suspect somewhat accurate. Chudo's conversations with the Belarussians in her reports from Minsk, are very illuminating and sure to cause an international incident. This book should be required reading in every Russian history and literature class.

A friend recommended this book so, given the reliability of her past recommendations, I found a copy and began to read. Assuming that Mr. Morson would have the wit and wry humor of a Gogol, Bulgakov, or Dostoyevsky, I kept waiting for the hillarity to began. It never did. Mr. Morson's book reads more like an angry, bitter screed against a Russia he obviously doesn't understand. His observations aren't just beyond the pale, they're cliched and predictable: who would have thought Russians drink? Additionally, as another reviewer has indicated, Mr. Morson doesn't seek to uplift and understand through humor, but to degrade and demean. His not being Eastern Orthodox results in his sounding offensive and ignorant when Russian spirituality or "the Russian mood" is the butt of a joke. I doubt Mr. Morson would so demean his spiritual or religious heritage in this way.

I give this book five stars because it is so nauseating as to achieve a repulsive excellence of its own. At least it is never boring, and I would not show my marginal glosses to minors (or majors). Everything about this collection of parodies and travesties of Russia and American academia is disgraceful. Chudo has "discovered" part of a Dostoevsky novel - the title is variously given as "Torture" or "Torture: A Comedy" - that utterly fails to do justice to the author's piety and love of humanity. I can tell you that in her discussion of Russian intellectual history, her portraits of The League of Beefy Vegetarians, the Society of Organized Anarchists, and the Union of Militant Pacifists are greatly exaggerated. She mocks Pushkin's Tatyana! She dares to offer her own scene from a Chekhov "play, "The Dodo," which makes the great lover of humanity descend to the lowest forms of comedy. Worst of all, she fails to show respect to the most saintly figure in Russian history - I mean, of course, St. Pstislav of Perm, whose eighteenth-century treatise, "Heaven in the Balance" influenced Isaac Newton, Ludwig Weigh, and Patricia Scales; Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa; and, of course, Al Gore. She is more of a Russophobe than Joseph Conrad; but not content with this, the second part of her book, "The Devil's Dictionary of Received Ideas," also travesties American universities. I notice that she is the author of a scholarly study, "Children of Menippus: Despisers of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present" and founded the "new discipline" of misanthropology. She also fails to mention my study of Isaac Babel. -- Martin Steerforth

A scalding repast of Cyrillo-Slavic virtues and vices; a true academecian triumph. This discourse on the ambiguities rages against Tsarist constipation just as poignantly as it does against the unconscious Soviet collectives (or is that Soviet collective unconscious?). A must for all scholars, travellers, and seekers of selfless debasement.

If you enjoy literature, frown upon people, and wonder aboutacademia, or even if you don't give a hoot about any of this, the bookis funny. How does one enroll in a course of misanthropology? This book is a wonderful introduction. I knew nothing about Russian literature before reading this book and know even less about it now. For an academic, Alicia Chudo's insights are frankly illuminating. I would recommend seeking out her book Children of Mineppus, although I do not believe it could be more sharply delightful than this one. From beginning to end, from belly laugh to snigger, this book creates a Russian literary funhouse of clarifying distortion. And,no reference collection should be without The Devil's Dictionary of Received Ideas. Russian literature, Alicia Chudo, and the devil -- strange and enticing bedfellows. Highly recommended to tickle your funny bone plus and definitely will not lull you to sleep.

This book (whose actual author is the distinguished Slavist Gary Saul Morson) has a few very funny segments, but there's an awful lot of dross; the more I read, the less I liked it. It makes me sad to think that someone's real book was probably passed over in order to publish this hodgepodge of professorial doodlings.