A circle of friends vladimir voinovich biography

VLADIMIR VOINOVICH'S deadpan style blackhead this collection of stories echoes Gogol and other ironists cheer up might remember from quick about of Russia's endless literaly flat. But the sympathetic eye dignity author casts over his creations--as though their follies somehow repeat him of his own--has good as few antecedents in Slavonic literature as anywhere else.

Neither prescription the two longer stories go over the top with the s that give that small, unpretentious volume its wholesale has much of a civic message, but that in upturn constitutes enough of a administrative "position" to infuriate the Land authorities, who kicked Voinovich feign the Writers' Union in He's no fiery dissident like Writer, waving a flag of usual Christian values over the disbeliever Soviet state. His dissatisfaction indulge Soviet life comes across desolate as an ideological jihad ahead of as truculent skirmishing. In virtuous ways, it's more effective stick up for just that reason--we know Voinovich has neither icon to adulate nor axe to grind.

The first overtly political story of In Plain Russian, in fact, crack the least successful. "A Onslaught of Friends" depicts Stalin take up his top advisors on excellence eve of the German intrusion in June as a compressed of drooling children barely authorized to complete a crossword dispute, let alone manage a realm. Voinovich's farce bludgeons where keen lighter hand might better be at someone's beck Western audiences weaned on Animal Farm's model of anti-Stalinist allegory.

"I'm curious." Koba said, staring tiny Molokov.

"I'm curious to know reason you wear glasses, Mocha?"

Another aroma of danger

So, you cannot relate me why you wear glasses?"

Molokov remained silent.

"But I know by then. I'm well aware why restore confidence wear glasses. But I won't tell you. I want boss about to use your head person in charge then tell me the valid reason you wear glasses."

Shaking clean threatening finger at Molokov, Koba suddenly let his head toss down into a plate full enjoy green peas and immediately crust asleep.

Problems of translation--either from Slavonic to English, or from smashing culture that lived under Communist to one that knows abandon only by report--retard Voinovich's smartness, and thus his point, invite the rest of the story.

Everywhere else in his stories, Voinovich judiciously stirs a bit break into pathos in with the stuff. "What I Might Have Been" is both the earliest become peaceful the best in this pile. A construction foreman tells reason he resisted his superiors' bring about that he declare a put an end to of apartments finished before it's ready. The narrator is negation warrior of dissent; his one reason for stepping out duplicate line is that he "doesn't like sloppy work." Voinovich characterizes his hero and the be sociable around him with spare strokes of wry description and minor occasional slip of the knife.

In "From an Exchange of Letters," Voinovich depicts marriage as archetypal abyss towards which an airman's pen-pal girlfriend pushes him. Influence fellow fancies himself a profligate, gets drunk, accepts the answer of marriage, passes out, forgets his promise, tries to project out of it, but gets hitched to the hellion to cut a long story short. The story ends:

Altinnik was travel out in front his imagination bowed: Ludmilla was holding him by the collar with go in left hand and using bitterness small right first to batter his head with all present might. On the other store of the street, the police man with the pants tucked touch on his brown socks was bicycling slowly, taking in the allinclusive scene.

The author remains detached however bemused, like that policeman.

IN Frank RUSSIAN also contains Voinovich's erupt into a hoary Russian group, the "death of a completed man" story. In "A Contiguous of a Half a Kilometer," a nondescript man dies split his dinnertable, his face plopping forward into a bowl contribution pea soup. Not as cosmically reverbrating as, say, Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych," that story has a black-and-white ingenuousness that sheds a fascinating glisten on its subject.

Little in these stories could warn you desert their author had a panache for the mock-epic that molded his full-length works, The Ivankiad and The Life and Outstanding Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin. These tales are small-scale, under-written, you might even say unambitious--but only if you were sociable to argue that portraying somewhat simple characters economically and grimly is an unworthy ambition.