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205th out of 283 books
—
1,015 voters
The Yellow Arrow
The main character, Andrei, is a passenger aboard the Yellow Arrow, who begins to despair over the trains ultimate destination and looks for a way out as the chapters count down. Indifferent to their fate, the other passengers carry on as usual — trading in nickel melted down fro the carriage doors, attending the Upper Bunk avant-garde theatre, and leafing through Pasterna...more
Paperback, 92 pages
Published
May 5th 2009
by New Directions
(first published 1996)
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This book received good reviews from a number of quality sources, so I was surprised to see how utterly devoid of content and thought this novella was. Like so many other postmodernists who have aped the tricks of the avant-garde without understanding the purpose behind those tricks, Pelevin writes a story that looks as if it should be interesting, but cannot do anything with the material. The entire effort reads as a sustained metaphor for the changes wrought by Yeltsin's deregulation, but its...more
the yellow arrow (Желтая стрела) is a slim philosophical parable set in post-soviet russia, but one easily applied to a much wider context. victor pelevin, acclaimed russian novelist and short story writer, wrote this existential novella nearly twenty years ago, following gorbachev's perestroika. the yellow arrow, a speeding train without station stops and destined for disaster as its terminus, is an apt metaphor- one that also captures the indifference and unquestioning nature of the train's pa...more
A tight little early book by Victor Pelevin. Similar in tone to The Life of Insects. Andrei and Kahn are on a train called The Yellow Arrow that is a perpetual train, and is also the whole world. There's a host of supporting characters, many of whom felt slightly familiar to me after riding on several Ukrainian trains this past summer. I'm sure they're all archetypal. Anyway, it's Pelevin, so there's a lot of philosophy in its 93 pages, and it's not particularly subtle, but, you know, he still m...more
I'm a big fan of Victor Pelevin, but I've never read the novella via which he first came to international attention. Until now, when I came across a sweet little used hardcover edition at the Powell's mothership on vacation in Portland last week. Which I then, while waiting for my sister and hostess to get off work, proceeded to take to the nearest pub and devour over a few pints of Guiness, not only because it is Pelevin, but because it is also another entry in that weird trope of fictions conc...more
"The Yellow Arrow" is an extremely quick read. I practically read it in a day. However, it is one of those books where one does not know whether it was extremely simple or the most complicated thing they have ever read. The whole concept of the passengers being on a train, but they don't know they're on a train, and the train never stops, is bizarre. I need to sit down and think for awhile just to decide if the train is the only metaphor, or if the entire book is an ongoing metaphor with literal...more
The conceit was brilliant, but the writing itself could be mundane and clunky. And at times that clunkiness weighed down the train allegory and made it seem too self-conscious. Some of the philosophical parts were boring and sounded like things stoned middle-schoolers say to each other ("And if I tell myself that I am here, where is this 'here'? And what does it mean, 'I tell myself'?" - p. 39). But overall, I still think that root concept is lovely - a train no one knows they're on speeding tow...more
This was the short story (around 90 pages, actually, so not too short) featured in a collection of short stories by the author.
Creepy, wonderful, messed-up, thought-provoking... These are adjectives I would use to describe the story. Very imaginative telling.
However, I am not sure whether those reading in English would enjoy this as much. I will take a look at the translation, when I have more time, to see how the interpreter manages, but certain things are understood on a purely visceral leve...more
Creepy, wonderful, messed-up, thought-provoking... These are adjectives I would use to describe the story. Very imaginative telling.
However, I am not sure whether those reading in English would enjoy this as much. I will take a look at the translation, when I have more time, to see how the interpreter manages, but certain things are understood on a purely visceral leve...more
We were told how planet Earth turns on its axis day by day, drawing an elliptical orbit around the Sun once a year.
Well, this is something.
Yet, both time and space may stand on a line, potentially leaning toward the infinite, but actually aiming to a specific moment in which everything will end. Somehow.
"The Yellow Arrow" is a neverending train tracing out that horizontal timeline, having a past, a present and even a future in its wagons. It runs to its fate. May it be a broken bridge, may it b...more
Well, this is something.
Yet, both time and space may stand on a line, potentially leaning toward the infinite, but actually aiming to a specific moment in which everything will end. Somehow.
"The Yellow Arrow" is a neverending train tracing out that horizontal timeline, having a past, a present and even a future in its wagons. It runs to its fate. May it be a broken bridge, may it b...more
Wonderful commentary on post-Soviet Russia. Captures the sense of peering into a chasm, about to leap into the great unknown, in just under 100 pages.
"Khan," said Andrei, "won't you tell me how you could learn something from someone you've never even seen?"
"You don't have to see a man in order to learn something from him. You could get a letter from him."
Thoughtful simplicity. An art in itself.
"Khan," said Andrei, "won't you tell me how you could learn something from someone you've never even seen?"
"You don't have to see a man in order to learn something from him. You could get a letter from him."
Thoughtful simplicity. An art in itself.
What a deceptively concise story. Who knew that it would aim to encompass the concept of life and the 'yellow arrow' that it is for so many people. The locomotive of I, to use one of the stories terms, brings to mind Plato's cave, inherent restrictions on life that are rarely observed and yet remain in plain sight. To only know a second of the present before it is shunted to the past by a succeeding second, to never observe fully the succession of moments, to be inextricably bound to life speedi...more
There's actually supposed to be shot stories along the main title. Anyway - this book is also one of those who transformed my thinking. I can't really say it's about the Russian State or State it self. It's about everything, and that everything is a train, and we don't even know this. Listen, and you might hear how the rails are making sounds.
La freccia gialla � un treno, non � possibile vederne l'inizio n� la fine. Fa pensare alla nascita, di cui non serbiamo ricordo e alla morte che totalmente sconosciamo; e noi l� nel mezzo, a volte in movimento, a volte in attesa, altre in stasi, dimentichi dell'ipnotico rumore delle rotaie.
An intelligent, insightful, and well crafted book about being a passenger on the train of life/society. "In order to get off the train, you need a ticket - you hold it in your hands, but who will you show it to?"
Sep 19, 2012
Kia76
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
girodelmondoin80libri,
russia
Il libro è composto da 2 racconti: il primo, il più lungo, si intitola proprio "La freccia gialla".
Libro molto strano, atmosfera cupa, triste.
L'idea è bella ma secondo me non è stata resa molto bene.
Libro molto strano, atmosfera cupa, triste.
L'idea è bella ma secondo me non è stata resa molto bene.
Wonderfully imaginative. Russian writers have a lock on how to portray the dehumanizing horrors of totalitarian societies.
1 like · like · see review
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В формате аудиокниги повествование под стук колёс оказывает прямо-таки гипнотическое действие.
Hard to find a modern piece that gets this innovative with the existential.
Definitely want to read again - perhaps more than once.
Moral; Hell is a train full of Slavs.
Jun 17, 2009
Ksu
added it
One of the best books i have ever read!
Норм. +1 за поезда) Итого: 4.
Супер
haven't read any of Pelevin's other work, but the Yellow Arrow is a personal favorite. A dark allegory about life and the Russian State, in which a man who is riding on a train that never stops, houses countries of people, and the dead are thrown out the windows, begins to wonder what would happen if he were able to get off. Beautiful and simple.
Victor Pelevin's novella The Yellow Arrow is a little philosophical parable. It's short, sweet, and make's you think. I may have rated this higher, if i felt like wracking my brain over the philosophy that Pelevin spouts throughout, but I just wasn't in the mood to do so, nor was his ideas interesting enough to make me go there with him.
This is great fiction. It is a very interesting story. Reading it made me really wonder what cultural differences (and similarities as well) between Russians and Americans.
Russians and trains. Not quite as good as Erofeev's "Moscow at the End of the Line" but still Pelevin, which equals goodness.
A really good book that mixes the Russian reality from the 90s with new age (Castaneda kind of) ideas. Amazing read.
A good work--the title story alone is worth buying the book for. Wonderfully desperate and grey.
Книжица была с рассказами ещё. Рассказы мне больше понравились, чем сама повесть.
May 22, 2013
Andrew
marked it as to-read
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aka Виктор Олегович Пелевин (Rus)
"Victor Olegovich Pelevin is a Russian fiction writer. His books usually carry the outward conventions of the science fiction genre, but are used to construct involved, multi-layered postmodernist texts, fusing together elements of pop culture and esoteric philosophies. Some critics relate his prose to the New Sincerity and New Realism literary movements." (Wikipe...more
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"Victor Olegovich Pelevin is a Russian fiction writer. His books usually carry the outward conventions of the science fiction genre, but are used to construct involved, multi-layered postmodernist texts, fusing together elements of pop culture and esoteric philosophies. Some critics relate his prose to the New Sincerity and New Realism literary movements." (Wikipe...more
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“I am closest of all to happiness—although I won’t attempt to define just what it is—when I turn away from the window and am aware, with the edge of my consciousness, that a moment ago I was not here, there was simply the world outside the window, and something beautiful and incomprehensible, something which there is absolutely no need to ‘comprehend,’ existed for a few seconds instead of the usual swarm of thoughts, of which one, like a locomotive, pulls all the others after it, absorbs them all and calls itself ‘I’.”
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