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Babies Without Tails
This volume collects 15 short stories by Walter Duranty, reprinted from "Collier's," "Red Book," and other sources. Included "The Brave Soldier and the Wicked Sorcerer," "Witch of the Alcazar," "The Village Maiden and the Three Bad Boys," "Leningrad's Lucky House," "The Gold Train," "The Spirit Within," "The Thrifty Peasant and the Precious Mattress," "Under Sentence," "The Woman Who Could Not Sleep," "The Magic Egg," "The Wife Who Lost Her Patience," "The Crazy Poets and the Distant Star," "Conspirators," "Lucky in Love," and "The Parrot."
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September 11, 2007
Walter Duranty worked as a foreign correspondant for the New York Times, living and writing in Moscow in the 1920s and 30s, and this collection of his short stories offers a sometimes-fascinating liberal Westerner's perspective on the pre-Cold War Soviet Union, a country that most of Duranty's contemporary readers would have known next to nothing about. For one reading from this side of MAD and the missile gap, Duranty's obvious empathy for the rural Russian peasant and his critical interest in the penetration of Soviet ideals into the Russian countryside are striking and refreshing.
These pieces read more as fables, really, than as short stories, as their titles ("The Brave Soldier and the Wicked Sorceror," "The Thrifty Peasant and the Precious Mattress," "The Wife Who Lost Her Patience") should suggest. The political clout of the local village Soviet stands in for the magic and deus ex machinas of older tales. In the best of these pieces, Duranty offers up portraits of a rural Russia where old superstitions and new revolutionary ideals are coming into conflict. The socialist ideals own political power, but the old beliefs are too deeply rooted to completely suppress.
This can become too repetitive, though, as in story after story the new instruments of Soviet justice hack through the problems of peasants like a blade through Gordian's knot, their machinations efficient but often inhumane. Fascinating to read at first, but the sheen is quickly dulled by overexposure. Also, Duranty's attempts at magical realism often end up feeling merely silly (see "The Magic Egg").
This is a worthwhile read, though, if you can get your hands on it. I found my copy deep in the stacks of the John K. King bookstore in Detroit, and the cover illustration alone — hastily sketched caricatures of Russian peasants who look like they'd be at home in a Hieronymous Bosch grotesquerie — was easily worth the five dollars I paid.
These pieces read more as fables, really, than as short stories, as their titles ("The Brave Soldier and the Wicked Sorceror," "The Thrifty Peasant and the Precious Mattress," "The Wife Who Lost Her Patience") should suggest. The political clout of the local village Soviet stands in for the magic and deus ex machinas of older tales. In the best of these pieces, Duranty offers up portraits of a rural Russia where old superstitions and new revolutionary ideals are coming into conflict. The socialist ideals own political power, but the old beliefs are too deeply rooted to completely suppress.
This can become too repetitive, though, as in story after story the new instruments of Soviet justice hack through the problems of peasants like a blade through Gordian's knot, their machinations efficient but often inhumane. Fascinating to read at first, but the sheen is quickly dulled by overexposure. Also, Duranty's attempts at magical realism often end up feeling merely silly (see "The Magic Egg").
This is a worthwhile read, though, if you can get your hands on it. I found my copy deep in the stacks of the John K. King bookstore in Detroit, and the cover illustration alone — hastily sketched caricatures of Russian peasants who look like they'd be at home in a Hieronymous Bosch grotesquerie — was easily worth the five dollars I paid.
Displaying 1 of 1 review