Stephan’s Comments (group member since Feb 15, 2012)

Stephan’s comments from the Q&A with Stephan Clark group.

It's suitable that the KGB Bar was the first to review Vladimir's Mustache. It's a thorough review, and shows the type of reaction to the book I could only hope to see repeated in other readers and reviewers. (I say this a day after receiving my first one star review here on Goodreads. The reviewer reviewed 100 books in 2 days. 99 got one star, including those by Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell and Michael Chabon. One book got more than a star -- and it got five: Anne of Green Gables.) So, happy to have received this: http://kgbbar.com/lit/book_reviews/vl...

http://booksoutsellingmybook.tumblr.com/

The Authenticity Question - as in "Why would an 'American' write about Russian characters?" - is answered over at The Nervous Breakdown, where I am the subject of an antagonistic self-interview. http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/sc...

Anne wrote: "Probably Everything is Illuminated..."
Did you like it? I really liked the backstory, but the the modern-day Ukrainians, with their "funny" English, were treated with all the subtlety of a minstrel show. I probably reacted so strongly against it because I read it while I was teaching English to Ukrainians -- and they were all so brilliant, so smart and sophisticated, that I felt I'd be betraying them if I liked the Safran Foer. On top of which, he got so much money at a young age!

I think Nabokov's contempt for Dostoyevsky has leeched into my own life, Pamela. Haven't read anything of his in years. I've been skewing 20th Century of late. Bunin, Voinovich, Dovlatov. Thanks for chiming in.

Feel free to say a little bit about yourself and what brought you here. If you need an ice-breaker, what is the last book you have read that is set in Russia or Ukraine?

You only need to look at the title of the first story, "The Lady with the Stray Dog," to see the debt I owe to Russian literature; that story was inspired by Chekhov's "The Lady with the Dog" -- as well as a student of mine in Ukraine. My other influences may be more hidden, but I'm sure someone can tease them out all the same.

Feel free to ask about any of the stories. Some are based on events in the historical record (Kamkov the Astronomer); some are based on events imagined into the historical record; and still others are drawn from a more journalistic approach -- those set in contemporary Ukraine, where I went on a Fulbright Fellowship to research the mail-order bride industry. And okay, maybe one story is somewhat autobiographical, but only the most embarrassing one.