Unwitting Street in Speculative Fiction in Translation

Dec 02, 2020 Kalin rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed-in-english, world-sf

I read this book along with the Speculative Fiction in Translation group; here's our (non-spoilerific) discussion thread.

Not my usual fare: a bit too allegorical and plotless for my taste. (I'm surprised to hear myself say that, but obviously even I have a limit in these areas.) Still, I'm glad I got to read something so different; who knows what will come out of the juxtapositions? ;)

The translation was, for lack of a better word, awesome.

Specific impressions:

https://choveshkata.net/forum/view ...more

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Dec 29, 2020 Oleksandr Zholud rated it liked it

This is a collection of novellas (actually short stories in terms of length if one applies say Hugo award criteria) of Soviet writer Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. He was almost unknown during his life (1887–1950), because censors found his works too strange to publish (even despite there is no openly anti-communist propaganda or some such), so his prose was first published as a separate book only in 1989. Now he is considered one of the lost classics. He has a strange, chimeric/phantasmagorical styl ...more

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Nov 29, 2020 Ed Erwin rated it liked it

Shelves: sf, short-story

This is the fifth collection of SZ stories excellently translated by Joanne Turnbull and Nikolai Formozov published by NYRB. They did not save the best stories for last. Rather, these seem be mostly the shorter stories that didn't fit in the other collections for whatever reason.

While these are not the authors best or deepest pieces, many of them are quite nice. Some I would rate 4 stars, including "The Grey Fedora" (about a suicidal thought that jumps from head to head by way of a hat) and "Unw This is the fifth collection of SZ stories excellently translated by Joanne Turnbull and Nikolai Formozov published by NYRB. They did not save the best stories for last. Rather, these seem be mostly the shorter stories that didn't fit in the other collections for whatever reason.

While these are not the authors best or deepest pieces, many of them are quite nice. Some I would rate 4 stars, including "The Grey Fedora" (about a suicidal thought that jumps from head to head by way of a hat) and "Unwitting Street" (in which a man with too many stamps writes letters to random people).

So that's how it started. We -- my coauthor, vodka, and I -- gradually developed a taste for letter-writing.

Maybe also "The Smoke-Colored Goblet" (about a wine glass that never runs dry) and "God is Dead" (which is exactly what it sounds like).

"'God knows' where it's gone."
But God did not know where Mr. Graham's book had gone: even this one. He was dead.

"The very possibility of the existence and development of faiths in gods was ascribed to pathogenic toxins which, over the centuries, had weakened intracranial nervous tissue."

Sometimes SZ takes a metaphor and makes a story out of it, such as in "A Page of History" where the phrase "A page of history is turning" becomes literally true when the world is lifted up and turned over. That represents the great change in Russian society after the 1917 revolution.

Some of the interest in these stories, and the only thing that interests me in the weakest ones, comes from seeing little details of life in Russia in the 1920s and 1930s. For example, in communal apartments, different residents would respond to different numbers of rings on the doorbell. (Much as with my grandmother's party-line phone.)

SZ wasn't able to publish any of these stories during his life. (Though he did some writing work on other projects.) He eventually stopped writing and became a heavy drinker. Drinking comes up often in these stories.

I drink. What, you may ask, makes me drink? A sober attitude toward reality. I am old -- I have rust-gray hair and rust-colored teeth, whereas life is young -- therefore, I must be washed off, like a stain, gotten completely out with vodka. So there.

Any fan of Kafka, Borges or Calvino should sample at least a few of SZ's stories, though not necessarily this collection. ...more

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Dec 18, 2020 Kalin rated it really liked it

Shelves: sf-in-tran

I came to this book with no foreknowledge of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, and read it as part of the SF in Translation group for December's monthly read. While these stories are more modernist and absurdist than they are speculative fiction as it's recognized in recent decades -- based on these stories I can easily see where the comparisons to Borges and Kafka come from, and these are apparently the less-philospohical ones -- I enjoyed this read a lot. The humour was wonderful, wry, and just bitter ...more

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Dec 26, 2020 John Folk-Williams rated it liked it

I believe these are early stories. Many of quite enjoyable but all too brief. I love Krzhizhanovsky's imagination but much prefer the stories in Memories of the Future. ...more

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