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Title: 33 Moments of Happiness: St. Petersburg Stories (Vintage International) by Ingo Schulze, John E. Woods ISBN: 0375700048 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 15 May, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33
Rating: 3
Summary: Fine observations, plodding fiction
Comment: This first book of fiction (33 short stories) by an ex-East German (an Ossi) has won several prizes in Germany. This is not necessarily praise - it tells you this is the kind of literature that gets prizes. The translation appears excellent.
The preface and one of the stories tell the same tale from two points of view - that the book itself is the edited version of some weekly letters written home by a German businessman working in St. Petersburg. At first, the businessman wrote of St. Petersburg life. Then, lacking material, he began building the letters around fictional tales, and this is the part of his output from which the present book was compiled. Many stories are indeed in the first person, and the first person is a German working on a Russian weekly in St. Petersburg. Put the two pictures together and you have a good idea of the general style. The missing elements are a) that many tales are fantastic and b) that quite a few are inspired by previous tales in literature.
To my eyes, the "reportorial" details are faithful and revealing, and they have the appreciable virtue of not falling for "that unique St. Petersburg spirit", though almost all the stories are set in the region. What is revealed is more often urban or village life in West Russia generally, and this is as it should be.
If you take the fiction as presented above, then it's a nice framework into which to post these observations. But if you take it as fiction, then the framework betrays a serious literary failure. In all stories, third- or first-person, the tone is that of the external reporter, and this simply doesn't bring to the prose the color it needs to carry the fantasy, and especially to breathe life into the cultural and spiritual themes that are the motive force behind it. We have fantastic themes, yes, but only the usual insights of the most ploddingly realistic fiction.
Said another way - if rich prose is prose that holds within its sentences gripping detail, deep color and complex cultural connotations and evocations, then 33 Moments is an example of poor literary prose. It's the kind of prose you would find in a long New York Times article, treating one thing at a time and always in the same tone.
Rating: 5
Summary: The German Moorcock
Comment: The closest ambitious writer I could think of to compare Schulze with is Michael Moorcock (in his Mother London/Cornelius Quartet mode) and if you like Moorcock (who influenced comics, cyberpunk the whole noir revival in the US) you'll go with Schulze's flow just as easily. I am a fan of both writers, though not of Moorcock's fantasy, which I liked as a kid, and I've been looking for years for a writer as good. This and Simple Stories are really outstanding. Schulze is a definite heavy weight on his way up. It's been a while since Germany showed us a writer as good and as ambitious as this. Wonderful work.
Rating: 5
Summary: beautiful moments
Comment: each of the 33 stories in this book prvided me with vivid places and deleicate people. the stories made me cry and laugh. this is one of the greatest collections of short stories i have read and it provided me with a true sense of beauty and honesty, about peole and life and the value of moments.
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Title: Blood of Victory: A Novel by Alan Furst ISBN: 0375505741 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 27 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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