Photo de l'auteur

Mikhail Shishkin

Auteur de Maidenhair

20+ oeuvres 622 utilisateurs 16 critiques

A propos de l'auteur

Œuvres de Mikhail Shishkin

Oeuvres associées

Le journal d'un fou / le manteau / la perspective nevski / le p (2016) — Avant-propos, quelques éditions33 exemplaires
Read Russia!: An Anthology of New Voices — Contributeur — 14 exemplaires
Russland das große Lesebuch (2017) — Contributeur — 2 exemplaires

Étiqueté

Partage des connaissances

Membres

Critiques

I count three bona-fide works of fiction in the sense that they aren’t objectively, self-evidently autobiography (but which likely are autobiographical), two personal essays and a set of curated letters which could pass as stories, and two entirely non-fictional ruminations on Russian literature, literature in general, and the author’s own novels. So the title is a bit misleading. But with the exception of the two extraneous critical pieces which did next to nothing for me, these are very good indeed. Of the unequivocally “fictional” (quotes because Shishkin has succeeded in blurring my understanding of the term) pieces, the stand-out is “The Blind Musician”, a confusing polyphony in which voices who don’t self-identify accuse, condole, recriminate, chew over a life’s worth of mixed up familial and amorous relationships. Reminded me a lot of Beckett. I also loved “The Bell Tower of San Marco”, told through the letters of a Russian revolutionary to her Swiss husband and his diary entries, which maps out the despair that succeeds to idealism in prolonged contact with reality. “Nabokov’s Inkblot” and “Of Saucepans and Star-Showers” both explore the author’s relationship with the dysfunctionality of his home country, and both also probe the nature of paternity. Subtle and moving.

I come away from this keen to read more by Shiskin, but rather put off his novels by his own discussion of them in the closer, “In a Boat Scratched on a Wall”. Bumping up to four stars despite its unevenness because of the very high ceiling.
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
yarb | 4 autres critiques | Sep 8, 2022 |
Mr Shishkin is new to me. But what a writer. Someone who uses words like a master craftsman. Each one carefully weighed before being put in place. The underlying construction masked and hidden. He joins a long historic list of Russian writers in exile. What is it about Russian writers and their self imposed exile followed by chronic nostalgia? Why is it that they can't write when at home in Russia?
 
Signalé
Steve38 | 4 autres critiques | Oct 5, 2021 |
Rather a disappointment. I liked the essays in 'Calligraphy Lesson,' though I wasn't so keen on the stories, and that should have suggested to me that I wouldn't want to read 500 pages of 'story.' Well, I tried. Others have praised the prose, but I wonder what they were reading: Shishkin do the police in different voices, and he do them so good (here, an interpreter for Russian/Slavic refugees; a singer first as a young girl, then as a woman, then as an older woman; the refugees themselves; and some more distant third narration). But that's not the same as writing well simpliciter. It doesn't help that the book's great climax is in my least favorite literary style that is actually a style, that of stuttering fragments:

"A Jew races on the Corso. Now you, you damn kikes, you're going to know how our Lord was crucified! A christened kike is a sated wolf. Man out back, kike in the shack. Man is the Holy Sepulcher; he must be freed. Mary herself indicated where to build the chruch, and in the middle of August, snow fell on Esquiline. After the free the fallen leaves stiffened. Triton went crazy, like an angel trumpeting through the Eustachian tubes: Arise, arise, why are you sprawled out here!"

This is a common enough tactic in English, and I'm too old to bother trying to read it anymore, unless it's in Joyce, who gets a free pass for originality (compare, unfavorably, Joyce Carey, or Eimear McBride). And of course, in Joyce, and for it being one option among many. The same is true for for Shishkin, but the first 450 pages of Maidenhair aren't quite as rewarding as the non-stuttering pages of Ulysses. I'll take the long-line of the modernist prose tradition, thanks.

Maidenhair's other problem, from my humble corner, is that I'm also done reading books that give us narrative fragments and then expect us to connect said fragments together. That doesn't mean I'm done reading difficult books; it means I'm done reading books in which the difficulty is invented by the author for no real purpose, rather than actually inhering in the topic or approach of the book (see also: Dodge Rose). I'm most particularly of all done reading books in which the payoff for all that laborious connecting is something as daft as "Life sucks, mostly, but love is good." Thanks, Mikhail. I never would have know without you.

That said, Shishkin is trying to write good books, he wants to write important books, he has good ideas (assimilating the refugees' stories to literary myths was a great one, though the execution wasn't so perfect), and he cares about literature and the literary tradition. So even though I'll never try to read this beginning to end again, I'm glad to have it, and I'll flick through it from time to time.
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
stillatim | 5 autres critiques | Oct 23, 2020 |
A nice collection, though perhaps not an ideal introduction to the author (I say, having never read him before). Shishkin is meant to be a great stylist, which doesn't come through in any of these translations. They swing wildly between academic obscurity and a philistine use of slang, thus combining the two worst tendencies of contemporary prose. It's also a little discomforting that the worst pieces here, by far, are the most fictional (special dishonor going to the ridiculously boring 'Blind Musician'), while the best are either essays, literary anecdotes, and naked memoir. That's not a problem, except that Shishkin is meant to be a great novelist, so presumably he's not totally at sea when it comes to fiction. Anyway, I've seen enough here to give Maidenhair a go, if only because Shishkin (as he appears from the essays here) is a militant defender of literature and language; I grow very tired of writers who are always dithering about whether what they do is worthwhile. It is, okay? Unless you're writing utter crap, it's worthwhile.

Also, typically good book production from the excellent Deep Vellum press.
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
stillatim | 4 autres critiques | Oct 23, 2020 |

Listes

Prix et récompenses

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi

Auteurs associés

Statistiques

Œuvres
20
Aussi par
3
Membres
622
Popularité
#40,476
Évaluation
3.9
Critiques
16
ISBN
96
Langues
14

Tableaux et graphiques