Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Rīga : Liepnieks & Rītups, c2007
Description
Venichka Erofeev (Venya), cultured alcoholic, self-mocking intellectual, regales us with an account of his heroic odyssey from Moscow to provincial Petushki. Stories of his rich, turbulent inner life abound as he staggers through Brezhnev's Moscow and encounters dangerous, eccentric and often hilarious strangers on a train. His journey ends when fate cruelly intervenes curtailing the vivid panorama of Russian life that we have seen through Venya's eyes. Stephen Mulrine's adaptation for one actor of Erofeev's cult novel has been highly acclaimed on BBC Radio 3, at the Edinburgh Festival, Lon
User reviews
LibraryThing member Lucylane
If Dante were horribly drunk and condemned to a laborer's life in Soviet Russia, I imagine he would have written something like this. I was reading this book on the train when a young man from Russia asked me if Americans thought they could understand Russian culture from its literature. He noted
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that there were several reference to alcohol on every page, as he had been reaading over my shoulder. I assured him I would not judge all of Russia on this one book, but the depression and hopeless smack on the head view of life in this story cannot be faked. Commentary indeed. Show Less
LibraryThing member JimElkins
A drunken novel about a drunk who ends up being beaten to death. The back cover describes it as a "classic novel of Russian humor and social commentary."
"Russian humor": wildly associative and perversely dissociative; unpleasantly sarcastic; bitter to a fault, irreproachably, impeccably
"Social commentary": the government is corrupt and supports itself on crazy lies and misinformation. The people respond by living indolent lives as savage drunks and louts: but at the same time they are stupendously well-educated in the deep riches of Russian culture, and even when they are stuporously drunk they swim naturally in literary and historical anecdotes. People are romantic, funny, and talkative precisely because they know it is pointless to be romantic, funny, and talkative. From Erofeev's point of view someone like Beckett is just a dried shell. But from the point of view of a reader brought up more on Beckett than Dostoevsky, the glitter and swill of sloshing, effervescent, pointless conversations about hope that people no longer have, romantic yearnings they hardly recognize, and culture that they despair of ever actually living, is all inappropriate. It's like someone dying on the street wearing a stage costume with feathers and baubles: it's maudlin and tiring to insist on frenetic empty celebration when emptiness itself is at hand.
And so despite all the acid wit, all this is old -- old Russian humor and social criticism, which never worked, which never really produced solace, and whose pyrotechnics only became harsher, not more beautiful, after Dostoevsky and Gorky. A dead end, as far gone as Philip Roth's America (despite what many people still hope), or the Russia that Erofeev loved and hated. There's a line about how Western eyes "buy and sell" and are "deeply hidden, secretive, predatory, and frightened," while Russian eyes are "constantly bulging but with no tension of any kind in them." (p. 28) All that has changed now.
"Russian humor": wildly associative and perversely dissociative; unpleasantly sarcastic; bitter to a fault, irreproachably, impeccably
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pessimistic; voluptuously black; giddy in its drunken embrace of hopelessness of all kinds. Any book that opens with this line: "The first edition of Moscow to the End of the Line was sold out quickly, thanks to its being an edition of one copy" and ends with this line (after the narrator has been beaten to death just for being a vagrant): "And since then I have not regained consciousness, and I never will" is not a book whose author will be likely to miss a joke or an opportunity to show what despondency really is."Social commentary": the government is corrupt and supports itself on crazy lies and misinformation. The people respond by living indolent lives as savage drunks and louts: but at the same time they are stupendously well-educated in the deep riches of Russian culture, and even when they are stuporously drunk they swim naturally in literary and historical anecdotes. People are romantic, funny, and talkative precisely because they know it is pointless to be romantic, funny, and talkative. From Erofeev's point of view someone like Beckett is just a dried shell. But from the point of view of a reader brought up more on Beckett than Dostoevsky, the glitter and swill of sloshing, effervescent, pointless conversations about hope that people no longer have, romantic yearnings they hardly recognize, and culture that they despair of ever actually living, is all inappropriate. It's like someone dying on the street wearing a stage costume with feathers and baubles: it's maudlin and tiring to insist on frenetic empty celebration when emptiness itself is at hand.
And so despite all the acid wit, all this is old -- old Russian humor and social criticism, which never worked, which never really produced solace, and whose pyrotechnics only became harsher, not more beautiful, after Dostoevsky and Gorky. A dead end, as far gone as Philip Roth's America (despite what many people still hope), or the Russia that Erofeev loved and hated. There's a line about how Western eyes "buy and sell" and are "deeply hidden, secretive, predatory, and frightened," while Russian eyes are "constantly bulging but with no tension of any kind in them." (p. 28) All that has changed now.
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LibraryThing member experimentalis
deceptively simple. stays in mind and becomes even better after second reading
LibraryThing member languagehat
A wonderful tiny little edition with a pale green cover, frequently carried in my pocket. "Venedikt Erofeev's 'poem in prose,' written in 1970, circulated in samizdat in tens of thousand copies before it was published in the USSR in 1988. The drunken saga of a Russian intellectual gives a vision of
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the whole of contemporary Russia, parodying Russian classical texts and the rituals and habits of late Soviet life." Show Less
LibraryThing member rocketjk
Moscow Circles (also known as Moscow to the End of the Line) by Benedict Erofeev (also known as Venedikt Erofeyev) is a drunkenly hallucinatory ramble through the subways of Moscow. The book was written in 1976 with the Soviet regime still in power, and is a dark, dark comedy written as an
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indictment of the repressive Soviet system. In the beginning, there is quite a bit of effective, drunken humor and I laughed out loud several times. But the drinking is portrayed quite powerfully as a metaphor for the Russian people's opiate, used to cover the realities of an impossibly depressing lifestyle. As the book progresses, the humor fades and the nightmare is amplified. Very effective writing and a book that will haunt me for a long time. Show Less
LibraryThing member paperloverevolution
Imagine a drunken Dante on an epic railway journey to nowhere, pondering the merits of various cocktails made from furniture polishes and solvents, debating the meaning of life and the worth of his soul, hilarious and tragic by turns. That'll give you a rough idea of what it's like to fall into
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this book. A delight every time I reread it. Show Less
LibraryThing member languagehat
I have three Russian editions of this book: one for convenience, one for annotations, and this big beautiful volume for the gorgeous illustrations, including an amazing center foldout.
LibraryThing member shawnd
A slow reading novel with very little plot, led by an alcoholic protagonist. The chapters are different legs between stations as the main character rides a train outward from Moscow to the farthest station. The book begins with a solid mix of humor and portraying the abstruse and depressing realism
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of alcoholism pervasive in modern Russian society. The story of the main character in his work life is especially ironic. However, compared to other Russian novels, the social commentary herein is very tame and along that spectrum this can hardly be said to be a strong political commentary--although if the government is indicted it might be for sustaining a society where virtually everyone from train conductor to Communist Party regulator is a daily drunk. As the book progressing humor dries up, the rants and delusions and re-telling dreams increase. A small coterie of fellow travelers occurs without much effect. As the book tails out, the ramblings might be pitch perfect, but pitch perfect for an unemployed, dirty, inebriated, likely somewhat mentally ill man who has lost all activity in the judgment part of his brain is not a compelling read when the author has decided to provide no structure around it rather than the stream-of-consciousness of an almost unconscious man. Show Less
LibraryThing member behemothing
I'm going to think about this one a bit, then it might get another star. But the language is so intense and great that I know it's missing something in translation, so maybe I'll have to get really good at Russian, give it a ponder, and then bump it up to five.
LibraryThing member Natalia_Sh
It’s late 1960s in Russia. Venya Erofeev is going from Moscow to Petushki by train. It’s not a long journey, but there’s enough time for him to tell monologues about history, philosophy, politics and his life.
The author is taking away a veil from an enigmatic Russian soul, simultaneously with
For that time, the significance of the book was tremendous, but nowadays, I think, it’s lost. As for me, since I didn’t live at that time, a lot of allusions and irony are just wasted on me; I simply don’t get it. I wonder, how people who haven’t been in Russia are taking the book; how they see it.
The author is taking away a veil from an enigmatic Russian soul, simultaneously with
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acrid critique of the lifestyle of some people in Russia in late 1960s. I know, that the book provoked a lot of disputes among the readers at that time and was a new, modern way to express author’s point of view. To convey the message, the author uses offensive language along with biting irony and acrid social commentaries.For that time, the significance of the book was tremendous, but nowadays, I think, it’s lost. As for me, since I didn’t live at that time, a lot of allusions and irony are just wasted on me; I simply don’t get it. I wonder, how people who haven’t been in Russia are taking the book; how they see it.
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LibraryThing member spiphany
This didn't quite work for me, although I can't quite put my finger on what I didn't like -- it is an amusing tale (it helps if one has modest knowledge of Russian culture and literature), but particularly towards the end the story felt rather unstructured and thematically didn't really come to any
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kind of satisfying resolution, although that may kind of be the point in this case. It reminded me a bit of Gogol's "Dead Souls", with its hapless hero travelling aimlessly across the countryside, drinking and conversing with people on the way or with his imaginary angels about the Russian experience. In this case, our hero is actually trying to get somewhere, but in his state of drunkenness he is hardly able to find the train station, and even once on his way, his attention seems little focused on the destination. This may, I suppose, be an appropriate description of the Soviet experiment in the late 1960s, but for me as a reader it made the plot rather unfulfilling. Show Less
LibraryThing member jonfaith
This grail was coveted for years; what followed was a classic Jon Faith faint moment when I saw it on a shelf. I read it in a blur, which may have been a problem. It is an effective device to have the dissolute protagonist repeat and finally divulge, but it didn't click for me. This book PROFOUNDLY
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desverves another look. Show Less
LibraryThing member mkfs
A few good jokes in there, but who knew getting drunk could be so boooooooring
Subjects
Language
Original language
Russian
Original publication date
1969 (samizdat)
1973 (commercial ∙ Israel)
1977 (commercial ∙ France)
1981 (commercial ∙ English)
Physical description
357 p.; 17 cm
Pages
357
ISBN
9789984960937