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Unwitting Street
An NYRB Classics Original
When Comrade Punt does not wake up one Moscow morning—he has died—his pants dash off to work without him. The ambitious pants soon have their own office and secretary. So begins the first of eighteen superb examples of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s philosophical and phantasmagorical stories. Where the stories included in two earlier NYRB collections (Memories of the Future and Autobiography of a Corpse) are denser and darker, the creations in Unwitting Street are on the lighter side: an ancient goblet brimful of self-replenishing wine drives its owner into the drink; a hypnotist’s attempt to turn a fly into an elephant backfires; a philosopher’s free-floating thought struggles against being “enlettered” in type and entombed in a book; the soul of a politician turned chess master winds up in one of his pawns; an unsentimental parrot journeys from prewar Austria to Soviet Russia.
When Comrade Punt does not wake up one Moscow morning—he has died—his pants dash off to work without him. The ambitious pants soon have their own office and secretary. So begins the first of eighteen superb examples of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s philosophical and phantasmagorical stories. Where the stories included in two earlier NYRB collections (Memories of the Future and Autobiography of a Corpse) are denser and darker, the creations in Unwitting Street are on the lighter side: an ancient goblet brimful of self-replenishing wine drives its owner into the drink; a hypnotist’s attempt to turn a fly into an elephant backfires; a philosopher’s free-floating thought struggles against being “enlettered” in type and entombed in a book; the soul of a politician turned chess master winds up in one of his pawns; an unsentimental parrot journeys from prewar Austria to Soviet Russia.
184 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2020
About the author
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
47 books199 followersSigizmund Dominikovich Krzhizhanovsky (Russian: Сигизму́нд Домини́кович Кржижано́вский) (February 11 [O.S. January 30] 1887, Kyiv, Russian Empire — 28 December 1950, Moscow, USSR) was a Russian and Soviet short-story writer who described himself as being "known for being unknown" and the bulk of whose writings were published posthumously.
Many details of Krzhizhanovsky's life are obscure. Judging from his works, Robert Louis Stevenson, G. K. Chesterton, Edgar Allan Poe, Nikolai Gogol, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and H. G. Wells were major influences on his style. Krzhizhanovsky was active among Moscow's literati in the 1920s, while working for Alexander Tairov's Chamber Theater. Several of Krzhizhanovsky's stories became known through private readings, and a couple of them even found their way to print. In 1929 he penned a screenplay for Yakov Protazanov's acclaimed film The Feast of St Jorgen, yet his name did not appear in the credits. One of his last novellas, "Dymchaty bokal" (The smoky beaker, 1939), tells the story of a goblet miraculously never running out of wine, sometimes interpreted as a wry allusion to the author's fondness for alcohol. He died in Moscow, but the place where he was buried is not known.
In 1976 the scholar Vadim Perelmuter discovered Krzhizhanovsky's archive and in 1989 published one of his short stories. As the five volumes of his collected works followed (the fifth volume has not yet reached publication), Krzhizhanovsky emerged from obscurity as a remarkable Soviet writer, who polished his prose to the verge of poetry. His short parables, written with an abundance of poetic detail and wonderful fertility of invention — though occasionally bordering on the whimsical — are sometimes compared to the ficciones of Jorge Luis Borges. Quadraturin (1926), the best known of such phantasmagoric stories, is a Kafkaesque novella in which allegory meets existentialism. Quadraturin is available in English translation in Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida, Penguin Classics, 2005.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
December 14, 2020
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/viewtop...
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/viewtop...
December 29, 2020
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 style, which on one hand reminds of Franz Kafka and on other – of Nikolai Gogol and Daniil Kharms. I read is as a part of monthly reading for December 2020 at Speculative Fiction in Translation group.
I actually read not this book, but the original stories in Russian from his Complete works, starting with this volume – Собрание сочинений в 5 томах. Том 1. So, a first thing to note that this collection (which is the fifth of the author) actually combines works from different periods (and different volumes of the Collected Works). In a lot of his works at the beginning something strange happens: a fly is turned into an elephant; a god dies; a paper stops allowing any lies to be written on it, etc. and then we readers follow the way these accidents change the world. Another common (for him) trope is having inanimate objects (e.g. pants) or even abstractions (like plots o unwritten stories) behaving as people.
He is definitely an interesting imaginative writer and I’m glad I am now aware of him. I plan to read more of his works.
I actually read not this book, but the original stories in Russian from his Complete works, starting with this volume – Собрание сочинений в 5 томах. Том 1. So, a first thing to note that this collection (which is the fifth of the author) actually combines works from different periods (and different volumes of the Collected Works). In a lot of his works at the beginning something strange happens: a fly is turned into an elephant; a god dies; a paper stops allowing any lies to be written on it, etc. and then we readers follow the way these accidents change the world. Another common (for him) trope is having inanimate objects (e.g. pants) or even abstractions (like plots o unwritten stories) behaving as people.
He is definitely an interesting imaginative writer and I’m glad I am now aware of him. I plan to read more of his works.
December 24, 2020
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.
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.
December 19, 2020
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 enough for my liking. And the weird twists on reality were creative and captivating.
My understanding is that Krzhizhanovsky was censored by the Soviet Union for not towing the party line, and his stories went unpublished until well after his death (they apparently needed the death of the USSR to see the light of day). I always feel a sense of sadness when I learn that writers leave this world before their success hits, and they don't get to see what their work will mean to readers around the world. And a sense of anger in knowing this resulted from authoritarian political interference. These stories deserved to see sunlight sooner than they did.
Edit to add: Joanne Turnbull's translation work in this volume was just incredible. Not speaking or reading Russian, there's only so much insight I can have on the final translated work, but to me there seemed to me so many wonderful adaptations and lexical/stylistic choices that really brought the writer's intellect and humour to life in English.
My understanding is that Krzhizhanovsky was censored by the Soviet Union for not towing the party line, and his stories went unpublished until well after his death (they apparently needed the death of the USSR to see the light of day). I always feel a sense of sadness when I learn that writers leave this world before their success hits, and they don't get to see what their work will mean to readers around the world. And a sense of anger in knowing this resulted from authoritarian political interference. These stories deserved to see sunlight sooner than they did.
Edit to add: Joanne Turnbull's translation work in this volume was just incredible. Not speaking or reading Russian, there's only so much insight I can have on the final translated work, but to me there seemed to me so many wonderful adaptations and lexical/stylistic choices that really brought the writer's intellect and humour to life in English.
November 27, 2020
Unwitting Street is the latest collection of Krzhizhanovsky stories published by NYRB, and the translation by Joanne Turnbull is just as excellent as her prior efforts. Though I'm happy to have more Krzhizhanovsky, none of the stories in this collection reach the heights of his story The Bookmark found in the collection Memories of the Future. That is not to say that any of the stories in this collection are bad. To the contrary, I didn't dislike any of the stories here, and in fact I quite enjoyed In Line, The Smoke-Colored Goblet, and God Is Dead.
As for the majority of the stories in the collection, they were merely okay. What most struck me about them was that, in contrast to the previous Krzhizhanovsky works I've read, the stories here repeated themes and subjects in a more noticeable manner. Ideas, words, and objects given lives of their own, tiny people, and chess are all found in multiple stories in this short collection, some using the subjects to better effect than others.
It feels like this is a collection of some of Krzhizhanovsky's lesser works. In the story The Gray Fedora Krzhizhanovsky himself seems to acknowledge that it's not his best effort: “This story has been strung together like a string of beads. The cheapest of devices, yet one that still somehow commands a per-line fee and the reader's attention.” That device, which Krzhizhanovsky recognizes as cheap, he reuses in the story Journey of a Cage later in this collection. Still, I'll take lesser Krzhizhanovsky works over most other short stories, and I'm glad NYRB is continuing to translate more of him. 3.5/5, rounding down.
As for the majority of the stories in the collection, they were merely okay. What most struck me about them was that, in contrast to the previous Krzhizhanovsky works I've read, the stories here repeated themes and subjects in a more noticeable manner. Ideas, words, and objects given lives of their own, tiny people, and chess are all found in multiple stories in this short collection, some using the subjects to better effect than others.
It feels like this is a collection of some of Krzhizhanovsky's lesser works. In the story The Gray Fedora Krzhizhanovsky himself seems to acknowledge that it's not his best effort: “This story has been strung together like a string of beads. The cheapest of devices, yet one that still somehow commands a per-line fee and the reader's attention.” That device, which Krzhizhanovsky recognizes as cheap, he reuses in the story Journey of a Cage later in this collection. Still, I'll take lesser Krzhizhanovsky works over most other short stories, and I'm glad NYRB is continuing to translate more of him. 3.5/5, rounding down.
January 30, 2021
I didn't care for Unwitting Street much. It's a collection of 18 stories in which the unusual happens. They're a kind of horror story without the horror. One is about a man who dies in his sleep. Next morning the man's pants, which had been hanging on a chair, go to work without him. And for many mornings after, too, so that it can be said the pants take over the career of the deceased man. Another story tells of a chess grandmaster who dies while in the act of moving a pawn. His soul falls into the pawn and is trapped there. There's a story about an elf who moves into a cello. All the time he lives in the cello his presence allows the instrument to make beautiful music, and the cellist has a prosperous career until the elf becomes sick and dies. Then the cello ceases to produce its beautiful music and the cellist's career ends. You get the idea. These are stories written with so much whimsy and paradox they pushed the boundaries of my patience. I thought most of them cute, meaning they were doomed.
September 19, 2020
Lighter reading than his previously translated collections but no less engaging. Basically very Swiftian. Zoschenko like social commentary but not as overtly humorous. Interesting to see him wrangling with his alcoholism in parts here as his wisdom is always on display. Fans of Chesterton and Borges will find something familiar here. Perhaps I feel less impact because I know what's coming now with him. I still recall my first time reading Red Snow and Quadraturin so that's an experience I will never have again. To the uninitiated - this might be the best collection to introduce yourself to him. Of the four collections from NYRB - this might be the most consistent. A very enjoyable read with hints of social criticism that are not as heavy handed as some of his peers.
August 18, 2020
These are delightful, phantasmagoric stories that come from the same river of story as the philosophical, weird, fanciful and satiric tales of Swift, Borges, Čapek, Bulgakov and even edgy John Collier. They beg to be read aloud. (In my head, my go-to voice for this collection is Stephen Fry). Krzhizhanovsky (1887-1950) was a writer whose fiction didn’t make its way past Soviet censors; it was not until the 1980s that his work was rediscovered in Soviet archives and published. NYRB classics has translated several of his works. I’m making my way through them, beginning with Unwitting Street, a collection of 18 short stories. In “Comrade Punt,” Comrade P dies, but that doesn’t stop his pants from getting up to go to the office anyway, and to rise through the ranks of office politics, eventually getting his own office. In “The Gray Fedora,” the wearer of that hat asks himself “Why Live?” but then forces the suicidal thought out of his cranium and banishes the thought (now named “Whylive”) to the inner headband of the fedora. The hat makes its way from owner to owner, with tragic results, as “Whylive” burrows his way into the minds of each owner, until…well, you’ll have to read this shaggy dog story to find out how it ends. (It so happens that Antoine Laurain’s The President's Hat (Le Chapeau du Mitterand) is living in my TBR. Also a tale of a “magic” hat passed from owner to owner, with the ability to change the wearer’s life.) Another favorite story is “In Line,” where a writer dips his pen in an inkwell ready to put his thoughts on paper, while, unseen by him, thoughts stand ready to squabble and jostle each other in line, vying to be THE thought the writer picks up. Will it be the fat novel thought “fifty percent paid for and twenty percent thought out”? or the critical thought – “a survey of the past year in literature… almost half written”? or the short, punchy feuilletons – “jokes for folks” that fill newspapers and magazines. Short story themes, plays, sketches all make their case for being the chosen thought here – and all know that “every one of us is supervised by the seven nudgers” – an allusion to Soviet censorship. Krzhizhanovsky’s stories resonate with life as we find it in the year 2020, and make for excellent pandemic reading. Makes me wonder what he would have thought of our “alternative facts” and “fake news”? Surely nothing new to him.
April 29, 2020
I'd love to hear these bizarre fables of personified thoughts, rogue clothings and fanciful drunk fantasies told in front of a roaring fire. Each story both eery and cozy as a waiting room designed by Winsor McCay, full of jokes dressed up in funeral wear.
October 14, 2020
Not nearly as good as his longer pieces but you can probably still tell that this is one of the smartest authors you’re ever likely to encounter. A couple of the stories are hilarious.
Want to read
September 2, 2020January 10, 2022
These stories, from a Soviet author I was unfamiliar with, are Kafkaesque, as other have noted, but they seem more fantastical than Kafka’s stories. In these stories, thoughts (so many thoughts) become disembodied and take on lives of their own, God dies, there are magical wine goblets, parrots, and grey hats, and chess games that are more about life and death than one would imagine. People are never just people. I am not sure how to interpret these stories beyond the obvious, and I’m not sure I could say that I enjoyed them. They aren’t meant to be enjoyed, I imagine. They certainly stimulate reflection and curiosity, even if sometimes they feel heavy-handed.
The first story, “Comrade Punt,” put me immediately in mind of Gogol’s story, “The Nose” – and that association is what Krzhizhanovsky was shooting for, I’m sure. In the Nose, Major Kovalyov wakes up to find his nose has disappeared, only to find that it is off, immersed in St. Petersburg society being way more successful than Kovalyov himself. In Comrade Punt, Punt just wakes up altogether dead and out of the picture, and it is his pants who pick up in the grind of Soviet society where Punt left off. Comrade Pants, too, succeeds where Comrade Punt couldn’t, though the success is just a step up in the office hierarchy in a featureless office of the machine that (more or less) kept Soviet society grinding on. But Comrade Pants has a downfall – he is a pair of pants (not one but two, given to cronyism and nepotism, apparently) and must be reduced to Comrade Pant, split right down the seams. Rather than that, Comrade Pant slips off, tries to hang himself (but he just falls off the hook), and ends up finding a clothing shop where he can be sold off again to…well, we never know. Gogol’s story was about being trying (and failing) to make it in the forbidding competition of Russian social circles, where Krzhizhanovsky’s story is about being trying and failing to measure up in Soviet metrics of economic productivity. Both stories are satirical tales aimed at the competitive nature of their respective societies. But Gogol’s story is more optimistic in the end – Kovalyov remains alive (the story is told from his point of view) and eventually he gets his nose back. Comrade Punt is dead from page one, and the pants are off on their own, dodging (or not) cars and competing in and failing at office politics.
The first story, “Comrade Punt,” put me immediately in mind of Gogol’s story, “The Nose” – and that association is what Krzhizhanovsky was shooting for, I’m sure. In the Nose, Major Kovalyov wakes up to find his nose has disappeared, only to find that it is off, immersed in St. Petersburg society being way more successful than Kovalyov himself. In Comrade Punt, Punt just wakes up altogether dead and out of the picture, and it is his pants who pick up in the grind of Soviet society where Punt left off. Comrade Pants, too, succeeds where Comrade Punt couldn’t, though the success is just a step up in the office hierarchy in a featureless office of the machine that (more or less) kept Soviet society grinding on. But Comrade Pants has a downfall – he is a pair of pants (not one but two, given to cronyism and nepotism, apparently) and must be reduced to Comrade Pant, split right down the seams. Rather than that, Comrade Pant slips off, tries to hang himself (but he just falls off the hook), and ends up finding a clothing shop where he can be sold off again to…well, we never know. Gogol’s story was about being trying (and failing) to make it in the forbidding competition of Russian social circles, where Krzhizhanovsky’s story is about being trying and failing to measure up in Soviet metrics of economic productivity. Both stories are satirical tales aimed at the competitive nature of their respective societies. But Gogol’s story is more optimistic in the end – Kovalyov remains alive (the story is told from his point of view) and eventually he gets his nose back. Comrade Punt is dead from page one, and the pants are off on their own, dodging (or not) cars and competing in and failing at office politics.
March 20, 2022
If these stories were reprinted by hand in the margins of Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind hiding in the back of a dusty used-bookstore on a rainy day in a city of between 50 and 6o thousand people...well, something like that would be the necessary setting for these works to feel great.
July 5, 2021
Not bad within the context of it's time, but I think reading it now just makes me realise how many of these types of stories by these types of older authors I've already read.
August 30, 2021
Don't bother. There's not a single good story in this collection. They're all just whimsical phantasmagorias without the profundity and metaphysical probing that we've come to expect from Krzhizhanovsky's previous collections.
Comrade Punt - 1
My Match with the King of Giants - 1
The Slightly-Slightlies - 1.5
The Played-Out Player - 1
The Life and Opinions of a Thought - 1.5
The Flyelephant - 0.5
"A Page of History" - 0.5
God is Dead - 1.5-2
The Smoke-Colored Goblet - 1.5-2
The Gray Fedora - 1.5-2
Paper Loses Patience - 0.5
The Mute Keyboard - 0.5
Death of an Elf - 1
The Gamblers - 1.5-2
In Line - 1.5
The Window - 1
Journey of a Cage - 1-1.5
Unwitting Street - 2.5
Comrade Punt - 1
My Match with the King of Giants - 1
The Slightly-Slightlies - 1.5
The Played-Out Player - 1
The Life and Opinions of a Thought - 1.5
The Flyelephant - 0.5
"A Page of History" - 0.5
God is Dead - 1.5-2
The Smoke-Colored Goblet - 1.5-2
The Gray Fedora - 1.5-2
Paper Loses Patience - 0.5
The Mute Keyboard - 0.5
Death of an Elf - 1
The Gamblers - 1.5-2
In Line - 1.5
The Window - 1
Journey of a Cage - 1-1.5
Unwitting Street - 2.5
August 31, 2020
This was the August 2020 New York Review Classics selection which also fulfilled my 2020 book challenge to read a selection of short stories. What an interesting and fascinating selection of stories! All written in the 1920s-1930s, they feature allegorical, fantastical, whimsical and dark brooding tales about the state of society at that time, but upon reading these stories modern parallels are eerily seen. Most of what the author wrote could not be published in his life time due to Soviet censorship but thankfully we can read them today. The overall theme of all the stories, or so it seems to me, is the death of freedom of expression and the ability to communicate honestly, a fragile commodity in any society if that society is dominated by people whose vision is to erase history or facts that are antithetical to these people’s alternative reality. The author is a magical writer. I enjoyed each story for beauty of it spurring me to look beyond the story and to think critically. This is greatly needed at any time but even more so today.
August 29, 2020
This collection of eighteen fantastical and whimsical stories by a Russian master of the weird is worth collecting just for the degree of entertainment and edification afforded by this pleasant reading experience. Indeed this is my first introduction to the writings Krzhizhanovsky who is often regarded as a lost Soviet writer from the 1930s who has been rediscovered only in the late 1980s and justifiably translated to English. A fitting resurrection for a true master of Soviet literature and who has shades of Kafka in his writings- indeed, a true European master!
The collection ranges from stories as fantastical and improbable as a pair of trousers leaving his dead owner and trudging off to work in the master's office only to end up finally in a shop assistant's hands ('Comrade Punt') to where a person's thoughts are rendered an identity of its own beyond the bodily confines of a human body and is rendered an independent existence ('The Life and Opinions of a Thought'). These stories are mostly of wild and esoteric ideas rendered in a story ranging in varied and multifarious hues; an ancient goblet brimful of self-replenishing wine drives its owner into the drink ('The Smoke-Colored Goblet'), a hypnotist’s attempt to turn a fly into an elephant backfires ('The Flyelephant'), a philosopher’s free-floating thought struggles against being “enlettered” in type and entombed in a book ('The Life and Opinions of a Thought'), the soul of a politician turned chess master winds up in one of his pawns ('The Played-Out Player'), an unsentimental parrot journeys from prewar Austria to Soviet Russia ('Journey of a Cage'). Other exceptional stories include “A Page of History”, 'Death of an Elf', 'In Line', 'Unwitting Street' amongst others. The stories are marked by an overall strange and unusual feel, and the endings make them even more so, comprising mostly of an unpleasant admixture of grave forebodings. This is one collection to be savoured and enjoyed again and again! Cetainly one of the best NYRB releases this year!
The collection ranges from stories as fantastical and improbable as a pair of trousers leaving his dead owner and trudging off to work in the master's office only to end up finally in a shop assistant's hands ('Comrade Punt') to where a person's thoughts are rendered an identity of its own beyond the bodily confines of a human body and is rendered an independent existence ('The Life and Opinions of a Thought'). These stories are mostly of wild and esoteric ideas rendered in a story ranging in varied and multifarious hues; an ancient goblet brimful of self-replenishing wine drives its owner into the drink ('The Smoke-Colored Goblet'), a hypnotist’s attempt to turn a fly into an elephant backfires ('The Flyelephant'), a philosopher’s free-floating thought struggles against being “enlettered” in type and entombed in a book ('The Life and Opinions of a Thought'), the soul of a politician turned chess master winds up in one of his pawns ('The Played-Out Player'), an unsentimental parrot journeys from prewar Austria to Soviet Russia ('Journey of a Cage'). Other exceptional stories include “A Page of History”, 'Death of an Elf', 'In Line', 'Unwitting Street' amongst others. The stories are marked by an overall strange and unusual feel, and the endings make them even more so, comprising mostly of an unpleasant admixture of grave forebodings. This is one collection to be savoured and enjoyed again and again! Cetainly one of the best NYRB releases this year!
October 13, 2020
Whimsical, satirical and melancholic. . Reading about the author's life, it's not difficult to see how the last two qualities came to be; most of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's work was never published in his lifetime, it did not conform to approved material. Much gratitude to translator Joanne Turnbull for not only making them accessible to us English readers but also for the numerous citations and footnotes providing context. Without those, these short stories would be less comprehensible and rich, particularly in the titular story. My favourite short story was 'Death of an Elf', about an elf trapped in a cello although I did enjoy 'Paper Loses Patience' (refuses to have propaganda printed on it anymore), 'Journey of a Cage' (a parrot screeches inconvenient phrases in wartime) and 'Unwitting Street'. The blend of bitter absurdist humor so prevalent to Russian literature is in full force here.
August 29, 2024
Surprisingly what stuck with me from this book was not the cold (wry) humor so deliciously omnipresent in Russian literature (Gogol, Bulgakov, the likes), but the language. I don't think I've ever read Russian literature "for the language" like I have with, say, Baldwin or Marquez. But Krzhizhanovsky (and translator Turnbull) was a most pleasant surprise. I left this text with more poetic inspiration than existential dread.
The stories themselves were mostly fun, and none could be called properly dull, but they weren't at all very hearty or "sticky." In short, rather forgettable. Interestingly enough, some stories failed in their over-expression of meaning (too allegorical!) while others fell into the kind of meaninglessness that determined a passing smile and forgetfulness. But all in all, the stories were creative and whimsical, and the language was enough to keep me around.
The stories themselves were mostly fun, and none could be called properly dull, but they weren't at all very hearty or "sticky." In short, rather forgettable. Interestingly enough, some stories failed in their over-expression of meaning (too allegorical!) while others fell into the kind of meaninglessness that determined a passing smile and forgetfulness. But all in all, the stories were creative and whimsical, and the language was enough to keep me around.
October 12, 2020
A somewhat uneven collection of surreal ficlets from 1930s (mostly) Russia.
The good ones, I must say, are very good, and usually hilarious. As the opening tale, Comrade Punt. Punt, an unassuming bureaucrat, is unfortunately dead. However, his pants are not. Since their owner is not doing so, they go off to work in his place. Fairly soon, they have a corner office and a secretary, which Punt did not. There is a sign posted in the office, No Handshaking, and the comrade changes his/their name to Comrade Pants. All is well, until some upper level nabob accuses Comrade Pants of nepotism, and demands that the Pants be separated. Alas, from there on, it is all downhill and the pants end up in a shabby shop. But then they are purchased. . .
The good ones, I must say, are very good, and usually hilarious. As the opening tale, Comrade Punt. Punt, an unassuming bureaucrat, is unfortunately dead. However, his pants are not. Since their owner is not doing so, they go off to work in his place. Fairly soon, they have a corner office and a secretary, which Punt did not. There is a sign posted in the office, No Handshaking, and the comrade changes his/their name to Comrade Pants. All is well, until some upper level nabob accuses Comrade Pants of nepotism, and demands that the Pants be separated. Alas, from there on, it is all downhill and the pants end up in a shabby shop. But then they are purchased. . .
November 13, 2021
Unwitting Street
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky/
Zygmunt Krzyżanowski
Another absolutely wonderful collection from Krzhizhanovsky. This one is far lighter than Memories of the Future, but just as delightful and crackling with wit.
I can certainly see how many of his stories weren’t published during his time, as he was a bit subversive! Although far less so than some. He described himself as “known for being unknown”. What a shame that he was not fully appreciated during his life. If you enjoy well-written short stories with unique twists and fantastic plots, then you’ll likely enjoy this.
Such a fan of his writing and can’t wait to read the other two collections I’ve found! #krzhizhanovsky #unwittingstreet #bookstagram #books #readingisfun #Krzyżanowski #кржижановский
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky/
Zygmunt Krzyżanowski
Another absolutely wonderful collection from Krzhizhanovsky. This one is far lighter than Memories of the Future, but just as delightful and crackling with wit.
I can certainly see how many of his stories weren’t published during his time, as he was a bit subversive! Although far less so than some. He described himself as “known for being unknown”. What a shame that he was not fully appreciated during his life. If you enjoy well-written short stories with unique twists and fantastic plots, then you’ll likely enjoy this.
Such a fan of his writing and can’t wait to read the other two collections I’ve found! #krzhizhanovsky #unwittingstreet #bookstagram #books #readingisfun #Krzyżanowski #кржижановский
May 29, 2022
Krzhizhanovsky is a master of challenging your perspective. His philosophical stories take as their premises things like the journey of an object, the life cycle of an idea, the experiences of marginalized people in society. More fantastical stories may endow an object with sentience, or witness the infighting between various ideas trying to get their writer to commit them to paper, or ask what would happen if the printed word went on strike, and then Krzhizhanovsky will masterfully follow the repercussions of that premise in the lives of ordinary people, to fascinating effect. Writing in early Soviet-era Russia, this backdrop is frequently present, but never heavy-handed; translator Joanne Turnbull's endnotes helpfully clarify any specific references.
September 28, 2021
Unwitting Street, the newest collection of short works by Khrzhizhanovsky translated by the good folks over at NYRB, is ultimately fairly disappointing and has me concerned that the Khrzhizhanovsky well is going dry much faster than I would have hoped. Even the better stories here, such as "Comrade Punt" feel a bit programmatically "Soviet satire"; as in, one could probably write that story now, having never lived in the USSR, if you have enough experience with the post-Gogol type of writerly perspective from whence it came. Autobiography of a Corpse is one of my favorite books, but nothing has matched it for me since.
December 27, 2022
I enjoyed interspersing these metaphysical, theoretical, political, meta, idea-stories into my reading-stream. In recent years, I'm generally reading at least three books at a time; it's important that there be contrasts in language, structure, degree of darkness, density, and substance. Unwitting Street would work well with just about anything. On their own, read one after another... tiresome, almost certainly, for the lack of characters.
Ted Chiang works in similar territory these days.
Ted Chiang works in similar territory these days.
September 25, 2020
Would be a great read at any time but absolutely fascinating at this moment in the U.S.
"What did we do to make It come - you know what I'm talking about. At most we called out to it, the way villagers used to call out to spring. With spring songs. Our spring songs really only wanted a little spring. Whereas the spring that came was frighteningly young, a genuine spring. Its blossoms are too bright for our eyes."
"What did we do to make It come - you know what I'm talking about. At most we called out to it, the way villagers used to call out to spring. With spring songs. Our spring songs really only wanted a little spring. Whereas the spring that came was frighteningly young, a genuine spring. Its blossoms are too bright for our eyes."
February 1, 2023
c'est un génie négligé. ses écrits sont très symboliques.
"vous n'êtes pas encore là, vous à qui j'écris. Pas encore, parce que la rue ne va que jusqu'au numéro 14, et que le 16 est en construction, il monte ses briques. Je n'ai pas envie que cette lettre arrive trop vite. Je préfère qu'elle parvienne sous vos yeux en même temps que le futur auquel je suis en train de penser!"👌
"vous n'êtes pas encore là, vous à qui j'écris. Pas encore, parce que la rue ne va que jusqu'au numéro 14, et que le 16 est en construction, il monte ses briques. Je n'ai pas envie que cette lettre arrive trop vite. Je préfère qu'elle parvienne sous vos yeux en même temps que le futur auquel je suis en train de penser!"👌
November 6, 2023
I read this book watching the Bills - Bengals game while Katie made her loud sleepy noises. She sounds like she’s dying. We just got back from Alexandria and I’m still being stubborn about turning in the heat.
I’m not ready for Seattle to be cold yet.
The book should be everything I like but I didn’t get into it.
I’m not ready for Seattle to be cold yet.
The book should be everything I like but I didn’t get into it.
September 6, 2023
Disappointed. It seems that 'Autobiography of a Corpse' contained the best short stories by Sigizmund K. This feels like the less imaginative, incomplete scraps. Sigh... We'll always have 'The Unbitten Elbow'...
September 11, 2020
A once-in-a-lifetime reading experience.
December 26, 2020
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.
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