Gogol’s Nevsky Prospect
There is nothing better than Nevsky Prospect, at least not in Petersburg; for there it is everything. What does this street – the beauty of our capital – not shine with! I know that not one of its pale and clerical inhabitants would trade Nevsky Prospect for anything in the world. Not only the one who is twenty-five years old, has an excellent mustache and a frock coat of an amazing cut, but even the one who has white hair sprouting on his chin and a head as smooth as a silver dish, he, too, is enchanted with Nevsky Prospect. And the ladies! Oh, the ladies find Nevsky Prospect still more pleasing. And who does not find it pleasing? The moment you enter Nevsky Prospect, it already smells of nothing but festivity. Though you may have some sort of necessary, indispensible business, once you enter it, you are sure to forget all business. Here is the only place where people do not go out of necessity, where they are not driven by the need and mercantile interest that envelop the whole of Petersburg. A man met on Nevksy Prospect seems less of an egoist than on Morskaya, Gorokhovaya, Liteiny, Meshchanskaya, and other streets, where greed, self-interest, and necessity show on those walking or flying by in carriages and droshkies. Nevsky Prospect is the universal communication of Petersburg. Here the inhabitant of the Petersburg or Vyborg side who has not visited his friend in Peski or the Moscow Gate for several years can be absolutely certain of meeting him. No directory or inquiry office will provide such reliable information as Nevsky Prospect. All-powerful Nevsky Prospect! The only entertainment for a poor man at the Petersburg feast! How clean-swept are its sidewalks, and, God, how many feet have left their traces on it! The clumsy, dirty boot of the retired soldier, under the weight of which the very granite seems to crack, and the miniature shoe, light as smoke, of a young lady, who turns her head to the glittering shop windows as a sunflower turns toward the sun, and the clanking sword of a hope-filled sub-lieutenant that leaves a sharp scratch on it – everything wreaks upon it the power of strength or the power of weakness. What a quick phantasmagoria is performed on it in the course of a single day! How many changes it undergoes in the course of a single day and night!
–The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol, “Nevsky Prospect” (trans. Pevear & Volokhonsky)
Classic Word Spaces (3): Maxim Gorky
One of the writers’ houses/flats that I visited in Russia was that of Maxim Gorky, born Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (b. 1868), who would later become a significant influence upon Soviet Russian literature and socialist realism. I had not read any of Gorky’s writing before visiting his house; however, I had become familiar with his name in the other books I had read before the trip. I recall reading, for example, that Gorky had intervened on Yevgeny Zamyatin’s behalf, convincing Stalin to allow Zamyatin to leave Russia after the publication of We, which saved his life. Ronald Wilks, the translator of my edition of Gorky’s book My Childhood, writes in the introduction: “As a close friend of Stalin, he had immense influence on the progress of literature and arts in Soviet Russia and there is no doubt that he was the driving force behind the creation of a modern Soviet literature.” Gorky’s house, then, to me, was an important landmark, and I’m thankful that my wife’s family tolerated my insisting we visit the place.
Fleeced by FC2?
'baaaaahhhht what did ewe think of my manuscript?'
We’ve shit on Narrative Magazine so much that I thought it might be fun to have it go the other way round for once: here’s someone shitting on a press that I really like.
I give you a link to and excerpt from Tim W. Brown’s essay in Preditors and Editors and in the ULA’s Monday Report. The essay, published in 2006, is (hilariously?) titled “FLEECED by FC2: Being an INVESTIGATION into the CONFLICTS of INTEREST and SELF-DEALING that Plague the Publisher FICTION COLLECTIVE 2, with ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS on the Academic-Government Complex, Proper Organisational Stewardship, &c.”
Responses?
Excerpt after the break.
Enjoy!
Etgar Keret adapted to clay film
For you Etgar Keret fans out there, Tatia Rosenthal has adapted the short stories of Etgar Keret into a stop motion animated film titled $9.99. I’ve little information about it – it just debuted yesterday in Los Angeles – so I’ll let you do that research on your own. Geoffrey Rush and Anthony LaPaglia do some of the voice acting. I wasn’t as familiar with the other actors, but you can check credits at the film’s site. There are also some ‘the making of’ pages, a list of bios, news and reviews, the trailer, and so on.
For the trailer, click over to Design Related and scroll down (sorry I can’t get it to embed).
Used Bookstore Finds: ‘The Director of the Meteorological Branch is please [sic] to supply…’
A few weeks ago, my friend Mike Scalise sent me a bundle of old guides of all sorts from the dollar bin at Riverby Books in Washington DC. I found the following letter in Weather Ways, a weather guide for pilots published by the Meteorological Branch, Department of Transport, Canada in 1957.
The Red Cavalry Riding
Just a quick hello from St. Petersburg. The trip has gone well so far. We’ve seen quite a lot of ‘stuff.’ I’m a bit overwhelmed now. I’ll try to put together some posts about some of my favorites when I get back this coming Monday. For now, I’ll leave you with the above painting titled ‘The Red Cavalry Riding’ by Kazimir Malevich. It’s hanging in the State Russian Museum and I liked staring at it very much.
Off to Russia
Perfect nonsense goes on in the world. - Nikolai Gogol, "The Nose"
In two hours my wife and I leave for the airport to fly to London and then from London we will fly to Moscow. Then after a few days in Moscow, we will fly to St. Petersburg.
We’ll see if I have any good stories/photos when I get back?
In the meantime, check out Zachary Schomburg’s June posts about his trip to Russia last year.
(via Adam Peterson)
Later.
Post Road now open
I’ve been wondering when Post Road would reopen submissions. I know they were dealing with a backlog for quite a while as well as a move to Boston College.
I suppose that’s over with now, and they are ready to read new work through the online submission manager.
Details of the reading period are as follows:
Call for Submission – for December 2009
Post Road literary magazine, published by the Department of English at Boston College, invites submissions for Issue 18, to be published in December 2009. Submissions of unpublished fiction, poetry, and nonfiction will be accepted until July 31, 2009. You may submit your work by clicking here.
Poetry: Submit up to six poems per reading period. No restrictions as to style or subject matter.
Prose: Submit one short story or essay per reading period. No restrictions as to style or subject matter.
Uncategorized / 2 Comments
June 4th, 2009 / 11:48 pm
June 4th, 2009 / 11:48 pm
Word Spaces (13): Elizabeth Ellen
Elizabeth Ellen is the author of Before You She Was A Pitbull (Future Tense Books 2006), and has work featured in two chapbook collectives: A Peculiar Feeling Of Restlessness (Rose Metal Press 2008) and Fox Force 5 (forthcoming from Paper Hero Press). She is a Deputy Editor at Hobart and edits Short Flight/Long Drive, Hobart‘s books division. Stories/poems of hers can be found in print issues of Hobart, Sleepingfish, Keyhole, Opium, and online in Waccamaw, Dogzplot, ActionYes, Juked, and 3AM.
I wish I had met Elizabeth at AWP. I think I spoke to her once, but I never found the courage to introduce myself. I don’t really have a rational explanation for my being timid, and I realize how silly of me it was to worry about that sort of thing. I think, though, it had to do with my feeling awe, maybe, in her presence. Elizabeth Ellen’s was one of the first names I remember seeing everywhere when I began to discover that writers had made their way onto the internet.
So it makes me really happy to post Elizabeth Ellen’s word space/essay for you.