The Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader (Penguin Classics) Review

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(More customer reviews)The other review (by the reader from New Orleans) appears to refer to the 19th-century volume, not to this the 20th-century volume. Here's the contents list for THIS volume, copied-and-pasted from elsewhere...
"Alyosha the Pot", Leo Tolstoy
"The Bishop", Anton Chekhov
"Recollections of Leo Tolstoy", Maxim Gorky
"Light Breathing", Ivan Bunin
"Time", Nadezhda Teffi
"A Girl Was Singing" "The Stranger", Alexander Blok
from "Petersburg", Andrei Bely
"The Cave", Evgeni Zamyatin
"Nikolai", Velimir Khlebnikov
"Three Things in this World He Loved" "We're No Good at Saying Good-bye" "Dante" "When a Man Dies", "Courage", Anna Akhmatova
"The Potudan River", Andrei Platonov
"Varykino" "Hamlet" "March", Boris Pasternak
"Theodosia" "The Admiralty" "The Thread of Gold Cordial Flowed" "Leningrad" "O Lord, Help Me to Live
Through this Night" "The Last Supper", Osip Mandelstam
from "The Master and Margarita", Mikhail Bulgakov
"My First Goose" "How It was Done in Odessa" My First Fee", Isaac Babel
"Bees and People" from "Before Sunrise", Mikhail Zoshchenko
"Envy", Yuri Olesha
"The Return of Chorb" "The Visit to the Museum", Vladimir Nabokov
"A May Night" "Last Letter", Nadezhda Mandelstam
"Anecdotes About Pushkin's Life" "The Connection", Daniil Kharms
"Prosthetic Appliances" "A Child's Drawings" "Lend-Lease", Varlam Shalamov
"Matryona's Home", Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"Pkhentz", Andrei Sinyavsky
"Adam and Eve", Yuri Kazakov
from "Faithful Ruslan", Georgi Vladimov
"A Circle of Friends", Vladimir Voinovich
from "A School for Fools", Sasha Sokolov

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Clarence Brown's marvelous collection introduces readers to the most resonant voices of twentieth-century Russia. It includes stories by Chekhov, Gorky, Bunin, Zamyatin, Babel, Nabokov, Solzhenitsyn, and Voinovich; excerpts from Andrei Bely's Petersburg, Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, and Sasha Solokov's A School for Fools; the complete text of Yuri Olesha's 1927 masterpiece Envy; and poetry by Alexander Blok, Anna Akhmatova, and Osip Mandelstam. Edited by Clarence Brown.

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Candide Review

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(More customer reviews)Ever since philosophers began thinking about the meaning of life, a favorite question has been "Why do bad things happen to good people?". In Voltaire's day, this issue was primarily pursued either from the perspective of faith (everything that happens is God's will and must be for Divine purpose) or of reason (What do these events mean to you, as you interpret them subjectively?). Infuriated by the reaction by some members of the church to a horrible loss of life from an earthquake in Lisbon, Voltaire wrote this hard-biting satire of the human condition to explore these questions.
Before reading further, let me share a word of caution. This book is filled with human atrocities of the most gruesome sort. Anything that you can imagine could occur in war, an Inquisition, or during piracy happens in this book. If you find such matters distressing (as many will, and more should), this book will be unpleasant reading. You should find another book to read.
The book begins as Candide is raised in the household of a minor noble family in Westphalia, where he is educated by Dr. Pangloss, a student of metaphysical questions. Pangloss believes that this is the best of all possible worlds and deeply ingrains that view into his pupil. Candide is buoyed by that thought as he encounters many setbacks in the course of the book as he travels through many parts of Europe, Turkey, and South America.
All is well for Candide until he falls in love with the Baron's daughter and is caught kissing her hand by the Baron. The Baron immediately kicks Candide out of the castle (literally on the backside), and Candide's wanderings begin. Think of this as being like expulsion from the Garden of Eden for Adam. Soon the penniless Candide finds himself in the Bulgarian army, and receiving lots of beatings while he learns to drill.
The story grows more far-fetched with each subsequent incident. To the casual reader, this exaggeration can seem unnecessary and annoying. It will remind you of the most extreme parts of Swift in Gulliver's Travels and Rabelais in Gargantua and Pantagruel. But subtly, Voltaire is using the exaggeration to lure the reader into making complacent judgments about complacency itself that Voltaire wants to challenge. The result is a deliciously ironical work that undermines complacency at a more fundamental level than I have seen done elsewhere. Basically, Candide challenges any view you have about complacency that is defined in terms of the world-view of those who are complacent.
Significant changes of circumstances (good and ill) occur to all of the members of the Baron's household over the course of the story. Throughout, there is much comparing of who has had the worst luck, with much feeling sorry for oneself.
That is the surface story. Voltaire is, however, a master of misdirection. Beneath the surface, Voltaire has another purpose for the book. He also wants to expose the reader to questioning the many bad habits that people have that make matters worse for everyone. The major themes of these undercurrents are (1) competing rather than to cooperating, (2) employing inhumane means to accomplish worldly (and many spiritual) ends, (3) following expected rules of behavior to show one's superiority over others that harm and degrade others, (4) focusing on money and power rather than creating rich human relationships, (5) hypocritical behavior, and (6) pursuing ends that society approves of rather than ends that please oneself.
By the end of the story, the focus shifts again to a totally different question: How can humans achieve happiness? Then, you have to reassess what you thought about the book and what was going on in Voltaire's story. Many readers will choose to reread the book to better capture Voltaire's perspective on that final question, having been surprised by it.
Candide is one of my favorite books because it treats important philosophical questions in such an unusual way. Such unaccustomed matching of treatment and subject matters leaves an indelible impression that normal philosophical arguments can never match. Voltaire also has an amazing imagination. Few could concoct such a story (even by using illegal substances to stimulate the subconscious mind). I constantly find myself wondering what he will come up with next. The story is so absurd that it penetrates the consciousness at a very fundamental level, almost like doing improvisation. In so doing, Voltaire taps into that feeling of "what else can happen?" that overcomes us when we are at our most pessimistic. So, gradually you will find yourself identifying with the story -- even though nothing like this could ever happen to you. Like a good horror story, you are also relieved that you can read about others' troubles and can put your own into perspective. This last point is the fundamental humanity of the story. You see what a wonderful thing a kind word, a meal, or a helping hand can be. That will probably inspire you to offer those empathic actions more often.
After you have finished Candide, I suggest that you ask yourself where complacency about your life and circumstances is costing you and those you care about the potential for more health, happiness, peace, and prosperity. Then take Voltaire's solution, and look around you for those who enjoy the most of those four wonderful attributes. What do those people think and do differently from you?


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Classic Spanish Stories and Plays : The Great Works of Spanish Literature for Intermediate Students Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a review of Classic Spanish Stories and Plays, adapted by Marcel C. Andrade. McGraw-Hill, 2001 (ISBN 0658011383).
After finishing Spanish IV at my community college, I started Don Quijote with the aid of Tom Lathrop's `Don Quijote Dictionary.' Even with the dictionary, Cervantes was slow going, so I decided to retrace my steps and gain some reading practice with something simpler. That's when I found this book. It contains eight Spanish stories (El Cid, Los cuentos el conde Lucanor, La Celestina, Lazarillo de Tormes, Don Quijote, Fuenteovejuna, La verdad sospechosa, and El burlador de Sevilla) greatly simplified for the intermediate student. (NB: an `intermediate' student knows what past subjunctive and conditional are.) I found that the editor's glosses matched my knowledge pretty closely; e.g. I very rarely had to look up a word that wasn't glossed. By the way, a vocabulary is included in the back of almost every word used in the text. Footnotes are used to explain cultural issues, though the notes to Don Quijote makes me think Andrade doesn't have a lot of sympathy with that ingenioso hildago.
All stories except Don Quijote are complete. But Andrade judiciously adapts chapter by chapter with Don Quijote, and includes only fourteen. He stops with the narrator finding the Arabic continuation of the tale by Cide Hamete Beningeli. Having read that far of the real Don Quijote, I enjoyed reinforcing my vocabulary with the glossing, and I liked being able to enjoy the story without looking up every fourth word.
My goal in Spanish is to read it semi-fluently. The only way to attain that goal is to read, read, read. Andrade's Spanish reader makes that possible, and rather painlessly at that. It's an excellent choice for any intermediate student who wants reading practice and doesn't mind gaining a superficial knowledge of some Spanish literary masterpieces at the same time - highly recommended.


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Spanning El Cid (1140) to El burlador de Sevilla (1630), Classic Spanish Stories and Plays contains eight great Spanish classics works including Don Quixote, one of the masterpieces of world literature. Expertly abridged and adapted for the intermediate learner, each tale and play includes ample cultural notes and translations of difficult words. An extensive vocabulary is included at the back of the book.

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Spanish Stories / Cuentos Españoles (A Dual-Language Book) (English and Spanish Edition) Review

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(More customer reviews)This book includes several excellent stories by many of the finest Spanish authors starting from the 16th century to the 20th. I recommend it highly for the intermediate Spanish student.
When I started reading book I had to regularly refer to the english page for a translation. At the end of the book, I seldom need to check the translation.
I assume that the stories written in the 16th and 17th centuries were re-written to update them into current Spanish, as I would think the older Spanish would be much more difficult to understand. As a result, this made the stories easy to read at the same time I could appreciate the skill of the writers.

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Unique format offers 13 great stories in Spanish — from classics by Cervantes and Alarcon to contemporary works by Borges and Goytisolo. Complete faithful English translations on facing pages. Includes Spanish to English vocabulary, biographical-critical introductions, more.

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