Why We (Still) Need Russian Literature: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov and the Case for Big Books

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For nearly two centuries readers all over the world have turned to the great canon of Russian literature. Love and death, war and peace, yes, even crime and punishment; readers across the globe have found in Russian writing a substantial measure of intellectual provocation, aesthetic pleasure, emotional resonance, and personal solace. Why We (Still) Need Russian Literature uses a number of Russian authors, from the familiar names of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov to less widely known writers like Goncharov, Bunin and Erofeev, to connect readers with these experiences. With a lively, jargon-free style and insightful analyses of thought-provoking texts, this concise volume helps you to understand more fully the pleasure to be found in reading by putting you in conversation with some of the Russian masters. Though Russian novels often seem to be as big and potentially dangerous as a brick, this book argues that big is in the eye of the beholder; the very definition of a Big Book, as is argued here, being a work of literature that bears reading and rereading, contemplating and discussing. Indeed by demonstrating how to identify what readers seek, and findfrom aesthetically pleasing descriptions to apt psychological renderingsin Russian books, Angela Brintlinger seeks to enhance the gratification of reading, giving armchair travelers an excuse to embark on a series of fascinating journeys. Drawing on Brintlingers experiences as a scholar, teacher, and reader of literature, the book is informed by a deep cultural understanding of Russia and Russians. It reveals this through engaging literary meditations that connect Russian literature to those losses, ironies, and ambiguities that define the human condition. More specifically, it will serve as a guide or a prompt to give the Big Books of Russian literature a(nother) chance.

Author Bio

Angela Brintlinger is Professor of Slavic Languages and Cultures and Director of the Center for Slavic and East European Studies at Ohio State University, USA. Her scholarly titles include books on biography (Writing a Usable Past: Russian Literary Culture, 1917- 1937, 2000) and war (Chapaev and his Comrades: War and the Russian Literary Hero in the Twentieth Century, 2012), as well as edited volumes about mental illness (Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture, 2007), Chekhov (Chekhov for the Twenty-First Century, 2012), food and gender (Seasoned Socialism: Food and Gender in Late Soviet Everyday Life, 2019), and translations (Derzhavin by Vladislav Khodasevich and Russian Cuisine in Exile by Pyotr Vail and Alexander Genis). She has also published numerous articles and essays in English and Russian. Brintlinger is also the author of The Manic Bookstore Caf, a blog dedicated to linking the presentboth the extraordinary and the quotidianwith some of her favorite writers and artworks.