Mud and Stars: My Year of Learning Russian By Sara Wheeler
In Mud and Stars: Travels in Russia with Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Other Geniuses of the Golden Age, Sara Wheeler records her travels across Russia to the homes and haunts of famous nineteenth century Russian authors. She crosses eight time zones; travels in cars, trains, boats, and planes; experiences extremes of weather; and observes a variety of landscapes.
Each chapter explores a different author. Among those discussed are Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Gogol, Chekhov, Goncharov, and Tolstoy. Wheeler briefly examines their major works, but her main interest lies in determining how time and place influenced each writer. Accordingly, she treks to each author’s estate/home, visits his place of birth, where he lived, where he wrote, where he died, and where he is buried. She weaves intricate details about the author’s personal life. Her narrative is rich with fascinating anecdotes about each writer, including his likes and dislikes, his strengths and weaknesses, his politics, and his idiosyncrasies.
Wheeler seamlessly travels back and forth in time. Her travelogue is peppered with observations about the current political situation in Russia. She dips into the history and political movements of the nineteenth century and then effortlessly switches to an observation or comment about Putin’s Russia.
She is like a sponge, absorbing and recording what she sees and hears in intricate detail. Curious about the lives of ordinary people—her guides, the shopkeepers, the drivers who shuffle her from one location to the next, and those who share her train compartments—she strikes up conversations with complete strangers. She stays in private homes and connects with her hosts by practicing her Russian, dining together, getting to know them, and listening to their perspectives on life in Russia. Some of the most enjoyable passages are descriptions of her train journeys and the food she shares with her traveling companions.
Wheeler’s style throughout is lively, engaging, and peppered with a delightful sense of humor. She is not averse to laughing at herself. She interrupts the narrative with amusing anecdotes about her personal life, her struggle to learn Russian, and her forays into cooking the Russian meals she has read about in novels.
By peeking into their homes, their lives, and their personalities, Wheeler humanizes Russia’s nineteenth century literary giants. Her travels also give voice to ordinary people—their stories and daily struggles, their emotions and spirit, and their hopes and aspirations.
An engaging mix of history, literary criticism, travelogue, and memoir.
Recommended.
My book reviews are also available at www.tamaraaghajaffar.com Sara Wheeler Mud and Stars: Travels in Russia with Pushkin and Other Geniuses of the Golden Age https://spectator.us/searching-soul-m... Sara Wheeler This is more of an unstructured musing than any type of memoir/travelogue/literary criticism. I'm baffled that reviews for this describe her as funny; this piece was dry and as poorly imagined as it was executed. Unless you want to know which Golden Age writers literally had hemorrhoids, I'd skip this book. Sara Wheeler SOLO FANGO
Queste pagine danno forma ad anni [...] in cui io ero nel fango e i miei scrittori erano le stelle.
Un nobile intento, per carità, e una lettura molto allettante. Peccato che l'impianto narrativo non la renda affatto godibile. L'autrice, infatti, tenta di gettare un ponte tra le biografie degli scrittori russi e le sue esperienze nei luoghi da essi visitati - fallendo miseramente, però. Nelle vicende capitate alla Wheeler, ho perso immediatamente interesse; quindi questa sensazione si è estesa alle notizie biografiche (senza contare le pillole di politica, che non avrei sopportato a prescindere).
Insomma: noia, confusione, superficialità. Ditemi dove sono le stelle perché io visto solo fango. Sara Wheeler Queste pagine danno forma ad anni ormai svaniti, in cui io ero nel fango e i miei scrittori erano le stelle. I libri, con me, sono stati più gentili della vita, e qui ho tentato di mostrare come i volumi citati siano diventati parte integrante della mia esistenza.
Non so se siate appassionati della letteratura russa dell'ottocento. Io ne ho fatto esperienza soprattutto come lettura forzosa durante il liceo e continuo a percepire le mie vaste lacune in merito. Poi ho sentito parlare di questo saggio/reportage/diario in cui l'autrice descrive i suoi tour in terra russa per imparare la lingua e al contempo andare alla scoperta dei luoghi in cui hanno vissuto e scritto gli intellettuali dell'età dell'oro.
Ed è stato un viaggio dentro al libro, un meraviglioso viaggio.
Un consiglio per affrontarlo: procuratevi un atlante con una bella mappa, perchè il territorio russo è letteralmente sconfinato, dall'Europa all'America, toccando l'intero bordo dell'Asia. Durante i capitoli vengono citati luoghi storici, eventi, ma soprattutto paesaggi, itinerari, e se non avete idea di dove si trovavano i nostri nel frattempo non potrete capire la genesi di certe opere, i motivi di certi fatti nelle biografie, da dove venne l'ispirazione per una determinato verso.
Invece così vi troverete a seguire tutto con la mente, spostandovi dal traffico di Pietroburgo alle spaziose steppe del Caucaso, dall'assolata riva del mar Nero ai villaggi isolati nella taiga artica, alle città sovietiche moderne con le loro centrali al carbone, e poi in un vagone della Transiberiana, curiosando tra le centinaia di isole sui laghi Ladoga e Onega, ciascuna con il suo piccolo monastero ortodosso (sapevate che questi due laghi, al confine con la Finlandia e ghiacciati per quasi tutto l'anno, sono i più grandi d'Europa?).
E veniamo ai geni russi. Se una cosa risulta chiara dalla loro biografia è che in quel paese non diventi un intellettuale celebre senza venire perseguitato dal regime, che fosse l'esilio comminato dallo zar o l'internamento nei gulag imposto dai bolscevichi e poi dalla struttura sovietica. Non è facile scrivere in modo libero, non è facile esporsi senza subire condizionamenti.
Tutti hanno lottato con una penna in mano e si sono impressi nella storia a modo loro: dal focoso e fascinoso Puskin, al pio Turgenev, al santone Tolstoj, dal tormentato Dostoevskij al puntiglioso Gogol’ con il suo nasone, sino a Lermontov, Leskov e Goncarov (inaspettate scoperte per la mia ignoranza) e ancora a Cechov che poco prima di morire scrisse: Il mondo di Dio è buono. C'è solo una cosa meschina: noi stessi.
Vi consiglio questo volume che mi ha riempito di entusiasmo, anche perchè è molto curato graficamente, con foto d'epoca e immagini dei viaggi della stessa Wheeler, e un ricco repertorio bibliografico.
Puškin non pensava quasi ad altro che al sesso, e trovava il tempo per scrivere solo quando soffriva di una qualche malattia venerea. Una volta un amico disse a un comune conoscente: «Puškin sta portando a termine il quarto canto del suo poema. Ancora due o tre attacchi di gonorrea e avrà finito» Sara Wheeler
characters Mud and Stars: My Year of Learning Russian
With the writers of the golden age as her guides--Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol, and Turgenev, among others--Sara Wheeler searches for a Russia not in the news, traveling from rinsed northwestern beet fields and the Far Eastern Arctic tundra to the cauldron of nationalities, religions, and languages in the Caucasus. Bypassing major cities as much as possible, she goes instead to the places associated with the country's literary masters. Wheeler weaves these writers' lives and works around their historical homes, giving us rich portraits of the many diverse Russias from which these writers spoke.
Illustrated with both historical images and contemporary snapshots of the people and places that shaped her journey, Mud and Stars gives us timely, witty, and deeply personal insights into Russia, then and now.
One of Smithsonian's Ten Best Travel Books of the Year Mud and Stars: My Year of Learning Russian
Ok for a first go at Russian literature. Nothing especially insightful if you’ve read the works and/or other commentary.
If you do read it and want more on Pushkin, ie a wry modern take on Pushkin-worship in the Soviet era, look for Pushkin Hills by Dovlatov. Sara Wheeler Wheeler follows in the footsteps of Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Chekov and other 19th century authors, connecting them to Putin's Russia of today. You needn't have read, or well remember, the writers detailed to enjoy this wryly told traveler's tale. Wheeler reminds me a lot of Susan Orlean, another writer who never seems to put her foot wrong. Sara Wheeler I have not yet read this but I'd like to point out that the title says MTS(?) AI(?) STAGS by SAGA SHNEELEG. The (?) is because a reversed ь can't actually be pronounced.
Update: I have now read it. Sara Wheeler I’m not quite sure what to make out of this book. It’s a book equivalent of a turducken — random anecdotes and trivia about Russian Golden Age writers stuffed into a travelogue which in turn is stuffed into a sort of a diary confessional.
Or to throw in some quasi-Russian flavor, maybe it’s a matryoshka doll of a book.
The selling point for me was the idea of seeing Russia through the places tied to Russian Golden Age writers. I’m pretty well-versed in Russian literature and these writers biographies, so I figured it will be a fun experience to see the places they came from.
But what I got an odd mixture of trivia and anecdotes that seemed strangely and off-puttingly fixated on negative sensationalism. I understand that scandals sell — but the focus was primarily on the unpleasant and sordid, minus Turgenev and Chekhov who are clearly her favorites (and mine as well) and generally nice people. For everyone else it was a snarky litany of the juicy unpleasantness — physical unattractiveness, affairs and STDs, monetary troubles, rivalries, marital issues and odd and unpleasant beliefs and appalling convictions, with little to offset the feel of the office water-cooler gossip.
And it’s written in a very “journalistic” style, reading like a collection of essays that would be well-suited for a glossy magazine column.
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Let me summarize the points breezily touched upon when it comes to the writers:
-Pushkin probably had every STD there is, wrote only when recovering from an STD, and was ugly.
- Lermontov was also ugly and died stupidly.
- Dostoyevsky was an appalling human being, an anti-Semite, a gambler and was obsessed with Russophilia and Russian spiritual superiority.
- Gogol went batshit crazy by the end of his life.
- Turgenev and Chekhov were lovely people and their chapter are the only ones without such negative filter. They both seemed too good for this world.
- Leskov and Fet and Herzen and Goncharov were also mentioned but I’m not sure why as nothing very interesting was said — it’s like they mentioned for the sake of completeness.
- Tolstoy was a messed-up miserable hypocrite hung-up on sex, sleeping with serfs and probably competing for the number of STDs with Pushkin.
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With the idea of visiting places where these writers lived or spent time in, Wheeler took a tour of provincial Russia, ostensibly to see modern Russia through the prism of 19th century literature and ideas — and that’s where I was starting to get a bit annoyed. Wheeler’s impressions of modern Russia are witty and pithy and mostly merciless — but the ties to the 19th century writers were often beyond tenuous, so I struggled to see much connection between what was on the page other than geographic one. Really, there’s not much that the writers of a century or two ago can tell us about modern Russia, besides propping this book’s premise. For instance, the root to perceived passive inertia of the people in Chukotka is not Oblomov-style ennui but the sociopolitical conditions and conditions. Seriously. Not to mention that she also generalizes very easily. Although early on she dismisses the ridiculous stereotypic notions of Russian soul and homogenous Russian culture, she happily proceeds to generalize whenever it suits her point — like that baffling point about Russians needing suffering to actually be happy.
Wheeler is pretty merciless, although, to give credit where credit is due, she is also quite funny and engaging. But her humor borders on mean-spirited in her constant pointing out of strange peculiarities of her hosts, tutors and travel companions in a way that often comes off as mocking and condescension. I felt uncomfortable reading this and imagining some of the people described reading their descriptions and feeling mortified.
Wheeler doesn't hold back on the criticism of Putin Russia politics either, and those are the parts that are done actually well and pithy snark is engaging indeed. But the connections between the parts, the jumping around between styles and centuries and themes on one page, relying on geography to connect it all — all that seemed a bit disjointed, maybe because in the end, the main character of this book is not Russia and not the writers but Sara Wheeler herself as the writers promised in the title really are little but set dressing to her travelogue. And I don’t think I was prepared for her to take center stage over the subjects that attracted me to this book, and I found that I just don’t care all that much for her personal accounts and gripes about bad train food or spotty wi-fi or comments on her host’s bosomless appearance.
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A few little gripes that I just need to get off my chest:
— a part where Wheeler bluntly states about Lermontov’s poem: “Rereading it now, I don’t think it’s much good. He was a prose writer. That said, Russians know him best for his lyrical and narrative verse.” But we spend what feels like a third of the book reading about her struggles to learn Russian, and we know she’s not fluent in it based on her own admissions — so can she really determine the relative qualities of Lermontov’s prose and poetry in the original Russian, or was she judging translators’ work?
— “The semi-forgotten poet Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet” — she apparently means a poet whose poems every Soviet (and now I presume Russian) schoolchild was required to memorize. Little-known to Wheeler (who, again, seems to rely on translated works) doesn’t mean forgotten in his country.
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In the end, Sara Wheeler is a funny and engaging writer, but to me this book lacked cohesiveness and depth, and was superficially interesting but without much of an impact. Had it been just a travelogue, I would probably been able to cut it more slack, but her choice of inclusion of literary “greats” in a breezy and superficially sensational manner made it feel slight and disjointed. Maybe if I knew less of the topics described I would have been charmed by the breezy snark — but as it stands, I wasn’t too impressed. It’s not bad - but not that good either.
2.5 - 3 stars.
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Recommended by: Left Coast Justin Sara Wheeler My ignorance of classic Russian literature is appalling. (I could expand this statement and say that my ignorance of all classic literature, including English, is appalling. On the other hand, I've read all of John McPhee's work, so I think it evens out.) Of course, I am aware of Tolstoy, and Chekhov, and Pushkin and others, but I have not read a single word from any of them.
Sara Wheeler, an engaging and conversational writer, has made these people real to me, as well as the times and places in which they lived. Some people will be troubled by the inability to categorize this -- is it history? a travel book? literary criticism? -- but I am not particularly troubled by the mishmash in these pages, which encompasses everything from descriptions of the meals found on the Trans-Siberian Railway to different philosophies of translation. Mostly, it describes the lives of the most celebrated Russian authors from about 1790 through 1910, along with her visits to the places in which they lived.
I was careful to say most celebrated authors and not greatest. This is deliberate. Wheeler is wise enough not to declare who the greatest of Russian authors is, but explores the histories of those authors who are likely to be known to a Western audience. Chronologically, she begins with Pushkin and ends with Chekhov, and all but a couple are very well-known.
One thing I didn't know is that most of these authors were actually members of royalty, or at least landed gentry. All of them had serfs to do the mundane work that stifles the muse of so many authors today. Several of them were doctors, though medical practice was pretty questionable at that time. And with the notable exception of Turgenev (who, on the basis of this book, would probably be my favorite) had a belief in an essential Russian spirit that was at odds with Europeans and their humanistic, materially-focused cultures. But I feel rather silly discussing the merits of writers that I have never read; let's focus on Sara Wheeler instead.
Many years ago, I enjoyed her book Terra Incognita, about a winter spent in Antarctica as part of a scientific mission. This was followed by a forgettable book about Chile, and so I kind of stopped reading her. She began this book with an annoying reference to personal tragedy that I assumed (correctly) would never be explained, so why bring it up? But I gradually thawed out, as her personal warmth for the authors she profiled shone through. Her vivid descriptive powers are also much in evidence here -- I particularly liked her description of a guide's eyes as blue as gas flames. Travel in Russia is not always wine and roses, but she does a lovely job of describing what a beautiful place it is with the arrival of spring, using a few judicious quotes from the authors profiled to bolster her case.
I think people who are familiar with these authors' works would get even more from this book than I did, but I am proof that even the most ignorant among us will find plenty to value in this book. Sara Wheeler