Demons, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1871; trans. Constance Garnett, Penguin Classics, 1916). The Russian Revolution should not have been a surprise. For decades leading up to it, Russia was gripped by an ever-rising wave of sadistic revolutionary terrorism. Gary Saul Morson
It's a good review, but you're very unfair to Fathers and Sons, which is nowhere close to wish fulfillment you describe. You say it's about zoomers learning to accept their boomer parents? Please! Bazarov, (the book's hero), scorns his own loving parents, romantically humiliates and then shoots the narrator's uncle, and finally dies of a self-inflicted wound. You make it sound like an after-school special. It's true that Arkady (the narrator) ends on good terms with his family, but not because he's realized they're hip after all. Rather, he finds he can't stomach the cruelty of Bazarov towards their parents' generation, for whom he has always harbored great affection. The point of the novel is not that Bazarov is wrong and Arkady is right, or reverse -- it's that Arkady's maturation forces him to recognize that he will never be as bold or exciting as Bazarov, and that any attempt to emulate Bazarov will always come off as ugly and inauthentic. Even with his downfall, at the novel's end it's clear that the future belongs to the Bazarovs of the world, and not the Arkadys. Arkady will live a nice life on his farm, but he will never become a figure of importance.
The Faust passage is wonderful. I want to read Faust now.
I'm going to recommend Antony Beevor's _Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921_, if you haven't read it already. (I might have gotten the recommendation from you in the first place!)
One thing that really comes through in Beevor's book is just how incompetent the White forces were. While very few people hate the Bolsheviks more than me, it was very hard for me to root for the White forces. Everything you mention in Demons is true of the White forces.
"La Chinoise, ou plutôt à la Chinoise: un film en train de se faire[1] (English: The Chinese, or, rather, in the Chinese manner: a film in the making), commonly referred to simply as La Chinoise, is a 1967 French political docufiction film directed by Jean-Luc Godard about a group of young Maoist activists in Paris.
La Chinoise is a loose adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1872 novel Demons. In the novel, a group of five disaffected citizens, each representing a different ideological persuasion and personality type, conspire to overthrow the Russian imperial regime through a campaign of sustained revolutionary violence. The film, set in contemporary Paris and largely taking place in a small apartment, is structured as a series of personal and ideological dialogues dramatizing the interactions of five French university students—three young men and two young women—belonging to a radical Maoist group called the "Aden Arabie Cell" (named after the novel Aden, Arabie by Paul Nizan). The film won the Grand Jury Prize in 1967 Venice Film Festival."
You may have mentioned Chadsky as a throwaway joke, but funny enough there is actually a character with that name in another Russian book about young radicals (Wikpedia suggests the English title is Woe from Wit). Maybe better transliterated as Chatsky, but I still kept waiting for the punchline that never arrived.
The guy is anything but what his name suggests (sigma male if you're feeling generous, edgelord if you don't), but this he is interesting as the step that precedes Fathers and Sons' Bazarov. One can draw a history of radicalism from westernized Chatsky who sees Russia as backwards and his relatives as what Caulfield will later call phony (but otherwise shares morality with every other guy), proceed to Bazarov who disrespects a lot of things Chatsky would hold dear, but is still an ardent believer in Enlightement ideals of Reason, and eventually this trend leads to Dostoevski's demons.
I read this review a few weeks ago and it was so good it inspired me to immediately begin reading the book in question. Finally finished after a bit of a pause midway through, came back to reread the review and it's even better now that I know the book myself. Really incredible piece.
I was very traumatized by how similar the miniatures-loving governor is to myself. Dostoevsky is right about Germans.
“ Its true name sounds to human ears like a high-pitched mechanical screeching and clicking, a sound calculated to drive men mad, and to drive madmen into making it real.”
“Faith of Our Fathers” by Philip K Dick. Which Mao [analog—he’s never named] did you see? The mechanical beast?
This is one of the best book reviews I’ve ever read.
It's a good review, but you're very unfair to Fathers and Sons, which is nowhere close to wish fulfillment you describe. You say it's about zoomers learning to accept their boomer parents? Please! Bazarov, (the book's hero), scorns his own loving parents, romantically humiliates and then shoots the narrator's uncle, and finally dies of a self-inflicted wound. You make it sound like an after-school special. It's true that Arkady (the narrator) ends on good terms with his family, but not because he's realized they're hip after all. Rather, he finds he can't stomach the cruelty of Bazarov towards their parents' generation, for whom he has always harbored great affection. The point of the novel is not that Bazarov is wrong and Arkady is right, or reverse -- it's that Arkady's maturation forces him to recognize that he will never be as bold or exciting as Bazarov, and that any attempt to emulate Bazarov will always come off as ugly and inauthentic. Even with his downfall, at the novel's end it's clear that the future belongs to the Bazarovs of the world, and not the Arkadys. Arkady will live a nice life on his farm, but he will never become a figure of importance.
The Faust passage is wonderful. I want to read Faust now.
I'm going to recommend Antony Beevor's _Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921_, if you haven't read it already. (I might have gotten the recommendation from you in the first place!)
One thing that really comes through in Beevor's book is just how incompetent the White forces were. While very few people hate the Bolsheviks more than me, it was very hard for me to root for the White forces. Everything you mention in Demons is true of the White forces.
You should watch Jean Luc Godard's La Chinoise:
"La Chinoise, ou plutôt à la Chinoise: un film en train de se faire[1] (English: The Chinese, or, rather, in the Chinese manner: a film in the making), commonly referred to simply as La Chinoise, is a 1967 French political docufiction film directed by Jean-Luc Godard about a group of young Maoist activists in Paris.
La Chinoise is a loose adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1872 novel Demons. In the novel, a group of five disaffected citizens, each representing a different ideological persuasion and personality type, conspire to overthrow the Russian imperial regime through a campaign of sustained revolutionary violence. The film, set in contemporary Paris and largely taking place in a small apartment, is structured as a series of personal and ideological dialogues dramatizing the interactions of five French university students—three young men and two young women—belonging to a radical Maoist group called the "Aden Arabie Cell" (named after the novel Aden, Arabie by Paul Nizan). The film won the Grand Jury Prize in 1967 Venice Film Festival."
You may have mentioned Chadsky as a throwaway joke, but funny enough there is actually a character with that name in another Russian book about young radicals (Wikpedia suggests the English title is Woe from Wit). Maybe better transliterated as Chatsky, but I still kept waiting for the punchline that never arrived.
The guy is anything but what his name suggests (sigma male if you're feeling generous, edgelord if you don't), but this he is interesting as the step that precedes Fathers and Sons' Bazarov. One can draw a history of radicalism from westernized Chatsky who sees Russia as backwards and his relatives as what Caulfield will later call phony (but otherwise shares morality with every other guy), proceed to Bazarov who disrespects a lot of things Chatsky would hold dear, but is still an ardent believer in Enlightement ideals of Reason, and eventually this trend leads to Dostoevski's demons.
Read it again a year ago. Bracing how relevant it remains, really.
I read this review a few weeks ago and it was so good it inspired me to immediately begin reading the book in question. Finally finished after a bit of a pause midway through, came back to reread the review and it's even better now that I know the book myself. Really incredible piece.
I was very traumatized by how similar the miniatures-loving governor is to myself. Dostoevsky is right about Germans.
“ Its true name sounds to human ears like a high-pitched mechanical screeching and clicking, a sound calculated to drive men mad, and to drive madmen into making it real.”
“Faith of Our Fathers” by Philip K Dick. Which Mao [analog—he’s never named] did you see? The mechanical beast?
Great! The best review of yours that I've read, a candidate for my Christmas list, cf. https://www.rasmusen.org/rasmapedia/index.php?title=Best_Dozen_Articles_I%27ve_Read_in_2023 . It makes me want to read the book again right now.