Autobiography of a Corpse (New York Review Books Classics)

Places whose names changed over time, different meaning but similar sounds: The author takes a greater delight in words than the average writer of history or guidebooks, making these observations all the more loveable. This piece even made me want to look things up, not get it over and done with like the others. It also uses that archaic and pointlessly frustrating structure of having endnotes but no pointers in the text: And now I know to try and avoid NYRBs in paper form, as the print was too small and closely packed to be really comfortable. At least the cover is decent - they've used an abstract Kandinsky, not the usual dreary post-Impressionist blur, and as it's a diffuse pattern, the central placement of the title box for once doesn't ruin the picture.

Oh, never mind, you'll probably love all of it. View all 8 comments. Oct 19, Amorfna rated it really liked it. Jan 22, David rated it it was amazing Shelves: I've read Krzhizhanovsky before Memories of the future , and didn't care for his writing style or material in that volume. However, I can say without a doubt, this is one of my favorite collections of short stories that I have ever read. First off, I would reccomend the Kindle version, as it makes it much easier to keep track of all the various footnotes, as Krzhizhanovsky makes numerous references to philosophers, philosophical teachings, religions, latin, various Russian folklore, locations, I've read Krzhizhanovsky before Memories of the future , and didn't care for his writing style or material in that volume.

First off, I would reccomend the Kindle version, as it makes it much easier to keep track of all the various footnotes, as Krzhizhanovsky makes numerous references to philosophers, philosophical teachings, religions, latin, various Russian folklore, locations, and plays-on-words, and much more, which would have caused me a great deal of annoyance to constantly flip to the back of the book to locate. The stories in this volume are bizarre and fantastic, and also, from my outside perspective towards the Soviet Era, show the loneliness and non-person status of Krzhizhanovsky as an author, and a Soviet Citizen.

It really is hard to explain without quoting at length from the book, so I'll leave it up to you to explore and learn. Some of my favorite short stories in the collection are: It is an AMAZING collection of short stories for those who like particularly strange stories, or who have a fascination with Soviet Era fiction published, or in this case, suppressed.

Dec 13, Leah rated it really liked it Shelves: The stories are quirky and imaginative, sometimes fantastical, usually satirical, and often witty; and there are common themes of individual and social identity, reality and abstraction, life and death, space and time. Some of the stories are quite clearly political, concerning the submergence and alienation of the individual under Soviet rule — soul seepage, as he terms it.

By morning many-hued military flags were hanging over building entrances and gateways. Men with newspapers held up to their eyes were walking down the sidewalks; men with rifles on their shoulders were walking down the roadways.

Autobiography of a Corpse

Thus from the very first day newspapers and rifles divided us all into those who would die and those for whom they would die. Like most collections, this one is variable — some of the stories are interesting and enjoyable, while in others Krzhizhanovsky lets his philosophising tendencies run away with him, making them overly wordy while not being quite as profound he presumably intended them to be. However, none of them are less than thought-provoking and they give an insight into the difficulties of plain-speaking in a time of censorship and worse.

There are 11 stories in the collection, plus a short introduction by Adam Thirlwell, giving brief biographical details of the author. There are fairly extensive notes at the back, and in some of the stories these are quite important as the people and institutions the author refers to are often no longer household names — at least, not in my household. The next story takes us straight to the fantastical as a man becomes fascinated by his own image reflected back to him from the eye of his lover — until one day the reflection disappears.

Humorous and quirky, but still with the theme of identity at the fore, we begin to get a feel for how Krzhizhanovsky uses the fantastic as a vehicle for philosophising and satire. It turned out that the energy of a potential fistfight, if sucked promptly into the pores of a street absorberator, could heat an entire floor for twelve hours. Overall I enjoyed most of the stories enough that they made up for the over-stuffed ones. I think my favourite is Yellow Coal — a satire based on the idea that sources of energy are running out and, in response to a competition, an inventor suggests powering things with human spite — bile, known as yellow coal.

This works amazingly well as supplies are inexhaustible, until gradually everyone becomes contented and well-fed… Unfortunately the last story, Postmark: Moscow , was the most incomprehensible to me, since it relied to some extent on the reader getting references to the ideas of many philosophers who were no more than names to me, if that. A thought-provoking collection where the best of the stories are highly entertaining and the worst are still quite readable — recommended. Dec 10, Chuck LoPresti rated it really liked it. Not to be read prior to Memories of the Future or Letter Killers Club, this collection of short works does the same as NYRB's previous two editions of K's short stories; it shows the fusion of engineering and literature in short outbursts of Soviet-era stories.

Think something like Zoschenko's social satire meets Verne's love of machination and you've arrived at this point. Grin's dreamy adventure lit is also a salient point of comparison and K. I must admit th Not to be read prior to Memories of the Future or Letter Killers Club, this collection of short works does the same as NYRB's previous two editions of K's short stories; it shows the fusion of engineering and literature in short outbursts of Soviet-era stories.

I must admit that the first group of stories bogged a bit but The Unbitten Elbow had a Voinovich-like abundance of humor that reeled me back in. But humor aside - it might be the mediation on death in the Bridge This is an important writer that pales in comparison to most of those I've mentioned above, and in no way is as important as Platonov if you're cruising the NYRB Russians - but he's great, fun, witty and should please most readers.

It reads easy and the length will intimidate no serious scholar. This is a book I'd find easy to suggest to even the most casual reader. Though Krzhizhanovsky wrote these stories in the s and s they weren't actually published until the Soviet Union was on its last legs. It's no wonder then that he is not a well-known writer in the west. I hadn't heard of him until a few months ago. The stories in this volume are surreal, fantastic tales; they remind me of E. Hoffmann and Franz Kafka as well as others - at times he's like Samuel Beckett.

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But Krzhizhanovsky has his own very distinctive style; he's obsessed with topics su Though Krzhizhanovsky wrote these stories in the s and s they weren't actually published until the Soviet Union was on its last legs. But Krzhizhanovsky has his own very distinctive style; he's obsessed with topics such as identity, especially with how it changes over time but also what it means when we say 'I' - in short I guess we can say he's an 'existentialist'. He's also interested in scientific topics in particular psychology and some of the stories are like science-fiction.

The stories included here are a bit of a mix; a mix of styles, topics and quality as well. So I thought I'd give a rating for each story as well as a bit of a 'taster' for some of them. I should state that I read the book quite slowly and ended up re-reading some of the stories as I went. I've just re-read 'In the Pupil' before writing this review and I must say that every story that I've re-read has improved on a second reading. A journalist from the provinces comes to Moscow and takes a room in a boarding house.

Not long after he's arrived he receives a notebook from the previous occupant who killed himself in the room. There's a lot of brilliant imagery in this story as the 'corpse' relates his existential concerns. He's concerned that his soul is seeping away drop by drop and calls this effect soul seepage - brilliant!

He hopes that his 'I' will seep into the new occupant's brain. I didn't really like the second story much when I first read it, but on a re-read I much preferred it.

It's about a man who falls in love with a woman and he notices a little version of himself in his lover's eye. One day he sees this little man wave to him and then disappear. The rest of the story is the little man's story of what happened. It's actually quite good but Krzhizhanovsky seems to have this habit of completely changing direction whilst telling a story, which is good, but you end up reading a different story than you started.

Autobiography of a Corpse (New York Review Books Classics) - Harvard Book Store

An author reads a recently written fairy tale to a small group of people. The tale is about a hermit who asks God for power over cracks! Anyway the tale sort of peters out but one of the listeners is a Gottfried Lovenix who is interested in cracks, but he's more interested in cracks in time rather than cracks in space. He ponders over whether time is actually continuous or discrete and is concerned that people may be flickering in and out of existence It concerns Adsum from the Nation of Ises who is describing the inhabitants from the Land of Nots humans I assume and in particular Not philosophers who shut themselves away in a darkened room to prove that they exist.

They are obsessed with death - until they die that is. It's a great satire on western philosophy and then it digresses into a strange mythological story before returning, sort of, to the initial narrative. Very playful, very strange and very funny. A pianist's fingers one day separate from his hand in the middle of a performance. They lead their own life before returning. By this point in the book I was realising that Krzhizhanovsky didn't always know how to end a story or rather they seem to just end abruptly. This one had a brilliant ending which I won't reveal.

The story is simple, but absurd: A man comes to the attention of a magazine when they send out a questionnaire and his answer to their question 'What is your goal in life? He ends up becoming a celebrity, philosophers Kint and Tnik debate the ramifications of this new phenomenon.

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So, does he bite his elbow? You'll just have to read it. Again, I liked this one because it was simple, silly and worked well as a story. But not if you can harvest human spite and bile the yellow coal!



There's a never-ending supply of that! The police have to arrest people that won't stop smiling, it's outrageous! But can it last? The stories sort of fizzle out from here though. It has a subtitle Thirteen Letters to the Provinces and is probably an amusing read for anyone who's familiar with pre-war Moscow but for the rest of us it's just dull. I think it's a bit cruel of me to criticise Krzhizhanovsky for writing it because as far as he was concerned no-one was actually reading his stories outside of his friends and family. But I'm not sure why it was included in this collection - it's expendable.

Overall this is a brilliant collection by an amazing, inventive writer. He's not polished or slick In that respect he's very similar to E. Hoffmann who's one of my favourite authors. I'll definitely have to read some other material from Krzhizhanovsky. View all 3 comments. Mar 02, Charles Dee Mitchell rated it really liked it Shelves: These intellectual fantastic tales can be heavy going, as they should be coming from an author whose name is so exquisitely unpronounceable.

His stories first met the public in His work reminds me most of Edgar Allan, bu These intellectual fantastic tales can be heavy going, as they should be coming from an author whose name is so exquisitely unpronounceable. Footnotes in this current edition help you with Moscow geography and the philosophical and scientific references, but some stories left me ungrounded and slightly bored. Then there were those that were brilliant, funny, and in ways horrifying. A man becomes a celebrity when he states his desire to bite his own elbow, then feels a horrible need to satisfy his audience.

The simmering anger of city dwellers proves to be a new source of cheap energy. Feb 24, Kris McCracken rated it it was ok. Krzhizhanovsky was largely unpublished in his lifetime. I expect that I know why Jan 30, Sharon rated it really liked it. Had I gone away unexpectedly? But not far from the building where my love lived, I sat down on a bench to wait for the dusk. Doubtless this was cowardice, utterly absurd cowardice: I was afraid, afraid of again not seeing what I had not seen.

You would think that the simplest thing then would be to search her pupils with mine. It was probably an ordinary hallucination — a figment of the pupil — nothing more. I wanted to keep going with the first narrator, and suddenly going off with the other left me disappointed.

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At least, story by story. If we take the work as a whole, it becomes more clear that Krzhizhanovsky is dealing with the same or, similar things in each story. Man Is to Man a Ghost. It begins like this:. I am — Adsum. And I namely am because I belong to the great Nation of Ises.

I cannot not be. But to explain to you, my worthy Ises, how Being can tolerate a clot of Nots, how it can have allowed — even on a desolate outskirt, on an out-of-the-way little planet — a strange little world of Nots to spring up and spread, that for me will be extremely difficult. Nevertheless, the Land of Nots is a fact. I myself have been there and what follows will attest to the truth of my declaration. As the collection continues, the strangeness does not diminish. In another, a man tries — and crowds cheer him on — to bite his own elbow.

Moscow Thirteen Letters to the Provinces. Naturally, he first finds his room fifty-four square feet is all. Krzhizhanovsky would have been thinking of other things instead of digging deep into his soul — in the dark — to pull out these bizarre stories. Oh, absolutely a must read if you enjoyed The Letter Killers Club. I loved the chaotic nature of the stories though.

Publisher Series: New York Review Books Classics

The few friends with whom she can relate become less and less accessible during the progression of her circumstances. Even if one had never been born in prison and had never seen stars or seas or woods, one would instinctively know of timeless freedom in unlimited space. Tension is built with careful precision and the veil is torn away at the most effective moment possible. This irony, particularly when situated within her supernatural and uncanny works here, allows her concluding lines to unsettle the reader on an even deeper level than all that came before.

But Storm keeps the appearances of these ambiguous apparitions in restraint, never losing sight of human imperfections to fuel the drama which leads to the mysterious origin of the rider in question. I second the James Hogg recommendation. Some other weird favorites in their backlist: