The Fatal Eggs - Mikhail Bulgakov (1926)

First book for the library book group. I had to smile when I bought this one, since the frog is kind of a personal symbol (for complex reasons I'll have to explain some other time - but seriously, isn't he cute?).

Synopsis: The scene is Moscow, 1928 (the near future, at the time of writing). Stalin is comfortably installed and is even starting to solve those niggling, post-revolutionary annoyances like the urban housing crisis. One Professor Persikov, zoologist, indifferent to politics and all other concerns outside the bounds of biology, is innocently studying his frogs when he inadvertently discovers a powerful new form of light.

The "red ray," as he dubs it, violently accelerates cellular growth - in the light of the ray, organisms grow at lightning speed, to enormous sizes, reproducing to the point of almost instantaneous overcrowding, at which point they turn to devour each other.

I did mention that Bulgakov was an anti-Soviet satirist, yes? Good.

In between interviews with state journalists, spent carefully dissimulating the significance of his discovery, Persikov runs a few rounds of red ray experiments with his frogs, then writes to an American zoologist to order some more interesting specimen - specifically, a selection of eggs from several of the larger species of snake native to North America.

Meanwhile, back on the farm...a poultry plague is ravaging the Russian countryside, killing every chicken within hundreds of square miles in a matter of days. To remedy this, the government sets up a state farm, commandeers a few of Persikov's red ray chambers (over his frenzied objections) and orders a few cases of chicken eggs from the West.

Two shipments of eggs. One Soviet bureaucracy. Care to guess what happens?

Naturally, the reptile eggs go to the state farm, and the hen eggs to the infuriated Persikov. A few shots of the red ray, and little villages across Russia are suddenly being terrorized by forty-foot-long rattlesnakes. Oh, yes.

One thing I'm curious about, that I hope comes up in our discussion, is the actual social position of the research scientist in early Stalin-era Russia. There's never been a place or time when the practice of science hasn't been politicized (usually, though not always, to the chagrin of the scientists themselves), and I'd like to know more about how that played out under the unique circumstances of that era.

Soviet Sci-Fi

I've had a few brief experiences participating in book groups in the past, and since moving to Chicagoland, I've made a few attempts to find a group to join. This is easier said than done, if you're going in blind - it's not as though there's some national internet repository for matching up would-be book groupies (?) to each other - and the few possibilities I've been able to follow up with haven't worked out.

So recently I decided to take advantage of mid-term sign-up for one of the groups sponsored by my local library. This one seems fairly serious, with a focus on hefty-ish fiction and a leader who formerly taught literature in Russia. (I had to draft the grammar of that last phrase several times. Russian former literature professor? Former Russian literature professor? Russian former professor of literature?)

Apparently, they spent last fall on Gogol, but the readings from now though May are all Mikhail Bulgakov. I can't say I previously knew much about Bulgakov (1891-1940) beyond his name. He was born in Kiev to Russian parents. Both his grandfathers were priests, and his father was a theology professor, but Bulgakov himself trained as a doctor and served in a medical capacity in World War I and the Russian Civil War.

Eventually, Bulgakov abandoned medicine to devote himself to literature, but, being a critic of the Soviet regime, found his hands tied by censorship within a decade - this despite having Stalin himself as a particular fan. In fact, rather than granting permission for Bulgakov to emigrate, Stalin found him work as a theatrical satirist. Still, much of his work of lay unpublished in a desk drawer until long after his death, at age 48, from inherited kidney disease.

Our February discussion will cover two shorter works (around 100 pages each) - The Fatal Eggs and Heart of a Dog - both works of science fiction, in its earlier sense; that is, more Jules Verne than Star Trek. I've started on the first, and so far, it's promising.

(Note: The plaque in the photo is installed at the Bulgakov museum in Kiev. I think. Half the site was in Russian.)

The end of 2008

I've been wanting to properly review all of these, but it's not going to happen - but they're all worth a real mention, so here are the last few crumbles from 2008.

1. Gertrude and Claudius - John Updike, 1991

I've occasionally been known to ironically summarize the works of John Updike - all of those I've read, at least - with the single sentence, Everybody spends all their free time committing adultery. The title characters of this novel being the King and Queen of Denmark - yes, of the Prince Hamlet tale - so I suppose it doesn't really break with the theme. Updike tells Gertrude's story from the time of her girlhood betrothal to King Hamlet up to the point where Shakespeare's version picks up. The book is written in three parts: in the first, Updike uses the character names as they appeared in an early account of Danish myth; in the second, as they appeared in a later later adaptation; and in the final section, as Shakespeare presented them. Accordingly, the telling of the story moves starts out with an atmosphere of dark, Nordic, barely post-pagan savagery, and gradually adopts the Renaissance sensibilities that color Shakespeare's telling.

2. Trespassers Will Be Baptized: The Unordained Memoir of a Pastor's Daughter - Elizabeth Emerson Hancock, 2008.

I had to pick this up the moment I saw it in the library, because it belongs to a genre I've long believed to be under-populated: the preacher's kid memoir. (I don't know if that sentiment is because I'd like to write my own, or because I want help defining the situation.) Hancock gets to the heart of the matter of being Raised Right in a first family, and, given the time, place and circumstances, her parents were amazingly awesome. It's a hoot, all rolled up in a familiar blanket.

3. The Yiddish Policemen's Union - Michael Chabon, 2007.

This is...strange. Takes place in a parallel universe in which Israel collapsed in 1948 and the United States offered amnesty to the Jews on an island off the Alaska panhandle (something of the sort was in fact proposed, briefly, in the real world). 60+ years later, the territory is set to revert back to the control of the now State of Alaska, and the Sitka Jews are scrambling to relocate to New York, Mexico, Madagascar. Meanwhile, a hard-drinking cop and his half-Tlingit partner try to solve the murder of the messiahesque, chess pro, junkie son of the local Rebbe/mob boss. Oh, and did I mention the Filipinos? Basically, it's a Raymond Chandler novel in a very odd setting.

2008 Tally

The Tally for 2008: 28. 28? Hm. Less than usual, but that's ok. I passed through a couple of seasons this year in which I couldn't seem to finish anything, or nothing held my interest, or my mind and time were overly occupied by one thing or another in real life, or for one reason or another I just couldn't read. At any rate, here's the list

Read in 2008

• The Yiddish Policemen's Union - Michael Chabon (2007)
• Trespassers Will Be Baptized - Elizabeth Emerson Hancock (2008)
• Larry's Party - Carrol Shields (1997)
• Gertrude and Claudius - John Updike (2000)
• The Periodic Table - Primo Levi (1975)
• Special Topics in Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl (2006)
• Spiritual Formation As If the Church Mattered - James C. Wilhoit (2008)
• The Now Habit - Neil Fiore (1989)
• The Renaissance Soul - Margaret Lobenstine (2006)
• The Third Man - Graham Greene (1950)
• Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) - Jerome K. Jerome (1889)
• How Proust Can Change Your Life - Alain de Botton (1997)
• Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar: Understaing Philosophy Through Jokes - Thomas Cathcart, Daniel Klein (2007)
• The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (2004)
• Possession - A.S. Byatt (1990)
• A Broom of One's Own - Nancy Peacock (2008)
• Miracle at Speedy Motors - Alexander McCall Smith (2008)
• God Is Closer Than You Think - John Ortberg (2005)
• Table for One - Camerin Courtney (2002)
• Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments -Michael Dirda (2000)
• Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances - Alexander McCall Smith (2003)
• Bel Canto - Ann Patchett (2001)
• The Careful Use of Compliments - Alexander McCall Smith (2007)
• Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon - Jane Austen (1795, 1804, 1817)
• Book by Book; Notes on Reading and Life - Michael Dirda (2005)
• Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Susannah Clarke (2004)
• Devil in the White City - Erik Larson (2004)
• The Know-It-All - A..J. Jacobs (2004)