There is just one more story left in our project—and it’s the shortest, only six pages, the second by Tolstoy.
In the course of looking for a cover image, I learned that it was published after Tolstoy’s death, and that it was based on a real person. (Inadvertently, I also learned how the story ends, because I cannot stop my eyes from scanning forward, or so it seems. /sigh)
This led me back to the diaries of Sophia Tolstoy (1844-1919). She started to keep a journal shortly after she married Tolstoy, and continued until she died. And, indeed, there is a reference to our title character, in December 1863.
Sophia’s sad. (Already! I don’t think they’d been married long at all!) And feeling neglected at best and betrayed at worse, believing that Tolstoy is undervaluing her love for him (and perhaps overvaluing someone else’s).
Which is when she says that she’s in the mood to flirt with anyone, “even with someone like Alyosha Gorshkoi”, who was, other sources say, the cook’s assistant and yard keeper.
I’ve only read the first page of the story (because I didn’t have my notebook with me, where I’ve been recording my first-page and mid-way expectations for each story in this project).
But, even so, we know straight away that Alyosha was a “skinny, lop-eared boy” with wing-like ears and a big nose (perhaps the inspiration for a certain Gogol tale).
This only seems to accentuate Sophia’s statement, that the last person anyone would expect her to flirt with, would be Alyosha Gorshkoi.
And even the fact that only this single reference exists about him in her diaries, eleventy-billion pages long in my copy, also reflects his relative importance in the Tolstoy family’s lives.
George Saunders has come up in my other reading recently, however. Specifically in a book by Elissa Altman called Permission, about memoirs and their creators, from Victoria Chang to Joy Williams.
Altman writes about Saunders’ instruction to writers that, while editing, they should “get quiet and listen to what the work is trying to tell them” (in contrast to their preconceived ideas about what they thought they were writing, because that might not be what lands on the page). Again about managing the gap between expectations and reality, in a slightly different context.
Altman actually adds to Saunders’ advice with memoir specifically in mind, saying memoir writers must also query what the work reveals about the writer’s motivations, because writing memoir could be an act of “transcendence” but also “retribution”. I imagine Saunders whispering “listen”, and Altman over his shoulder whispering “listen harder”. (And I bet we can all think of some memoir writing which skips over transcendence and leans hard into retribution.)
Since last month’s story, there’s also been news of another novel coming from Saunders next January.
And just a couple days ago, the Booker Prize longlist was announced, which includes Maria Reva’s fabulous novel, Endling. (In which George Saunders is the example that fictionalised Reva’s agent holds up, instructing her to stitch together her stories like he does, cuz it’s hard to move from short-to long-form fiction.)
As for other “reading around” our A Swim in a Pond in the Rain project, my copy of Chekov’s letters has arrived via ILL, and I borrowed a copy of “Bicycle Thieves” (even though it’s now been so long since GS recommended it that I no longer recall its significance). Beyond, I do want to read on with each of these authors, but next up, this fall, will be Tanya Talaga’s The Knowing, a different kind of resistance literature.
Anyone interested in joining with this final Tolstoy story can find a copy here, although both Bill and Bron are more experienced with seeking out digital options for texts (with specific translation).
It’s the last in our ASiaPitR list:
Anton Chekhov “In the Cart” 1897 (February) Trans. Avrahm Yarmolinsky
Ivan Turgenev “The Singers” 1852 (March) Trans. David Magarshack
Anton Chekhov “The Darling” 1899 (April) Trans. Avrahm Yarmolinsky
Leo Tolstoy “Master and Man” 1895 (May) Trans. Louise Mude and Aylmer Maude
Nikolai Gogol “The Nose” 1836 (June) Trans. Mary Struve
Anton Chekhov “Gooseberries” 1898 (July) Trans. Avrahm Yarmolinsky
Leo Tolstoy “Alyosha the Pot” 1905 (August) Trans. Clarence Brown
[…] Gooseberries (1898) BIP 1, BIP 2, wadh, This Reading LifeLeo Tolstoy, Alyosha the Pot (1905) BIP 1, BIP 2, wadh, This Reading […]
Ah, those spoilers are terrible, aren’t they? 😉
Hahaha, exactly!
Thanks for the news about the upcoming Vigil … a cause for celebration a new Saunders ! Also I’d like to read the Maria Reva novel up for the Booker. Will it make the shortlist?
I hope it does: such a clever way of telling a story!
Thanks for the tip about the cook’s assistant being based on their real family servant and Sophia’s comment – I will keep that in mind when I sit down to read this story (hopefully this weekend is the plan).
Saunders advice about editing is so interesting. I wonder if writers often surprise themselves writing about something entirely different to what was initially intended, and without realising it at first. Intriguing!
What he observes about how wide the gap can be between what a writer intends and, by virtue of not rigorously attending to what’s on the page through revision, what readers receive has changed my thinking about the process. Made me sit up a little straighter in my seat!
Unlike you I kept going for all six pages. Didn’t take very long! And at least the ending was where it should be, at the end. Why do smartypants keep sneaking endings into Introductions? it will be interesting to think about why Tolstoy made his “cook’s assistant and yard keeper” into a fictional cook’s assistant and yard keeper, and gave him the no doubt fictional ending that he gave him.
Hahaha, I can see where it will be the sort of story that proceeds in a predictable manner; I’m curious to see what’s between that first page and the (inadvertently spoilers) last. It’s interesting to me that I want to know more about these Russian writers as a means of better understanding their short stories; I don’t have that inclnation with today’s short story writers. (And I’m betting you don’t have it about ANY short story writers! heh)
I wonder if you will think the arc of the story was predictable when you read it (as you no doubt have by now). In any case, I am as bemused as you are by my comment – I seem to be trying to say that Introductions are not the place to discuss the story – I am all the time surprising myself by what I write.
Why can’t the discussion go in an Afterword, after [one has read all the] words?! It seems a straightforward matter. hee hee
I agree with you Bill. I prefer Afterwords to Introductions, and always read Introductions at the end. Not only do I not want spoilers but I don’t want to be told what to think.
As for the comment about writers being quiet when editing. Love it. Even with my own little blog posts, I can see how sometimes what I write and how it comes across can vary because I haven’t attended properly.
I think writing on the ‘net is particularly challenging in one unusual sense, because if one is constantly to keep one’s audience in mind, well, then, the ‘net means that audience is actually anyone with an internet connection. When it comes to your own little URL on the web, you have to keep in mind someone who reads most of what you write AND a first-time visitor (who might have landed there via a search string). It’s so tricky: as Saunders says, you have to lean in to what you do (which means knowing what that is LOL).