Charles Yrigoyen

“If we have learned nothing else… at least we have learned to stand in line.”
Said in 1946 in “A Gentleman in Moscow”.

One of the criticisms sometimes levelled at Towles’ novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, is that the Bolshevik revolution is only seen by a “former person”, from his very gilded cage.
One of the things I disliked about Towles’ short story A Whimsy in the World was its magical unrealism.
This short story is between the two in terms of realism and, written after A show more Gentleman in Moscow, but starting before it, it shows the revolution from the viewpoint of peasants and workers. Sort of.

The story

Pushkin (not the poet, though he apparently has a poetic soul) is a contented peasant, and from the first page, we know there will be a sprinkling of fairy dust:
“And we all know exactly where that sort of happiness leads.”

He and his wife, Irena, hear a young man from Moscow preach the revolutionary message. Pushkin is not much of a thinker, and besides, he’s content. But Irena, fired with a convert’s zeal, takes charge, takes her husband on a five day trek to Moscow, and finds them both jobs and an apartment in the huge city.
“Pushkin felt like a character in a folk tale.”

I liked how Pushkin’s wide-eyed wonder and simple acceptance of life contrasts with Irena’s political fervour and earnest desire to retain faith in it, and her husband, even in the face of food shortages and his apparent inadequacies. It’s a constant to-and-fro, but increasingly upbeat and unrealistic, although it’s not fantastical in the sense of magic.

However, after mention of “a bright yellow card marked by a crimson stamp” it becomes either outright comedy (it’s beyond satire) or jumps the shark, according to taste.

The overall mood, even before that, is mostly so rose-tinted that I don’t think it escapes the criticisms some make of A Gentleman in Moscow (see below): there is no sense of the suffering and death of millions over many years.

Image: A queue (line) for bread in Soviet Russia (Source)

Analogy overload

This is stuffed with more similes and metaphors than a piñata at the party of an over-generous host. I quickly found them an exhausting and tiresome distraction. The good ones (“Times of upheaval throw off orphans like sparks”) were swamped like a beach in a proxigean spring tide by others that were oddly oxymoronic (“quiet as a crèche”), or just clichéd (the annoyance of a dripping tap), or irrelevant.

Furthermore, their fluffy tone was oddly juxtaposed with the hardships of Communist Russia, though I realise that was deliberate, and many readers will enjoy them for that very reason.

Read it

It’s about 20 pages, and free to read online, HERE.

What do I make of Amor Towles?

• Just over a year ago I read his short story, A Whimsy of the World, and thought it objectively weak: an idea for a children’s picture book, padded out (see my review HERE).
• Last week I read his novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, which immediately entered my top ten reads (see my review HERE).
• I’ve now read this short story, which is better than Whimsy, but not to my taste.
• Nevertheless, I am now reading Rules of Civility. show less

In my period of doctrinal studies I wanted to know more of the Methodist doctrinal beliefs. I found this book was very good for getting a complete picture of this particular faith.

Updated from 1st edition with the inclusion of entries such as feminism, Latin America, divorce, and the addition of several biographies. Intro essay has brief history of Methodism by Frank Baker, updated by editors.

UMW Book