Eugene Ostashevsky

Much of my reading revolves around World War II. And then I read the news. Sometimes it's hard to tell apart history and current events. Nor is it easy to keep your spirits up amid all this reading. And then THE PIRATE WHO DOES NOT KNOW THE VALUE OF PI falls into my lap. The PIRATE and his PARROT are a PERFECT anti-Dote to tRump. There were moments I laughed so hard I could no longer read the lines out loud.

THE PIRATE... might perhaps be best described as a picaresque poem. But you could also call it a one-book deserted island (but wait, is it deserted if there is a pirate and a parrot, and the reader to boot? -- a philosophical question central to the enterprise of piracy!). Then again, you might call it a galley, rigged with pirated lines and parroted puns. The knowledge of Russian, a smattering of French, a handle on sums and square roots, familiarity with Kant and Wittgenstein (and other -steins & their contents), a passing acquaintance with language philosophy (or perhaps language psittosophy) might be enlightening to the reader, although they are neither prerequisite nor precisely proportional to the quantity of laughter the reader will take away as his or her loot. (Although the ability to sense humor is sine qua non.)… (more)

Worth reading for the Vvedensky and Kharms alone, although some of the Kharms is also available elsewhere (see Today I Wrote Nothing). Much of Vvedensky's work was regrettably lost or destroyed, so the selections here are mainly later efforts. The rest is a mixed bag; a few of these were not even OBERIU members, but instead had some association with the group at one time. A couple were philosophers who Vvedensky and Kharms loosely joined with after OBERIU disbanded following persecution of the group that led to sentences in labor camps or internal exile for various members. Of these, Yakov Druskin's work was the highlight.

Some reviewers who read Russian have complained about the translations in this volume. I can't speak to that, although one can see the potential for difficulty considering the penchant for extreme wordplay that these fellows exercised. No doubt the English can rarely, if ever, match the original Russian.… (more)