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Title: Pushkin's Button by Serena Vitale, John Rothschild, Ann Goldstein ISBN: 0374239355 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: March, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4
Rating: 3
Summary: Potential Interest, but Goes Nowhere
Comment: This book is full of interesting subject matter. Pushkin, the founding father of Russian Literature and its most exemplary poet, is a fascinating figure, embodying the enigmatic Russian soul and character. He was the ultimate Romantic outsider. His African descent was the subject of behind-the-back snickering at the court of Nicholas I. He was, however, held in great esteem as a writer by his contemporaries, yet he did not achieve his heroic status until after his death. It is his death (at the relatively young age of 38) in a duel with the French dandy, George D'Anthes, that is the primary subject of Serena Vitale's investigation.
The main drawbacks to Pushkin's Button are stylistic. Instead of marshaling her facts and presenting them in a forthright manner, Vitale instead resorts to a kind of breathy, gossip-laden, Dominick Dunne for "Vanity Fair," type exercise. She also scatters tidbits of information that she claims will have some significant import later in the story, yet in most instances, this turns out not to be the case. If she is trying to write a mystery, there are way too many red herrings. She claims that a series of letters found in a trunk in Paris in 1989 and viewed for the first time by her, reveal some startling information concerning the events leading up to the duel. Written by D'Anthes to his patron Barron Heeckeren (the Dutch Ambassador to Russia, who later adopted D'Anthes and may have had a more-than-fatherly love for his charge), they convey nothing particularly startling. To those familiar with the background behind the main characters, the fact that the letters reveal that D'Anthes and Heeckeren were shallow, supercilious hedonists is hardly news. Though she constantly hints that "all will be revealed," concerning the identity of the perpetrator of the "cuckold letters" that were disseminated amongst the Petersburg aristocracy, and that directly led Pushkin to challenge D'Anthes to the fatal duel, the identity behind the letters is never established. This is but one example of myriad unsubstantial queries the author leaves hanging.
For those looking for a more carefully reasoned, and infinitely better written book that covers much of the same material, I would recommend Henri Troyat's biography of Pushkin. Troyat, unlike Vitale, doesn't engage in empty conjecture and he has a thorough understanding of Russian history and literature, as he has authored several great biographies, ranging from Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Tolstoy, Elizabeth II, Alexander I, etc.
Rating: 4
Summary: Literary Whydunnit
Comment: In her work on the events surrounding the duel that killed famed Russian writer Pushkin, Vitale weaves a literary web of both his contemporaries' accounts of the events leading up to the duel and its repercussions, and the often tangled motives of the players and those who reported their actions. Similar in its reconstruction techniques to Charles Nichols' "The Reckoning" (dealing with the murder of Christopher Marlowe), "Pushkin's Button" reads like a great mystery, and a window onto upper class Russian society of the day
Rating: 5
Summary: It reads like a novel!
Comment: A stunning tour de force of scholarship and literary style. Truly a suspenseful page-turner, somehow not slowed down by the author's use of liberal quotations from primary sources. Some of the credit must go to the translator, Anna Goldstein.
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Title: Alexander Pushkin (Everyman's Poetry Series) by Tony Briggs, Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin ISBN: 046087862X Publisher: Everyman Pub. Date: August, 1997 List Price(USD): $3.50 |
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Title: The Guest from the Future: Anna Akhmatova and Isaiah Berlin by Gyorgy Dalos, Antony Wood, Andrea Dunai ISBN: 0374167273 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Mr Phillips by John Lanchester ISBN: 0399146040 Publisher: Putnam Pub Group Pub. Date: April, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes ISBN: 0805057838 Publisher: Metropolitan Books Pub. Date: 21 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Anil's Ghost (Vintage International) by Michael Ondaatje ISBN: 0375724370 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 24 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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