What Is to Be Done?

Rating:
Summary: Not artistically great, but strangely compelling
Review: "What is to be done?" is the novel in which noted leftist critic Nikolai Chernyshevsky outlined his vision of a future of economic cooperation and women's rights. Though it is remembered more for its political message than its literary merit, a few words about its plot seem in order. We meet the main character, Vera Pavlovna, as she is about to be betrothed to a man who, though there's nothing especially terrible about him, she does not at all love. She meets the enlightened Dmitri Lopukhov and they fall in love, so, much to her parents' chagrin, they run off together and get married. After a few years of marriage, the odd behavior of Dmitri's close friend Alexander Kirsanov reveals to Dmitri that Alexander loves Vera, and Dmitri correctly suspects that the feeling is mutual, and that although Vera cares for Dmitri very much and appreciates all he has done for her, her passion for him was a youthful indiscretion. Ever sympathetic to his wife's interests, Dmitri contrives to get out of the lovers' way, and Vera and Alexander are happily married for pretty much all of the second half of the novel. Meanwhile, Vera has founded a highly successful sewing union, and Chernyshevsky uses this to preach the value of worker ownership of businesses and also to illustrate women's potential for industry outside the home.

Chernyshevsky admits at a number of points in the work that he wasn't born to be a novelist, and it shows--especially annoying were his inability to stay in the same verb tense and his periodic silly asides to "the sapient reader." Still, I was pleasantly surprised at how gripping I found the work; I was ever anxious to find out what was going to happen to the characters next (partly because their rather unorthodox views on marriage and other matters, especially given the time period, were bound to keep me guessing), and that made the fairly long novel go by a bit more enjoyably than I expected. Some of Chernyshevsky's views, and especially his prophecies for the future, seem a bit naive nowadays (though in my edition, translated in 1886, the translators gleefully note that Chernyshevsky predicted the invention of the electric light), but given when he was writing (1863), it's easier to see how he might fall into some of the traps that he did, and in fact the novel offers a very interesting look at Russian socialist thought in its relatively early years. All in all, though the novel's not great, it's better than it's generally given credit for, and if you're interested in the history of leftist thought or Russian literature, it's a worthwhile read.

Rating:
Summary: Mawkish, misguided, unbelievably bad
Review: I note with amazement that some reviewers comment favorably (!) on the fact that Chernyshevsky was one of the forerunners of "Socialist Realism," and that this man was held in great esteem in the Soviet Union. It's as if, somehow, some people still have not heard the news about the Soviet Union 1918-1953: that it was perhaps the worst period in the entire history of the planet. It should at least be noted that such artists and thinkers as Vladimir Nabokov hold "Socialist Realism" to have been nothing but writing PR for a gang of slave-traders.

Another item -- strangely overlooked -- is just how awful this "novel" is. I mean this seriously: this novel is so bad that it even makes the agitprop churned out by Ayn Rand look good! :-0
Ayn Rand presents the reader with cardboard characters, but Chernyshevky manages not even to produce cardboard characters, but talking heads, wandering moralists, and mad sermonizers. Frequently the characters do not have names firmly attached to them, and one wonders just who is speaking. At least with such other propaganda efforts as "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "The Fountainhead," one always knows who is speaking.

It is somehow vastly depressing to learn that Lenin read this book five times (!) in one summer, and that he firmly considered Chernyshevsky one of the leading influences on his thought. It is even more depressing to realize that "leading Russian criticism" of the 19th century was heavily influenced by such dolts as Chernyshevsky, claiming that novels without overt morals and overt moralizing were worthless. This utilitarian, overtly political school of criticism led straight to the tenets of Socialist Realism, a school which never produced any art at all! (Mounds of human corpses were produced, however, so many that it was impossible to bury them all during the harsh Russian winters.)

This is a fascinating book for the historian and the philosopher, or for anyone trying to understand what went wrong during the 20th century.

Rating:
Summary: The only reason to read this book is masochism
Review: I note with amazement that some reviewers comment favorably (!) on the fact that Chernyshevsky was one of the forerunners of "Socialist Realism," and that this man was held in great esteem in the Soviet Union. It's as if, somehow, some people still have not heard the news about the Soviet Union 1918-1953: that it was perhaps the worst period in the entire history of the planet. It should at least be noted that such artists and thinkers as Vladimir Nabokov hold "Socialist Realism" to have been nothing but writing PR for a gang of slave-traders.

Another item -- strangely overlooked -- is just how awful this "novel" is. I mean this seriously: this novel is so bad that it even makes the agitprop churned out by Ayn Rand look good! :-0
Ayn Rand presents the reader with cardboard characters, but Chernyshevky manages not even to produce cardboard characters, but talking heads, wandering moralists, and mad sermonizers. Frequently the characters do not have names firmly attached to them, and one wonders just who is speaking. At least with such other propaganda efforts as "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "The Fountainhead," one always knows who is speaking.

It is somehow vastly depressing to learn that Lenin read this book five times (!) in one summer, and that he firmly considered Chernyshevsky one of the leading influences on his thought. It is even more depressing to realize that "leading Russian criticism" of the 19th century was heavily influenced by such dolts as Chernyshevsky, claiming that novels without overt morals and overt moralizing were worthless. This utilitarian, overtly political school of criticism led straight to the tenets of Socialist Realism, a school which never produced any art at all! (Mounds of human corpses were produced, however, so many that it was impossible to bury them all during the harsh Russian winters.)

This is a fascinating book for the historian and the philosopher, or for anyone trying to understand what went wrong during the 20th century.

Rating:
Summary: The only reason to read this book is masochism
Review: If you like watching cripples drag their mangled bodies along with fetid, termite ridden crutches, then you'll like Chernyshevsky's prose. The movements are comparable at least; Chernyshevsky jerks and stumbles his way through his prose (and tenses!) extricating himself from each new scene with a terrific, almost audible squelch of effort. Frankly, I started it because I was fascinated that any one author could enrage Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Nabokov to such a point that they all wrote pieces condemning him. I finished it because American television has gifted me with a sadistic sense of voyeurism; it was too terrible not to finish.
I am disgusted by those who brush off Chernyshevsky's lack of talent as relatively unimportant; that crass philistinism echoes Chernyshevsky's assertions that his novel, however lacking in grace, was better than any other book because it was true. The book is not "true"; it's a nauseating, simplistic, and disturbing illustration of socialist thought, with fascist implications. Aesthetics are never secondary in a novel. To all of you pompous college students: Keep your lumbering social agendas and moral mediocrities away from the creative sphere. Go write indignant letters to the editor or self-righteous editorials, just keep away from art.

Rating:
Summary: Probably the Weightiest Russian Writing...
Review: Probably no other single novel or writing has had enough influence on the history of Russia, or for that matter, the modern world. While Marx provided the means and ideas, Chernyshevsky kindled the strongest spark towards the revolution of the peasant masses towards gender and class equality. This work, along with Chernyshevsky's others, was held in the highest esteem in the Soviet Union, shelved along with the philosophies of Marx and Engels and Lenin.

"What is to be done" swept through the liberal student bodies of the Russian universities in the late 19-century, and it was the rereading of Chernyshevsky's novel at Lenin's scholastic exile in Kokushkino that inspired the young man to forge his life's course as a revolutionary. The historical importance alone needs to be understood and appreciated.

Aesthetically, "What is to be done" leaves behind a dry taste in one's mouth; yes, the book is tedious. But at the same time, you can feel the author's energy and fervor at espousing what he really feels is the best course for Russian life, which had been left improved a little, reformed a little, but not wholly bettered since the time of Ivan the Terrible. This is functional art at its best, and it's no question why Chernyshevsky, with his views on art and science given in "The Contemporary," is believed to be the forerunner to Socialist Realism.

Any Russian lit readers should welcome the forerunner to countless Doestoevsky and Tolstoy parodies and reactions, as well as Turgenev's intended "perfect" revolutionary, Bazarov.

Rating:
Summary: Historically important book
Review: This has been called "the worst novel ever written", but it's far from that. Older translations might be partly responsible for that reputation; this new translation is very readable. An excellent introduction is provided, as well as helpful footnotes throughout. The book is blatantly didactic, art in the service of ideas, and you have to be awfully good to make literature that way -- Chernychevsky freely admits that he's not that good. But his plot is actually pretty clever, and the book goes rather quickly. If you want to understand what Dostoevsky's Underground Man was railing about, read this first. The didactic sections are interesting for what they say about the hopes of the 1860s radicals, hopes that we can easily recognize today as fantasies. (Vera's 4th dream is particularly poignant.) Hindsight is a wonderful thing for feeling superior and dealing out the 'told-you-so's'. But the naive faith and doomed optimism of the author is extremely touching. Only 35, he wrote this book from prison, and he could have had no confidence that it would ever see the light of day; yet there is no hint of despair anywhere in it. He was subsequently destroyed by Siberia, and nothing turned out the way he had hoped.

The radicals of his day were not wrong to seek fundamental change in the oppressive and autocratic system under which they lived. They were not alone in being enthralled by the ideas of Robert Owen, and their goal of seeking earthly salvation through reason and the reform of institutions does not make them clowns and fools. Their moral critique of Russian society was valid; their solutions turned out not to be. Not being omniscient, they did not foresee the ways that the flaws in their ideas would be seized upon, utilized, and magnified by men who were power-mad and malevolent, and what Russia's future would thereby turn out to be. They were far from alone in that, also. To flog idealists like Chernyshevksy with the horrors that were perpetrated by others a half-century or more later, is very easy to do. It is also unfair, mean-spirited, and foolish.

Rating:
Summary: Historically important book
Review: This has been called "the worst novel ever written", but it's far from that. Older translations might be partly responsible for that reputation; this new translation is very readable. An excellent introduction is provided, as well as helpful footnotes throughout. The book is blatantly didactic, art in the service of ideas, and you have to be awfully good to make literature that way -- Chernychevsky freely admits that he's not that good. But his plot is actually pretty clever, and the book goes rather quickly. If you want to understand what Dostoevsky's Underground Man was railing about, read this first. The didactic sections are interesting for what they say about the hopes of the 1860s radicals, hopes that we can easily recognize today as fantasies. (Vera's 4th dream is particularly poignant.) Hindsight is a wonderful thing for feeling superior and dealing out the 'told-you-so's'. But the naive faith and doomed optimism of the author is extremely touching. Only 35, he wrote this book from prison, and he could have had no confidence that it would ever see the light of day; yet there is no hint of despair anywhere in it. He was subsequently destroyed by Siberia, and nothing turned out the way he had hoped.

The radicals of his day were not wrong to seek fundamental change in the oppressive and autocratic system under which they lived. They were not alone in being enthralled by the ideas of Robert Owen, and their goal of seeking earthly salvation through reason and the reform of institutions does not make them clowns and fools. Their moral critique of Russian society was valid; their solutions turned out not to be. Not being omniscient, they did not foresee the ways that the flaws in their ideas would be seized upon, utilized, and magnified by men who were power-mad and malevolent, and what Russia's future would thereby turn out to be. They were far from alone in that, also. To flog idealists like Chernyshevksy with the horrors that were perpetrated by others a half-century or more later, is very easy to do. It is also unfair, mean-spirited, and foolish.