Rating: 
Summary: last of the great samizdat
Review: Ah, this book...a cherished one for me, pilfered from a friend who's father studied under Nabokov (but later given back). I read this under the serious spell of Knut Hamsun and this book is similiar to "Hunger" but perhaps more humorous. It's about an unemployed, alcholic cable fitter who is fired for charting diagrams of his comrades "idleness" correalated with the days they get drunk. Thrust into a serious drinking binge he is stuck on a train trying to reach Moscow and in between we have flashbacks of him trying to buy vodka before restaurants and stores have opened, giving us recipes of cocktails made out of aftershave ("Aunt Clara's Kiss) that brings on hallucinations and incredible verbal pyrotechnics full of literary ramblings and political rumblings. The whole time his hallucinations are marked by a pair of overcoated angels egging him on or chastising his behavior as he mixes up his route on the train forgetting to disembark and actually heading away from his destination. He finally does reach Moscow and the novel closes like a hand over a movie lens as abruptly as it started. It is a startling book, not only the best of the samizdat novels (works distributed like fanzines secretly during the communist regime) but by far the most dazzling comic novels ever written about desperation and alcholism. It is an incredible book and after reading it you will never have patience for another Bukowski book again.
Rating:
Summary: last of the great samizdat
Review: Ah, this book...a cherished one for me, pilfered from a friend who's father studied under Nabokov (but later given back). I read this under the serious spell of Knut Hamsun and this book is similiar to "Hunger" but perhaps more humorous. It's about an unemployed, alcholic cable fitter who is fired for charting diagrams of his comrades "idleness" correalated with the days they get drunk. Thrust into a serious drinking binge he is stuck on a train trying to reach Moscow and in between we have flashbacks of him trying to buy vodka before restaurants and stores have opened, giving us recipes of cocktails made out of aftershave ("Aunt Clara's Kiss) that brings on hallucinations and incredible verbal pyrotechnics full of literary ramblings and political rumblings. The whole time his hallucinations are marked by a pair of overcoated angels egging him on or chastising his behavior as he mixes up his route on the train forgetting to disembark and actually heading away from his destination. He finally does reach Moscow and the novel closes like a hand over a movie lens as abruptly as it started. It is a startling book, not only the best of the samizdat novels (works distributed like fanzines secretly during the communist regime) but by far the most dazzling comic novels ever written about desperation and alcholism. It is an incredible book and after reading it you will never have patience for another Bukowski book again.
Rating:
Summary: translation
Review: I am Russian, and I am not so fluent in English, so beg you pardon. I highly recommend this book, together with Bulgakov this is the most lovely and admired writer in my country.
Rating:
Summary: translation
Review: Moscow Circles (J.R Dorrel) is a better translation than Moscow to the End of the Line (H. William Tjalsma). It's more faithful to the original. I've read them both and prefer it by quite a bit. Moscow Circles is a little hard to find though. Moscow to the End of the Line is still a great read if thats all you can find. This is probably my favorite Russian book!
Rating:
Summary: Intoxicating...in More Ways Than One
Review: MOSCOW TO THE END OF THE LINE centers around Venichka, an alcoholic cable fitter who has only recently been fired from his job. The book is not really a "story." It consists instead of Venichka's rambling monologue as he indulges in one huge binge while taking the train from Moscow to Petushka, supposedly to visit his girlfriend and their young son.When Venichka boards the train at Kursk Station in Moscow, his speech is fairly lucid. As his journey progresses, however, he becomes more and more drunk and his monologue degenerates into incoherent babble, accompanied by hallucinations. Venichka is definitely not a shy speaker and he'll talk to anyone who will listen. He's also willing to expand on just about any topic available: politics, social reform, religion, angels, music, literature, love, philosophy, mathematics and, most of all, alcohol. I know some readers see this book as satire while others see it as a commentary on Soviet Russia. Perhaps I'm too politically unsophisticated, but I didn't see it as either one. I saw it as a brilliant and classic tale of the tragedy of alcoholism. No matter how one interprets the book, however, I think most poeple would agree it's certainly a masterpiece, not only of Russian literature but of world literature as well. MOSCOW TO THE END OF THE LINE is a short book, more novella than novel. It's not divided into chapters; breaks in the monologue occur at the different stops along Venichka's journey. The breaks are not always natural stopping places, however, and, I think it's best to read this book in one sitting. I don't read any Russian at all, so I can only guess how extraordinary this book must be in its original language. Even in translation it's exceptional and the juxtaposition of the poetic and the profane provides a heady mix that's as intoxicating as are Venichka's alcoholic "recipes." MOSCOW TO THE END OF THE LINE is a book I'd recommend to anyone who loves great literature. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Rating:
Summary: Venichka's Journey
Review: Moskva-Petushki, which is translated in English as Moscow to the End of the Line, is Venedikt Erofeev's greatest work, one drunken man's (Venichka's) journey on the Moskovskaia-Gor'skovskaia train line to visit his lover and child in the Petushki. En route, Venichka talks with other travelers in dialogue and he also speaks in monologue about various themes such as drinking, Russian literature and philosophy and the sad, poetic soul of the Russian peasant. As the novel progresses, it becomes increasingly dark, disoriented, hallucinogenic and surrealistic, in proportion to the narrator's alcohol intake. Moscow to the End of the Line was written in 1970. During this time, Erofeev, himself, was traveling around the Soviet Union working as a telephone cable layer. Erofeev's friends have said the author made the story up in order to entertain his fellow workers as they traveled, and that many of these fellow workers were later incorporated as characters in the book. The text of the novel began to be circulated in samizdat within the Soviet Union and then it was smuggled to the West where it was eventually translated into English. The official Russian language publication took place in Paris in 1977. With glasnost, Moscow to the End of the Line was able to be circulated freely within Russia, but, rather than stick to the original form, the novel was abridged in the government pamphlet Sobriety and Culture, ostensibly as a campaign against alcoholism. Finally, in 1995, it was officially published, together with all the formerly edited obscenities and without censorship. Although he is an alcoholic, Venichka never comes across to the reader as despicable. Venichka is not a man who drinks because he wants to drink; he drinks to escape a reality that has gone beyond miserable and veered off into the absurd. He is not a stupid or pitiable character, but rather one who has no outlet for his considerable intelligence. That Venichka is very educated is obvious; he makes intelligent and well-read references to both literature and religion. However, in the restrictive Soviet Union of his time, there was no outlet for this kind of intelligent creativity; Venichka is forced to channel his creative instincts into bizarre drink recipes and visions of sphinxes, angels and devils. Although many will see Moscow to the End of the Line as satire, it really is not. Instead, it is Erofeev's anguished and heartfelt cry, a cry that demanded change. Venichka is not a hopeless character, however, the situation in which he is living is a hopeless one. A semi-autobiographical work, Moscow to the End of the Line was never meant as a denunciation of alcoholism but rather an explanation of why alcohol was so tragically necessary in the day-to-day life of citizens living under Soviet rule. Moscow to the End of the Line is a highly entertaining book and it is a book that is very important in understanding the Russia of both yesterday and today as well. This book is really a classic of world literature and it is a shame that more people do not read Moscow to the End of the Line rather than relying on the standard "bestseller." This book deserves to be more widely read and appreciated.
Rating: 
Summary: The perfect imagery is not yet literature
Review: Obviously, the poem is not a good literature. It is very uneven, with episodes of strikingly different literary strength: from near-perfect accounts of drunk's perceptions to feeble moralizing.
The writer's goal of presenting himself as Soviet-era incarnation of the Russian Silver-era intelligent is laughable. To make his point, he resorts to several crooked arguments.
Firstly, the superficial reasoning, "they, too, drunk excessively." This is untrue, since even Esenin and Majakovsky committed suicide perfectly sober. In the critical minutes, their mind was clear. The writer, on the contrary, exhalts the mindlesness.
Secondly, the non-acceptance of evil. But while the real intelligentsia worked to change the world, or at least clearly opposed it, and usually offered a solution, even if mystic, the writer elevates his inability to do anything positive into the theory. Oscar Wilde, a contrarian par excellence, lashed out on the society, but never praised the drunken coma.
Thirdly, a pretense at erudition. But an acquaintance with few isolated historical facts is no equivalent of digested knowledge.
The writer's claim of the highest morality is immediately discredited by silly and unnecessary anti-Semitic turns.
The hero reminds of Dostoevsky's (Demons) degraded pseudo-intelligentsia ugly precisely because it is a mere pretense.
Is it a coincidence that Erofeev became widely popular at the same time as, for example, Nautilus Pompilius? Hardly so. His ideas resonated in the society which had lost the old ideals and saw no new ones. Two thousands years ago, the same thoughts were expressed in apocalypses. Now, the apocalypse became internalized: it is no longer a death of all brought about by someone on a black horse, but personal death to the world. While the latter recalls of the mystic experience, of people consciously leaving the society in search of the inner self, this is not what the writer suggests. Like a person scattering his inheritance in drunken endeavors, the writer kills the major human endowment, his soul. His appeal might therefore be likened to that of crusaders: the darkest evil made permissible by dressing it in demagogy of good intentions.
Is his message something of meaning? Yes, but that meaning is of Raskolnikoff's mold: any means are allowed for the supposedly more spiritual beings (dropped-out students and common drunks, in fact) toward the materialist population. Only the people content with living in this world could be truly spiritual. Confucius said something like, "In a country of no Humanity, a shame is being rich and renown. But in a country of Humanity, a shame is in poverty and seclusion." His point was that a person should work on himself, preparing himself to live in the state of Humanity.
The poem might serve as warning. It is Venichka's decadence, not his supervisors who punished him. At the same time he drunken himself into delirium, the Soviet dissidents in prisons, labor camps, or boiler-houses worked to change the society.
The most dangerous is the poem's appearance of straightforward decadence. The writer, on the contrary, argues for his way of life as the only decent one. This makes him close to Slavophil writers of the nineteenth century. The poem is consciously patterned in the neo-Christ fashion: the journey is allegorical of the way to Golgotha, culminating in the hero's Passion. This inhumane drunk, who lost an ability to love, to dream, to suffer, for whom alcohol remains the only passion, and vomiting - the only concern, is not a bearer of panhuman morals he poses as.
Rating:
Summary: Sad, humorous, poetic, excellent
Review: There is little to add to the rave reviews that precede me - the novel is a monologue of an alcholic supervisor of a group of men who lay cable ... or at least are employed to lay cable. He is fired for his intellectual curiosity, especially, charting productivity against alcohol consumption. While the novel starts as a realistic narrative, one is given early hints of what is to come e.g. angels guiding the narrator to possible sources of alcohol. As the narrator drinks more, the tale moves from realistic to absurd to surrealistic - abruptly turning realistic at the conclusion. It is as the story turns unrealistic that the reader is given real insight into the Russian soul - literary culture, musical culture, religion. The writing is exquisite - a mixture of poetic and coarse that reflects perfectly the attitude of the speaker and communicates perfectly to the reader. Consider this a must read.
Rating:
Summary: Venichka's Journey
Review: This book was recommended to me by a friend who apparently read it my accident, and loved it. Now I've gotten a hold of it and read it too, and I'm disappointed only because there isn't more of it. I'd like to have three hundred or so more pages of the same stuff. A great mixture of humour and poetry, terribly funny and tragic at the same time. Highly recommended - I've read quite a lot of Russian literature, and I was surprised to find that there are such gems out there that I've never even heard of. Get it, read it, you won't regret it. At least not if there's some sense in you.
Rating:
Summary: An Exquisite Read.
Review: This is a sublime little tale, saturated with humor and pathos. Erofeev (both author & narrator have the same name, heightening the autobiographical tone of the book) is the Dante of the Moscow commuter rail. He stumbles from bar to bar and a purgatory of the 'thirteen varieties of Soviet vodka.' Then, it's onto the train, which takes him some thirty stops from Kursk station and 'The Hammer and Sickle' to the 'end of the line' at Petushki (which I'm told means 'flowers' in Russian) where he is to meet his Beatrice. But (unlike Dante) Erofeev never seems to arrive. As he downs more and more hooch, the story becomes progressively more blotched and incoherent. It culminates in the Passion of Erofeev, in which our poor hero is driven up against the wall of the Kremlin (though whether its the Kremlin in Moscow or Petushki is unclear) and left screwed. This is a story about mercy. Read it. It is easily one of the best books I've read in the past year. Then pass the word along, because it deserves to be better known.
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