Sunstroke: Selected Stories of Ivan Bunin

Rating:
Summary: If you like Chekhov's stories, you'll like these
Review: American and English readers don't generally know the the works of Ivan Bunin, although educated Russians know and love his poetry and short stories, and often can quote them by heart. These stories, unobtrusively translated anew by Graham Hettlinger, vary in length from a couple of pages ('Summer Day', which neatly limns the cruelty arising from boredom) to the seventeen pages of Bunin's best known story, 'The Gentleman from San Francisco.' Most of them, some appearing in English for the first time, are really little more than sharply-etched vignettes which adroitly catch humanity in its variety; sometimes you'll catch your breath with the shock of recognition. If you respond to Chekhov's stories, you'll like these.

Rating:
Summary: Reactionary melodrama
Review: Bunin won the 1933 Nobel Prize for Literature, but we all know that the Literature prize is primarily a political statement (in this case against the Soviet Union that had banned Bunin's work). Bunin's stories are beautiful, lyrical, like poetry written in prose form. In fact, many of his shortest stories are nearly written in blank verse. However, there is a reason why Bunin is "underappreciated." His stories are highly melodramatic and frequently are artificially infused with explicit sentimentality. If Rachmaninoff had written short stories rather than piano concerti, this is how they would have looked. These stories lack the emotional and psychological subtlety of Chekhov and Turgenev, writers to whom Bunin is frequently compared. They are as socially reactionary as they are mushy: The story considered to be Bunin's masterpiece, "The Gentleman from San Francisco" is a patronizing fable about how the (particularly American) bourgeois habit of purchasing nobility is futile. It's like Citizen Kane with a nasty dose of anti-American bourgeoisie bashing. After all, Bunin believed that the nobility were the source of all good in Russia, and the American super-rich were nothing more than pretentious fools. Though the imagery can be lovely, you never get passed the idea that Bunin forced much of what he wrote.

Rating:
Summary: Reactionary melodrama
Review: Bunin won the 1933 Nobel Prize for Literature, but we all know that the Literature prize is primarily a political statement (in this case against the Soviet Union that had banned Bunin's work). Bunin's stories are beautiful, lyrical, like poetry written in prose form. In fact, many of his shortest stories are nearly written in blank verse. However, there is a reason why Bunin is "underappreciated." His stories are highly melodramatic and frequently are artificially infused with explicit sentimentality. If Rachmaninoff had written short stories rather than piano concerti, this is how they would have looked. These stories lack the emotional and psychological subtlety of Chekhov and Turgenev, writers to whom Bunin is frequently compared. They are as socially reactionary as they are mushy: The story considered to be Bunin's masterpiece, "The Gentleman from San Francisco" is a patronizing fable about how the (particularly American) bourgeois habit of purchasing nobility is futile. It's like Citizen Kane with a nasty dose of anti-American bourgeoisie bashing. After all, Bunin believed that the nobility were the source of all good in Russia, and the American super-rich were nothing more than pretentious fools. Though the imagery can be lovely, you never get passed the idea that Bunin forced much of what he wrote.

Rating:
Summary: Sensuous, Poetic Imagery
Review: SUNSTROKE contains some of my very favorite short stories. These stories, written by Nobel Prize winner, Ivan Bunin (he was the first Russian to win the Nobel) have been sadly neglected by American (and even western European) readers. Even sadder is the fact that much of Bunin's work has yet to be translatd from the original Russian and so is inaccessible to those of us who can't read the language.

If you're looking for a good plot or highly developed characters, you won't find either here. Bunin seemed to care little for plot, and characters, for him, seemed to function only as the vehicle through which he could express the rich imagery and sensuous detail of life. The stories contained in SUNSTROKE are not thematic, either, at least not in the way Borges was thematic.

Athough sophisticated, the stories contained in SUNSTROKE express very little of the cerebral. Instead, they concentrate on the sensual, the emotional, the rich fullness of life as well as its tragic fleetingness.

Rather than weave a plot, Bunin chooses instead to concentrate on a smile, a chance meeting, a glimpse of something long remembered or long forgotten. This may seem to make the stories skeletal, though they are anything but. Bunin's gorgeous prose (he was a poet as well as a short story writer) ensure the fact that our reading experience will be rich and luch and voluptuous. Bunin isn't a writer who makes the reader think; he's a writer who makes the reader feel.

While I love all the stories in this volume, my favorite is Bunin's best known, "The Gentleman From San Francisco." This beautifully told story, which expresses both the fleetingness and tragedy of life, is longer than most of Bunin's other stories. Even so, we never become involved with the characters. Instead, it's their situation that moves us (sometimes to tears); it's the emotional depth the story expresses that's important.

"The Gentleman From San Francisco" is a rare masterpiece of a story, embracing not only tragedy, but beauty and pleasure as well. In my opinion, "The Gentleman From San Francisco" is on par with Tolstoy's beautiful novella, THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYCH, yet it is far less widely known. Overall, however, I think you'll find these stories more akin to Chekhov (Bunin's friend and contemporary) than to Tolstoy (Bunin's idol).

If you haven't read any of Ivan Bunin's stories, there's no better place to start than with this volume. It's filled with tragic and beautiful imagery, lovingly detailed by a true artist of life.

Finally, I have to thank Graham Hettlinger for translating these stories and, in doing so, giving those of use who don't read Russian, the priceless gift of Bunin's writing. The love and admiration Hettlinger feels for Bunin's work is certainly evident in this beautiful volume.

Rating:
Summary: Vivid descriptions not to be missed
Review: These selected short stories include Ivan Bunin's better known 'Gentleman from San Francisco' along with over twenty other newly-translated stories - some for the first time in English. Bunin's language is filled with sparkling descriptions and metaphors: vivid images fairly leap from the page as individuals and circumstances spring to life. His vivid descriptions are not to be missed.