Around the World in 80 Books discussion

Start discussion here for An Armenian Sketchbook by Vasily Grossman.

About the Book (from the publisher)

Few writers had to confront as many of the last century’s mass tragedies as Vasily Grossman, who wrote with terrifying clarity about the Shoah, the Battle of Stalingrad, and the Terror Famine in the Ukraine. An Armenian Sketchbook, however, shows us a very different Grossman, notable for his tenderness, warmth, and sense of fun.

After the Soviet government confiscated—or, as Grossman always put it, “arrested”—Life and Fate, he took on the task of revising a literal Russian translation of a long Armenian novel. The novel was of little interest to him, but he needed money and was evidently glad of an excuse to travel to Armenia. An Armenian Sketchbook is his account of the two months he spent there.

This is by far the most personal and intimate of Grossman’s works, endowed with an air of absolute spontaneity, as though he is simply chatting to the reader about his impressions of Armenia—its mountains, its ancient churches, its people—while also examining his own thoughts and moods. A wonderfully human account of travel to a faraway place, An Armenian Sketchbook also has the vivid appeal of a self-portrait.


About the Author (from The Modern Novel)

Vasily Grossman was born in Berdychiv (in what is now Ukraine) in 1905. He was born Iosif Solomonovich Grossman but his name was Russified into Vasily, though he was called Vasya at home. His father was a chemical engineer and his mother a French teacher. His parents separated when he was five and Grossman and his mother lived in Switzerland for a while. He lived with his father, while studying in Kiev, and then moved to Moscow where he studied physics and mathematics at Moscow University. After graduating he worked as a chemical engineer in the Donbass region. His first story received praise from Gorky and Bulgakov. It was made into a successful film, which was finally released in 1987. He continued to write and publish and left his job to become a full-time writer. He had trouble with the authorities when his novel, Степан Кольчугин [Stepan Koluchin], was denied the Stalin Prize, allegedly by Stalin himself.

During the War, he worked as a war correspondent but his mother was trapped in Berdychiv and murdered along with many others Jews by the invading Germans. He was at many of the key events of the war, including the Battle of Stalingrad, which featured in his novel За правое дело [For a Just Cause] and the Battle of Berlin. He published newspaper articles and books on the topic, as well as articles and books on the Holocaust. He also edited The Black Book, which documented crimes by the Germans against the Jews. The book was suppressed and only published in Russian in Jerusalem in 1980. Because of the post-war anti-Semitism campaign in the Soviet Union as well as Grossman’s criticism of the treatment of the peasants, his work was soon no longer published. His magnum opus, Жизнь и судьба (Life and Fate), was submitted for publication in 1959 but was rejected and the KGB raided his flat and took all manuscripts and carbon copies. He was told that the book could not be published for two hundred years. Fortunately, a microfilm was smuggled out of the Soviet Union by Vladimir Voinovich and published in Switzerland in 1980. But by this time, Grossman had died of stomach cancer (in 1964) and he never saw his greatest work published.

I started this book today and I admit to being surprised so far, admittedly page 20. I expected a travelogue, with personal commentary. Thus far, it is an essay outlining Grossman’s political and philosophical thoughts. Not a bad thing, but again not what I had anticipated.

Here’s a wonderful review from The Spectator circa 2003. It provides context that I found to be more straightforward and accessible even than that provided by the Introduction in the NYRB version (Yury Bit-Yunan and Robert Chandler).

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2013/08/a...

And another from The Jewish Chronicle that makes some additional and key points.

https://www.thejc.com/culture/books/r...

I am on page 60 and entranced. The political philosophy has toned down, and I am most reminded of In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, a book I love and first read a couple of years ago.

Grossman’s descriptions of individual women are kind, rich, evocative.

It becomes more travel-oriented and when he settles into the countryside and becomes acquainted with the people there.

Diane wrote: "It becomes more travel-oriented and when he settles into the countryside and becomes acquainted with the people there."

Indeed. It switches between melancholy, food, piercing observation and back to melancholy. I love his prose. His insecurity (when no one cares about talking to him, for example), is charming and relatable.

Carol,
I enjoyed the article from the spectator. It gave me some much needed background that makes a few of the chapters of Grossman's book make more sense.

I enjoyed the random musings of the various subjects, people, and places. He was so fixated on the ever-present and abundant stone all over Armenia. The wedding at the end made me sad because it didn't sound joyful at all. But the description of his personal discomfort on the way to the wedding because of stomach troubles gave me the giggles.

The best part, for me, was his statement about nationalism being bad because it focuses on surface similarities between people and not the deep things we have in common. Grossman's belief that all of humankind are brothers is the message we need to spread and actually believe in today.

The wedding, the bride’s blue coat, the vodka and peppers, the speeches, his intense need to use the facilities, and then the quote from nationalists musing that it’s a pity Hitler didn’t finish the job. There’s so much there in a dozen pages.

It was the sort of strong, thoughtful, passionate close that makes me rate the book higher than I would have if you’d asked me at page 100. I’m so glad we read this.