The life lived in the external or internal world of a writer

When promotional material for Cult Writers: 50 Nonconformist Novelists You Need to Know fell into my inbox, I couldn't resist comparing its contents against my own mental list of quirky writers and literary obsessions.

Written by Ian Haydn Smith and illustrated by Kristelle Rodeia, this volume covers a decent cross-section of slightly off-mainstream literature available to the English reading public. Some of the writers are better known for their poetry or essays, but all had authored at least one novel. (For those interested, the publisher's page reveals the full list of writers.)

Note: The contents of my digital review copy differ slightly from the public list (swapping out five entries). I truly hope Eve Babitz and Joan Didion made the final cut over Joseph Heller and James Joyce.

I've read 32 of them, and obsessed over several of them throughout various phases of my life (though only one served as namesake for a pet cat).

Women writers are relatively well represented (23 of the 50). Regarding language, 18 of them do not write in English. All but 12 writers are dead.

Only one author had I never heard of (Juan Rulfo).

Each entry is topped by the writer's name and dates, with a pithy descriptive label, like "Chronicler of the Weird" (Murakami) or "The Literary Outlaw" (Genet) or "The Experimenter" (Lessing). Some of these are repetitive, not particularly insightful, arguably not even accurate, but I'd be hard-pressed to come up with better options — that's a tough exercise.

The entry covers a combination of biography, publication history, and public reception — it sticks to objective fact rather than attempt to offer insight. There is little attention to any particular work, but in most cases a style is attributed to the author — "Southern Gothic" (McCullers) and poetic Confessionalism (Plath) — and their work is described in broad thematic strokes. Every entry is complemented by an illustration of the author (that's Bulgakov below, and can you guess who it is on the cover?), and some of them feature quotations.

The book is indexed (mostly people, institutions, publications, and prizes) and includes a list of key works for each writer.

But how do you define the cult status of a writer anyway? Without setting hard and fast criteria, Smith focuses on the fervour of their readership and their transgression of genre boundaries.

However, for all its focus on their work, this book is ultimately about the creators. Which raises another question: is a cult writer defined by the work they produce or the life they have lived? As you will glean from the portraits included here, the answer is: both. More specifically, it depends on the life lived in the external or internal world of a writer.

(Umm, what? I think I disagree.)

I would dispute the status of some of the writers included (and here my own biases will be laid bare).

One stumbling block for me is that I don't think it's enough to have authored a cult book to be considered a cult writer. To me, you're only a cult writer if, having experienced your work, I'm compelled to search out and devour everything you've ever written.

By my thinking, JRR Tolkien does not fit the bill. The world he created is massive and influential; Middle Earth inspires worship, but Tolkien does not. Besides, he is too obvious and too present in our culture to be a discovery — cult status is reserved for the special, beyond mainstream.

Pauline Réage authored but one book, The Story of O. She is, I think, unfairly labeled here as "the sado-masochist author," diminishing the sexual paradox of liberation in slavery that it explores and the controversial brand of feminism it inspires. While I think her novel is an important one and it enjoys elite status, the author, anonymous for years, remains essentially unknown.

Ken Kesey. Really?

And Ayn Rand. Does anyone read her seriously after high school?

But I was pleased to see Chris Kraus in this company (whose work I only recently discovered, and yes, I am compelled to explore more).

And then there are the inevitable oversights.

Smith justifies some of his choices in the introduction: "Thomas Pynchon stands in for other experimental writers such William Gaddis, Roberto Bolaño and David Foster Wallace." Even while they're all postmodernists, and often maximalists, they're quite different. I suspect Pynchon is less prevalent on college campuses today than the others. But maybe not. (Smith acknowledges, "Times are changing and so should this list.") Since the entries tend toward the biographical with only a minimal attempt to place these figures on the literary landscape and describe their significance and influence, the idea that one writer might stand for a group isn't strongly conveyed. (I would've chosen Bolaño to represent this group, because he resonates more strongly with this millennium's readers.)

Smith nods at a few other writers that didn't make the cut (I would have included Mark Z Danielewski over several of the others).

The one writer missing who, in my view, absolutely ought to be here: Clarice Lispector.

Despite my quibbles, I love lists, and I think Cult Writers makes for a great coffee table book. It has smallish dimensions but the illustrations are a lot of fun. It's not the kind of book you read cover to cover; you flip through and learn a random fact, reminisce over the copy of Cortázar your ex gave you, be inspired to finally read Train Dreams.

I'd happily bestow this book on the right college student, possibly annotated to better mould their mind.

Whom would you include in a list of cult writers everybody needs to know?

What would it be like to read Bulgakov for the first time now?

"I don't know if you have ever been in love. Really and truly. If you have, you're a lucky man, If not, I envy you like the devil, because you have the greatest adventure of your life ahead of you — perhaps. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's like with books. It was great to read The Master and Margarita at grammar school, but I'm green with envy to think there are adults who still have that ahead of them. I sometimes wonder: what would it be like to read Bulgakov for the first time now? Never mind. Anyway, if you want to reply: 'I don't know,' it means you haven't loved yet."

— from Entanglement, by Zygmunt Miłoszewski.

These are not new sentiments being expressed here, but I find this little monologue from a minor character in the final pages of this contemporary Polish crime novel odd for two reasons.

Odd thing number one: I love books. Sure, there are times I prefer the company of books to people. But I my love for books is not on the same scale as my love for my loved ones. These are entirely different orders of love; it would not occur to me to juxtapose them.

Odd thing number two: To read a beloved book again for the first time is a common enough wish. I've heard people wish this of Jane Eyre. Childhood classics, coming of age classics. Mind-bending SF classics. Simply it surprises me that the sentiment should be expressed regarding Bulgakov.

I read The Master and Margarita more than twenty years ago, loved it, but remember next to nothing about it. I've been planning to reread it — perhaps this year is the year — and in a different translation, it'll be as if I'm reading it for the first time. Won't it?

What would you like to read again for the first time?

The devil in a bottle

The experience of Mikhail Bulgakov's short story Morphine is exquisite and hallucinatory, but its meaning is a little elusive.

On the surface it's the story of a young country doctor who turns to morphine to quell his stomach pains, perhaps the manifestation of a deeper suffering. Polyakov had been in love with an opera singer, but she left him. "I was a man full of joie de vivre until my domestic drama."

Add a layer of biographical context. Bulgakov himself was addicted to morphine. During the First World War he served as a doctor on the front, where he suffered serious injuries and developed a habit.

Polyakov tries to wean himself from morphine by taking cocaine. "The Devil in a bottle. Cocaine is the Devil in a bottle":

There's no pain. On, on the contrary: I'm anticipating the euphoria that will soon be coming. And then it does come. I know of it because the sounds of the accordion which Vlas the watchman, rejoicing at spring, is playing on the porch, the ragged, hoarse sounds of the accordion, which come flying to me, muffled, through the window pane, become angelic voices, and the rough basses in billowing furs hum like a heavenly choir. But then, after an instant, obeying some mysterious law which isn't described in a single one of the pharmacology books, the cocaine in the blood is transformed into something new. I know: it's a mixture of the Devil and my blood. And on the porch Vlas flags, and I hate him, while the sunset, with an uneasy rumbling, scorches my innards. And that's how it is several times running in the course of an evening until I realize that I'm poisoned. My heart starts thumping such that I can feel it in my arms, in my temples... and then it sinks into an abyss, and there are sometimes moments when I think that Dr Polyakov won't come back to life again...

But a Bulgakov-loving Russian I know tells me this is a story about the revolution, how morphine (or vodka, or whatever) is the only means of coping with the insanity, horror, devastation, absurdity of sovietism.

Indeed, Polyakov's diary runs from January 1917 till his death in February 1918. "There's a revolution going on there." "Far, far away is dishevelled, turbulent Moscow." Perhaps the woman he pines for, unreasonably, is Mother Russia.

Medical professionals will view Morphine as a document with educational value, for example: "Bulgakov's short story Morphine documents the decline of Dr Polyakov and illustrates a number of salient professional issues such as self-medication, abuse of authority and risks to patients."

So many stories in this one story. And if we go back to the beginning, it's still not clear where happiness lies.

Morphine was originally published in 1926 and is generally collected in A Country Doctor's Notebook. Morphine is also published on its own as a New Directions Pearl.

Has anybody seen the adaptation of A Young Doctor's Notebook with Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcliffe?

How you do remember happiness

Clever people have been pointing out for a long time that happiness is like good health: when it's there, you don't notice it. But when the years have passed, how you do remember happiness, oh, how you do remember it!

— from Morphine, by Mikhail Bulgakov.

Some books I'd ordered arrived yesterday. Coincidentally they're all Russian, setting off an olympic marathon of Russian literature.

I've yet to read past the first paragraph of Bulgakov's short story Morphine, but I love the design of this slim volume, the feel of it, it's whiteness, it's lightness, like a sheet of ice. Happiness.

Why do you want to write? It must be so upsetting!

"Leontii Sergeyevich" remarked Ivan Vasilievich, "has brought me a play."

"Whose play?" asked the old woman, gazing at me sorrowfully.

"Leontii Sergeyevich has written the play himself."

"What for?" asked Nastasya Ivanovna anxiously.

"What do you mean — what for?... H'm... h'm..."

"Aren't there enough plays already?" asked Nastasya Ivanovna in a tone of kindly reproach. "There are such lovely plays and so many of them! If you were to start playing them you couldn't get through them all in twenty years. Why do you want to write? It must be so upsetting!"

She was so convincing that I could find nothing to reply, but Ivan Vasilievich drummed his fingers and said:

"Leontii Leontievich has written a modern play!"

This disturbed the old lady and she said: "We don't want to attack the government!"

"Why should anyone want to?" I said in her support.

"Don't you like The Fruits of Enlightenment?" asked Nastasya Ivanovna shyly and anxiously. "Such a nice play... and there's a part in it for dear Ludmilla..." She sighted and got up. "Please give my respects to your father."

"Sergei Sergeyevich's father is dead," put in Ivan Vasilievich.

"God rest his soul," said the old lady politely. "I don't suppose he knew you were writing a play, did he?"

Black Snow, by Mikhail Bulgakov, is a very funny novel. Bulgakov never finished it, and it was not published for more than thirty years after his death.

It starts off as a book about the creative process, and veers off into the surreal (weird). There's a failed suicide attempt (funny) and a Mephistophelean editor (funny!), and before long it's a nightmare of financial dealings, with characters, offices, and assets disappearing over night (funny, in a dark way). Most of the novel, however, has the pacing and tenor of a 1930s screwball comedy, befitting the theatrical farce that it is.

For example, the theatre itself is opulent, the foyer hung with portraits in gilded frames, including depictions of Sarah Bernhardt, Molière, Shakespeare, various actors and other theatrical personages, and the Emperor Nero (hilarious!).

"By order of Ivan Vasilievich," said Bombardov, keeping a straight face. "Nero was a singer and an artiste."

The business of the theatre is chaotic and has a logic all its own. Bulgakov captures the mystique with an almost filmic precision:

The three telephones rang incessantly and sometimes the little office was deafened by all three ringing at once. None of this disturbed Philipp in the least. With his right hand he picked up the receiver of the right-hand telephone, clamped it between his shoulder and his cheek, with his left hand he picked up the other receiver and pressed it to his left ear. Freeing his right hand he used it to take one of the notes being handed to him and began talking to three people at once — into the left-hand telephone, the right-hand and then the visitor again. Right-hand telephone, visitor, left, left, right, right. Dropping both receivers back on to their rests at once and thus freeing both hands, he took two of the scraps of paper. Refusing one of them, he picked up the receiver from the yellow telephone, listened for a moment and said: "Ring up tomorrow at three o'clock." He hung up and said to the petitioner: "Nothing doing."

In time I began to understand what they wanted from Philipp Philippovich. They wanted tickets.

Black Snow is based on Bulgakov's own experiences with writing for the Moscow Art Theatre. Bulgakov mercilessly satirizes the theatre milieu and its famous director, Konstantin Stanislavski (he of the eponymous acting method). It is much less political than I might have expected, but it does deal with censorship of a kind — how a playwright's work ceases to be his own.

Despite feeling uneven, like three or four different novels rolled into one though they might have wandered off in different directions, Black Snow is a highly entertaining insider's view of the workings of the theatre.

Mired deep in the relentless, endless mud of Russia

Why do so many Russian writers need to make their protagonist a victim or pain-bearer? Why this fixation with self-flagellation? With guilt?

My theory — based on absolutely no research whatsoever — starts with mud. Thick, sucking, up-to-your-knees mud. Centuries of it. Add millions of serfs all labouring away, mired deep in the relentless, endless mud of Russia. Lives worn away by the yoke of oppressive landowners. Throw into the mix long, dark, dismally cold winter. Pile on the gloomy weight of the church. Voilà! The only hope of survival is to admit your guilt and accept punishment for the unknown sin that landed you in this miserable existence. A resigned acknowledgement of your own responsibility. A spiritual masochism.

— from Terry Gilliam's introduction to Black Snow, by Mikhail Bulgakov.

Bulgakov and the case of the missing galoshes

"Yes, a rack of galoshes. I have been living in this house since 1903. And from then until March 1917 there was not one case — let me underline in red pencil not one case — of a single pair of galoshes disappearing from that rack even when the front door was open. There are, kindly note, twelve flats in this house and a constant stream of people coming to my consulting rooms. One fine day in March 1917 all the galoshes disappeared including two pairs of mine, three walking sticks, an overcoat and the porter's samovar. And since then the rack had ceased to exist. And I won't mention the boiler. The rule apparently is — once a social revolution takes place there's no need to stoke the boiler. But I ask you: why, when the whole business started, should everybody suddenly start clumping up and down the marble staircase in dirty galoshes and felt boots? Why must we now keep our galoshes under lock and key? And put a soldier on guard over them to prevent them from being stolen? Why has the carpet been removed from the front staircase? Did Karl Marx say anywhere that the front door of No. 2 Kalabukhov House in Prechistenka Street must be boarded up so that people have to go round and come in by the back door? What good does it do anybody? Why can't the proletarians leave their galoshes downstairs instead of dirtying the staircase?"

"But the proletarians don't have any galoshes, Philip Philipovich," stammered the doctor.

"Nothing of the sort!" replied Philip Philipovich in a voice of thunder, and poured himself a glass of wine. "[...] Nothing of the sort! The proletarians do have galoshes now and those galoshes are — mine! The very ones that vanished in the spring of 1917. Who removed them, you may ask? Did I remove them? Impossible. The bourgeois Sablin?" (Philip Philipovich pointed upwards to the ceiling.) "The very idea's laughable. Polozov, the sugar manufacturer?" (Philip Philipovich started to turn purple.) "Why on earth do they have to remove the flowers from the landing? Why does the electricity, which to the best of my recollection has only failed twice in the past twenty years, now go out regularly once a month? Statistics, Doctor Bormenthal, are terrible things."

The Heart of a Dog, by Mikhail Bulgakov, is a little weird and hilarious. Philip Philipovich has brought home a stray on which to conduct a medical experiment. The doctor transplants the testes and pituitary gland of a dead man into the dog. He and his associate observe and document the dog's progress, his gradual transformation into a human.

While medically speaking the experiment might be said to be a success, it doesn't go so well at all on a social level. The humanized dog is a lazy but subtly scheming drunken lecher (much as we assume the donor of his human parts must've been). Attempts to educate and cultivate him become hopeless. When the doctor risks losing more of his rooms to the proletarians invading his house, he decides there's nothing do but to turn the dog back.

Translator Michael Glenny in his foreword (reprinted in the new Melville House edition with the fabulous cover art) argues that it can be read as a parable, that the doctor represents the Communist party and his operation is the revolution. "The bitter message is that the Russian intelligentsia, which made the Revolution is henceforth doomed to live with — and eventually be ruled by — the crude, unstable and potentially brutal race of hominids — homo sovieticus — which it has called into being."

I rather see Philip Philipovich as wholly unsympathetic to the cause and wanting to inject a counterrevolutionary element, a better human. But Sharikov (he needs papers, after all) eschews betterment in favour of "behaving naturally," proving a kind of fatalism — that people, or dogs, are what they are, despite the accoutrements of class or, on the contrary, the attempts to annihilate it.

You hate the proletariat

"I want to ask you" — here the woman pulled a number of coloured magazines wet with snow, from out of the front of her tunic — "to buy a few of these magazines in aid of the children of Germany. Fifty kopecks a copy."

"No, I will not," said Philip Philipovich curtly after a glance at the magazines.

Total amazement showed on the faces, and the girl turned cranberry-colour.

"Why not?"

"I don't want to."

"Don't you feel sorry for the children of Germany?"

"Yes, I do."

"Can't you spare fifty kopecks?"

"Yes, I can."

"Well, why won't you, then?"

"I don't want to."

Silence.

"You know, professor," said the girl with a deep sigh, "if you weren't world-famous and if you weren't being protected by certain people in the most disgusting way" (the fair youth tugged at the hem of her jerkin, but she brushed him away), "which we propose to investigate, you should be arrested."

"What for?" asked Philip Philipovich with curiosity.

"Because you hate the proletariat!" said the woman proudly.

"You're right, I don't like the proletariat," agreed Philip Philipovich sadly [...]."

— from The Heart of a Dog, by Mikhail Bulgakov.

Out of print

I'm not what you'd call an impulse shopper. I've wanted one of these t-shirts forever, but which one? It had to be a design I liked and a book I loved. Something that expressed something about me. Finally, a day came when I felt I deserved a little something, and about a year and a half after first hearing about these tees, I decided. The Master and Margarita.

The shirt is thin, but it's a good-quality print, and the cut and the feel make for a remarkably comfortable fit. I love it.

(I'm fairly certain now that I want to dress my daughter in Darwin's Origin of Species, but I'll have to think on this for another month or two.)

And, for every purchase, a book is donated to a community in need.

I did in fact read The Master and Margarita (by Mikhail Bulgakov), but it must've been a lifetime ago. I remember Pontius Pilate and the politics of the crucifixion, and something about a cat, bearing some resemblance to my actual cat, but little else. I've been wanting to reread this for several years now, and now I'm really going to have to, so as not to appear a fraud.

An e-version of the translation by Richard Pevear is widely available under a creative commons license.