Perfect Rigor
Masha Gessen
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26)
It cannot be easy to write a biography of someone who will not (or cannot) be interviewed. Certainly, posthumous biographers do it all the time. Yet somehow it is different when the subject is living, taunting the researcher with silence and stone walls.
Nonetheless, in her excellent new biography of the notoriously reclusive mathematician Grigory Perelman (see Russian Life, Nov/Dec 2006), Gessen does a remarkable job of unraveling what makes the award-declining genius tick, while providing a fascinating portrait of the competitive and political world of high mathematics. Immersing herself in Perelman’s world and talking to seemingly everyone he has ever had contact with, Gessen paints a nearly-complete picture of an Aspergian pedant with principles of Tolstoyan proportions, relentlessly stubborn on everything from footnoting to expense reports to black bread.
The only thing lacking here is what no one save the subject can provide: an explanation of the Perelman anomaly (rejecting all fame and fortune in a fame and fortune obsessed world). The closest we can come is the answer Perelman himself gave, that he does not want to compromise his principles or be “treated as a pet.” But that merely begs the question. And so, not unlike a tantalizingly unsolvable math puzzle, the anomaly remains.
Anton Chekhov
A Brother’s Memoir
Mikhail Chekhov
Palgrave Macmillan, $25
This wonderful translation (by Eugene Alper) of a hundred-year-old biography by Anton Pavlovich’s younger brother, secretary and assistant, offers uncommon first-hand insight into family dynamics and history as well as background on some of Chekhov’s literary works. But the perspective of a sibling, the brother of a famous man, is intriguing enough in its own right, and one cannot help grazing this fertile biography in search of telling asides and tender criticisms, which are plentiful. It helps that Mikhail has something of his brother’s cutting eye for detail, and that he does not stint on his opinions, be it on an ill-chosen summer cottage or on “The Beautiful Lika” who long sought the writer’s affection.
it has been a good year for Russian fiction in translation, thanks to the assiduous efforts of a few fine publishers. Three compact volumes are of particular note.
Everything Flows, by Vasily Grossman — a powerful tale about some of the worst years of Soviet rule, and a truth-telling indictment of same that was written during the late Stalin years — has been translated by Robert Chandler (NYRB, $15.95)
The Village, by Ivan Bunin, has been translated by Galya and Hugh Aplin. A grimly realistic novel (the one that established Bunin’s position as a great writer), it looks at the waning years of tsarism and the 1905 revolution through the brutish lives of village peasants, who, in contrast to the Tolstoyan vision, do not offer much of redeeming value.
For brighter fare, there is Hugh Aplin’s translation of Alexander Pushkin’s The Tales of Belkin (and The History of the Village of Goryukhino). These hilarious parodies are “for the most part true” and are a delightful prose counterpoint to Yevgeny Onegin, which Pushkin wrote at about the same time.
Is There an App for That?
I constantly come across Russian words I don’t know (or have forgotten) and that I need to learn. Back when I first began studying Russian, I had stacks and stacks of little one-inch flashcards, and I would drill myself relentlessly. Since I don’t tote around a pocketful of empty flash cards, but always carry a five ounce oracle (iPhone) with plenty of spare memory and processing power, I wondered if it would be amenable to helping me out.
After briefly considering the $30 desktop program called Flash My Brain, which has a $6 iPhone app, I decided to look for a less expensive, simpler solution. I began with Declan’s Russian Audio Flashcards (declan-software.com, $14.99) for the iPhone (there are also PC desktop and Windows mobile versions). In all, the software contains about 3000 Russian words and phrases, with very good native speaker pronunciations to tune your ears (although I found a few missing recordings).
There are four different exercises and a flash-card like interface offering a good mix of words and word lists (usually about 50 on a list). The only problem is that they are their words, not mine. But this would be a fine solution for beginning Russian learners.
Next I tried iFlipr (iflipr.com, $4.99), which offers a different approach, selling you simply a flash card delivery system (and a good one), with random repeating of cards until you have mastered them. Plus you can make your own card set, directly on the iPhone or on your computer, or download those shared by other users (not risk-free: I spotted an error in the “Harvard Russian Verbs Quiz 4”).
This seemed perfect. All the more so that one can generate a list of words and definitions, say in a spreadsheet, and easily upload them to iFlipr’s website, which instantly syncs with the app on the iPhone (you can also access and work through card decks via website, by logging in to your account).
Even better, the great digital dictionary program I use, TranslateIt! (gettranslateit.com, $25/yr or $100 for life, Mac only) can log all the words you look up and then export them into a format that can be easily imported into iFlipr.
App Heaven, right?
Not quite. As I was finishing this review, the developer of iFlipr came out with a buggy update for the app that made it freeze in its tracks. The app’s Facebook page caught fire, with irate users wondering when the app would work again, because they had tests coming up and they needed to quiz themselves. Apparently a data backup to one-inch flashcards might be prudent.
Next time, online and desktop Russian language learning software.)
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