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43. Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak - This is a weird book only because it has such a reputation as the book that got snuck out of the USSR because the author knew that it was going to get banned for being a book critical of the Russian Revolution. And certainly you can see Pasternak's ambition to write the War & Peace of the Bolshevik Revolution. He even outright talks about Tolstoy at one point, mostly a discussion of Tolstoy's main point of War & Peace which is that the Great Man of History theory is utter bunk.
Yet, that's not the book I read. I very much enjoyed this book. I was surprised about how much I enjoyed this book. But ultimately Pasternak fails at being Tolstoy. The grand epic picture of a society changing almost always gives way to the title character. Where Tolstoy gives you dozens of characters and makes you care about most of them (similar to George R.R. Martin) Pasternak gives you one main guy that you follow around the entire book with some scenes that are supposed to tie into the main themes but never feel like they are really doing much more than providing some background for the action. By the middle of the book I simply looked upon the Non-Zhivago chapters as "things that happened at the same time to people that I won't remember".
I'm sure if I look at the Wikipedia I will find a chart concerning who everyone is and what their role is in the book but the ones I can remember are Zhivago, Lara, Lara's husband who shoots himself toward the end of Zhivago's wife who he leaves behind at a certain point and never reconnects with. There's also Lara's groomer and rapist who keeps showing up even at the ending where he helps her to hide away from the Bolsheviks claiming that her husband was murdered by the Bolsheviks (and to the surprise of no one reading this thing the husband turns up alive).
I wasn't even confused by the big problem with Russian novels which is the way that the names were presented in several different ways because I honestly stopped trying to tell them apart.
Failing at being Tolstoy, Pasternak did succeed at being his own existential angst writer who spoke about depression and angst. If he wasn't a Russian he'd be all emo. I'm trying to figure out whom to compare him to. He's not Dostoyevski. Maybe Nabokov? But I've only read Lolita. Shirley Jackson? Jack Kerouac? His characters are sad and depressed characters who are always surrounded by death. Zhivago starts out going to a funeral and as he's drafted into the war with Japan and then ends up as the "official doctor" for the Bolsheviks during the civil war with the Whites.
Even when he finally ends up with Lara who kind of became the love of his life from inertia more than anything, it's mostly because both he and Lara are possibly in danger with the rising Bolshevik regime. So they end up in an abandoned house in the old town and they are unhappy. So unhappy that they are more than eager to believe Lara's rapist when he comes over and tells them that he wants to save them. The last scene in that house is Lara's husband showing up and whining a bit before shooting himself in the head.
The conclusion involves Zhivago's last days as he wanders a bit, gets married and abandons that third wife and finally just dies of a heart attack at the train station. I think in the movie he sees Lara.
The final irony is that all that poetry he was working on is just crap religious poetry. I don't know if that's the point that Pasternak is trying to make, but Zhivago saw himself as something better than a functionary because he was an artist and his art is garbage. I suppose Pasternak thought this poetry was good. It's not.
Yet, that's not the book I read. I very much enjoyed this book. I was surprised about how much I enjoyed this book. But ultimately Pasternak fails at being Tolstoy. The grand epic picture of a society changing almost always gives way to the title character. Where Tolstoy gives you dozens of characters and makes you care about most of them (similar to George R.R. Martin) Pasternak gives you one main guy that you follow around the entire book with some scenes that are supposed to tie into the main themes but never feel like they are really doing much more than providing some background for the action. By the middle of the book I simply looked upon the Non-Zhivago chapters as "things that happened at the same time to people that I won't remember".
I'm sure if I look at the Wikipedia I will find a chart concerning who everyone is and what their role is in the book but the ones I can remember are Zhivago, Lara, Lara's husband who shoots himself toward the end of Zhivago's wife who he leaves behind at a certain point and never reconnects with. There's also Lara's groomer and rapist who keeps showing up even at the ending where he helps her to hide away from the Bolsheviks claiming that her husband was murdered by the Bolsheviks (and to the surprise of no one reading this thing the husband turns up alive).
I wasn't even confused by the big problem with Russian novels which is the way that the names were presented in several different ways because I honestly stopped trying to tell them apart.
Failing at being Tolstoy, Pasternak did succeed at being his own existential angst writer who spoke about depression and angst. If he wasn't a Russian he'd be all emo. I'm trying to figure out whom to compare him to. He's not Dostoyevski. Maybe Nabokov? But I've only read Lolita. Shirley Jackson? Jack Kerouac? His characters are sad and depressed characters who are always surrounded by death. Zhivago starts out going to a funeral and as he's drafted into the war with Japan and then ends up as the "official doctor" for the Bolsheviks during the civil war with the Whites.
Even when he finally ends up with Lara who kind of became the love of his life from inertia more than anything, it's mostly because both he and Lara are possibly in danger with the rising Bolshevik regime. So they end up in an abandoned house in the old town and they are unhappy. So unhappy that they are more than eager to believe Lara's rapist when he comes over and tells them that he wants to save them. The last scene in that house is Lara's husband showing up and whining a bit before shooting himself in the head.
The conclusion involves Zhivago's last days as he wanders a bit, gets married and abandons that third wife and finally just dies of a heart attack at the train station. I think in the movie he sees Lara.
The final irony is that all that poetry he was working on is just crap religious poetry. I don't know if that's the point that Pasternak is trying to make, but Zhivago saw himself as something better than a functionary because he was an artist and his art is garbage. I suppose Pasternak thought this poetry was good. It's not.
