I'm Officially a fan of Bulgakov.

This is literally a rant/burn book that Bulgakov churned out in a few hours. You get the point (that the theater scene in Moscow is ridiculous) in about twenty pages and unless you know quite a bit about twentieth century Soviet theater it will be pretty difficult to pick up on his many detailed burns on specific people. The supplementary materials and introduction are really interesting but the book itself didn't do much for me, I skimmed the last third. Apparently Bulgakov set this aside to co...

Since I have suddenly acquired 5 likes for this - a book I read years ago and rated without reviewing when I joined GR in 2014, perhaps I should write a review, but all I remember about this book was that it seemed a little disappointing compared with The Master and Margarita

There are two things I enjoy in Bulgakov's books : the dialogues and the way he describes his characters' emotional state. In Novela Teatral (The Black Snow) we meet a melancholic writer living an ordinary life, who hates his job and rushes to come home to write his novel. He manages to get in to the literature and theatre world, and realizes that there is business in art, and art is never pure or uncensored. To give the theatre a product with which the directors will be satisfied, he has to cha...

I read first "A Dead Man's Memoir: A Theatrical Novel" (Penguin Classics) and right after I finished it I read this edition, Black Snow (Melville House). While I appreciated a lot the abundant notes of the Penguin edition, I must point out that I enjoyed the Melville House edition far better, probably because I was reading the same novel for the second time; but I also liked the translation better.I wish the author had been able to finish this novel. I was left wanting more. But I do have a soft...

4.99 starsbrilliant and funny and just lovely. especially after having just suffered through that godawful kundera garbage. in a hurry. will come back to say more if i have a chance. if i forget, just take away that i definitely recommend this quick read (and really, anything else by bulgakov)

I must have first read this in my late teens/early twenties, in that splurge you get when discovering great writing for the first time and I remember not exactly getting on with it then, following the effects of the greatness of Bulgakov’s ‘The Master and Margarita’ had on me. A lack of new books now led me to pick it up again and what a joy and revelation it has been.Written in 1935 but unpublished till 1965 (and here translated by Michael Glenny) this is a semi-autobiographical account of Bulg...

I like the cut of this Bulgakov guy’s jib. His books are so funny and so melancholy, and he can’t contain his hatred of the Russian literary world.

ChronologyIntroduction & SourcesA Note on the TextFurther Reading--A Dead Man's Memoir (A Theatrical Novel)Notes

CENSORSHIP: When Maxudov's novel fails, he attempts suicide. When that fails, he dramatizes his novel. To Maxudov's surprise - and the resentment of literary Moscow - the play is accepted by the legendary Independent Theater, and Maxudov plunges into a vortex of inflated egos. Each rehearsal sees more and more sparks flying higher and higher and less and less chance of poor Maxudov's play ever being performed. Black Snow is the ultimate backstage novel and a brilliant satire on Mikhail Bulgakov'...

Black Snow is a satirical roman à clef of two worlds – the one of literature and the other of theatres… And those worlds collide… In creative throes, the novel is born and the author enters a literary world – the world of ostentation, hypocrisy and envy…The party warmed up. Layers of smoke were already billowing over the table. I felt something soft and slippery under my foot and bending down I saw that it was a piece of salmon. How it got there, I had no idea. Laughter drowned Ismail Alexandrov...

Театральный роман = A Dead Man's Memoir = Theatrical Novel, Mikhail BulgakovTheatrical Novel, translated as Black Snow and A Dead Man's Memoir is an unfinished novel by Mikhail Bulgakov. Written in first-person, on behalf of a writer Sergei Maksudov, the novel tells of the drama behind-the-scenes of a theater production and the Soviet writers' world.A Dead Man's Memoir is a semi-autobiographical story about a writer who fails to sell his novel, then fails to commit suicide. When the writer's pla...

I must be one of only a few that didn't think a great deal of Master and Margarita. Not that it was bad, I just didn't think of it as the masterpiece I expected, generally brought on by all the hype surrounding it. Personally, I much preferred The White Guard, of which the subject matter interested me far more, and now having read Black Snow, I can put it right along side that as my fave Bulgakov. This is one of the last books Bulgakov wrote (although it didn't see the light of day until 1967) a...

My sweet delight author. ♥️Reread. I love him even more after each other reading."I twice started on Lesosyekov's novel The Swans, each time getting as far as page forty-five, and then turning back to the beginning again, because I had forgotten what had happened. I began to feel really alarmed; my head seemed not to be functioning properly."

Bulgakov's 'theatrical novel' Black Snow introduces the reader to the unfortunate Maxudov, whose efforts to publish a book, and later to turn that same book (based on his own suicide attempt) into a play, are met with varying degrees of contempt, incompetence and unhelpful interference from the literary contingent of Moscow. It's a typically Russian novel: it feels more modern than it has any right to, brims with sarcastic wit, and is often morbid. It's years since I read The Master and Margarit...

Black Snow is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov. This apparent platitude is full of contradiction. The book is perhaps better described as an autobiographical episode, with Bulgakov renamed as the book’s central character, Maxudov. It’s also a satire in which the characters are precise, exact and often vicious caricatures of Bulgakov’s colleagues and acquaintances in the between-the-wars Moscow Arts Theatre, including the legendary Stanislawsky. In some ways, Black Snow is a history of Bulgakov’s grea...

There are some oppressive regimes (well, most of them) where it’s not a good idea to be a wit. Like Burma, for example, where two comedians were sentenced to twenty years hard labour for, um . . . telling jokes. Or, as Bulgakov learned the hard way, when Stalin is King and Russia is tooling up for another war. Black Snow is about censorship but mainly about the inner workings of the Moscow Theatre, how Stanislavsky was a fraud, and how being a playwright in Stalinist Russia was harder than swall...

It may be heretical to muse along these lines, but I was heartened to imagine what would've been the result of a collaboration between Mikhail Bulgakov and Preston Sturges. My mind's eye sees something similar to 42d Street but with Joel McCrea in the lead as a struggling playwright, Barbara Stanwyck vamping her way into the production, causing the author to rewrite and ruin his artistic vision. The NKVD (led by William Demarest) will undoubtedly swoop in during the final reel. A pipe and mustac...

Mikhail Bulgakov must have had a thing for cats. He’s must have been like the Russian Edward Gorey or something because there are cats in this book. Satan, however, is of a different from than cat in this book. If Satan is in this book, he is the powers that control the theater and drive an author to the end of his rope. This isn’t Satan conjuring Helen, this isn’t a bargain with a temporary gain but eternal damnation, this is just eternal damnation. Not really surprising that Terry Gilliam wro...

Reread at the urging of the Strugatsky Brothers, and well worth the doing so. Although an excellent work, I shall leave my rating as a four plus rather than elevating it to a five minus. Bulgakov certainly did not like Stanislavsky and his Method! Gogol and Bulgakov’s shared grave stone.It is said that Gogol may have been buried alive. He died in Moscow at the end of winter in 1852, a few weeks short of his forty-third birthday. A couple of weeks earlier he had burned some manuscripts, including...