Short Stories. Vol. 3

Vasily Shukshin expressed the soul of the modern Russian person in his stories—exhaustively and penetratingly. The way nobody else can. Even to this day, discussions continue around the “Shukshin phenomenon,” and in particular: how could the “man from the village” possess such a vision, such talent, comparable only to the pillars of Russian literature? Shukshin was not exactly underrated… But—overlooked at a certain scale. It just happened that way. He was held in high esteem during his lifetime (wasn’t it enough?). He died in the 70s. Then came the mid-late 80s of perestroika (when attention turned to literary dissidents), the wild 90s (with their rejection of everything Soviet— and besides, not really of literature), the 2000s…
And now it’s time to turn back, meet oneself, and move on to solving this “mysterious Russian soul.” Besides, Shukshin’s stories are simply incredibly captivating.

“...it seems to me that he [Shukshin] restored the story of a case in Russian literature.
We have gotten used to doing without this easy narrative— the manner of conversational oral storytelling and narration rendered through written story. We want literature where the ‘act of creation’ is visible in all its beauty, and where the entertainment is precisely the kind we now recognize.
But old Grigorovich once left the house, talked to the gardener—and that became a story. Chekhov met a huntsman—another story. He rode across the steppe—a novella, and what a novella. And Korolenko could do it. And Kuprin. And many others. While we—we’ve forgotten how.”
Sergey Zalygin