I first read Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita on a balcony
of the Hotel Metropole in Saigon on three summer evenings in 1971. The
tropical air was heavy and full of the smells of cordite and
motorcycle exhaust and rotting fish and wood-fire stoves, and the
horizon flared ambiguously, perhaps from heat lightning, perhaps from
bombs. Later each night, as was my custom, I would wander out into the
steamy back alleys of the city, where no one ever seemed to sleep, and
crouch in doorways with the people and listen to the stories of their
culture and their ancestors and their ongoing lives. Bulgakov taught
me to hear something in those stories that I had not yet clearly
heard. One could call it, in terms that would soon thereafter gain
wide currency, "magical realism". The deadpan mix of the fantastic and
the realistic was at the heart of the Vietnamese mythos. It is at the
heart of the present zeitgeist. And it was not invented by Gabriel
Garcia Marquez, as wonderful as his One Hundred Years of Solitude is.
Garcia Marquez's landmark work of magical realism was predated by
nearly three decades by Bulgakov's brilliant masterpiece of a novel.
That summer in Saigon a vodka-swilling, talking black cat, a coven of
beautiful naked witches, Pontius Pilate, and a whole cast of benighted
writers of Stalinist Moscow and Satan himself all took up permanent
residence in my creative unconscious. Their presence, perhaps more
than anything else from the realm of literature, has helped shape the
work I am most proud of. I'm often asked for a list of favorite
authors. Here is my advice. Read Bulgakov. Look around you at the new
century. He will show you things you need to see.
Les mer
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780802190031
Publisert
2016
Utgiver
Vendor
Grove Press UK
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter