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 mustache have the last laugh.

While reading this unfinished farce, I was viewing a few episodes of the 2005 Russian miniseries of The Master and Margarita http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0403783/?ref_=sr_1. Even at the gravest of junctures, there is always humor. A quip can be made while fearing the late night knock on the door.

This is a very incomplete work which festers and taunts. There is a vein of promise which alas will never be realized.

2.5/5 ( )

A satire of the Moscow Art Theatre, this semiautobiography novel is surprisingly a riot of laughs despite its behind-the-scenes account of the frustrating tightrope-balancing politics of the theatre. The scathing portrayal of the theatre's madcap crew and their bizarre observances is bitingly funny and induces more of an incredulous laughter. Chaos reigns and increases throughout the book before an abrupt end which leaves you questioning what just happened. Recommended for readers who are already fans of Bulgakov and Russian literature. Aside: that Mephistopheles scene made me laugh too hard, how else would he get around modern Russia? ( )

Bulgakov’s roman à clef about the writing of ‘The White Guard’, trying to get it published, and then trying to get it staged as a play is delightful in its character sketches drawn from real life. His experiences are also heartbreaking, as he was taken advantage of as a young author, and subjected to censorship under the emerging Soviet state. Unfinished and published posthumously, the book provides a fascinating look into the Moscow Art Theater and Bulgakov’s life in the 1920’s. ( )

It is not only a reflection on me that I managed to read 30 or 40 pages of this book before realizing that I had read it before, more than fifteen years ago, translated under the title Black Snow. It is inconceivable that something similar could happen with even the first two paragraphs ( )

In this short semi-autobiographical novel, Bulgakov satirizes the famous Moscow Art Theater and his experiences transforming his novel The White Guard (about an upper class family from Kiev during the civil war, from a very White perspective) into a play, The Days of the Turbins, that could be acceptable to the censors (indeed, even Stalin became a fan of the play). The conceit of the novel is that the novelist turned playwright Maksudov, before he threw himself off the Tesepnoi Bridge, sent these memoirs to the writer, hence "a dead man's memoir"; it has also been translated under the title Black Snow, which is the title of Maksudov's play in the novel.

The novel is clearly extremely witty, although I had to rely on the notes to see who all the characters are really based on, and I'm sure this would have been much more fun for readers familiar with the cast of characters of the 1930s Moscow theater scene. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it, and even laughed aloud at certain points. Even without having a grasp of who the "real" people were (although one of the co-directors of the Theater is Stanislavsky, famous for developing "method" acting), I appreciated the insight into the craziness of the theater: the dislike of the two founders for each other (and the absence of one of them, although he sends telegrams with advice), the difficulty of staging new works featuring younger characters with the aging actors instead of always performing classics, the peculiarities of individual actors, the censor's desire to completely change the characters and the plot of the play, the amazing abilities of the typist/office manager, the jealousy of other writers, although one gives him sage advice about dealing with the censor (who, by the way, is called the Head of Internal Order).

" 'What you ought to have done is not argue,' Bombardov said quietly, 'and reply like this: 'I am very grateful to you for your guidance, Ivan Vasilievich, I will definitely put it into effect.' You must not object, do you understand that or not? At Sivstev Vrazhek Lane nobody objects."

'How is that possible? Nobody ever objects?'

'Nobody, not ever,' Bombardov replied, tapping out each word. 'Nobody every has, nobody does, and nobody ever will.'" p. 113

The book gathers speed as it goes on, and it is occasionally difficult to remember all the characters, so the total effect is of barely contained chaos and the insanity (and worse) of the theater world and the effects of the Soviet system on it. This book doesn't stand up to The Master and Margarita or The White Guard but it is full of entertaining yet horrifying scenes of the creative life, such as it was, of 1920s and 30s Moscow.