In “The Rattling of Wheels”, a defining story in this collection, the narrator asks Filofey, after a brief run in with murderous highwaymen, if perhaps they may not have been highwaymen in the first place (undoubtedly they were). His response: “How can we tell? Can one creep into the soul of another? Another’s soul, we know, is a dark place. But, with the thought of God in the heart, things are always better…. No, no!… I’ve my family all the time.” These words I feel are the driving sentiment behind the beauty and correctness of these stories. With the thought of God in the heart, things are always better. In a situation where death was surely, uncompromisingly on the table, a light-hearted jest was born.
Fiction today, on the contrary, fills itself with unabashed pessimism and a distrust of strangers (very much the opposite found in these pages). The characters are often wrought in schizophrenic delusions, unwarranted hatred, and a disquieting nihilism. The world in which they inhabit is nearly unlivable, constantly prodding and abusing, and those within arm’s length are more often than not pushed away by a permanent distrust. They are by extension stick-figure vassals of the author, proofs of their sad and pathetic worldview. How often we come across a main character who is the victim of unspecified guilt and shame and angst, an unfightable enemy, who is infatuated by trivial cycles of human ugliness, and often times driven to the negative extremes by it. Careless, dumb, and malevolent people inhabit these fictions, people which in reality are, rightfully so, ignored or incarcerated. With the thought of God in the heart, things are always better.
But these stories in “A Sportsman’s Sketches” do help. And thankfully they do. They are far removed from the ills of the current art world. But what are they about? The driving force of their excellence? In their artistically subtle way, they are about friendship, love, longing, duty, and the respect and admiration of nature. Things that matter. Things which sincerely delve into the human condition and bring us closer to God, to peace. How refreshing it is.
As Raymond Carver said, “Fiction that counts is about people.” These stories occupy the lives and conditions of characters, and we may as well call them real people, of a 19th century Russian countryside, but are as identifiable and deserving of our sympathies as our city-born brothers and sisters of America in this 21st century. These people, and let’s not kid ourselves, instruct us on how to properly behave and treat one another. We can learn from their actions, their mistakes. If they are flawed, they are recognizably and understandably so. Tchertop-hanov, for example, is us, and if not us, he is a neighbor, a friend, someone who lives on the other side of town, someone more or less we’ve at least heard of, and at the news of his passing we are disheartened.
When reading these stories I was reminded at once of what successful fiction does. It translates the learned experience, as far removed or autobiographic, of the author’s life into a universal understanding; the author has conveyed an intended emotion to the reader out of the specifics of character, plot, and setting. The words paint a picture in the imagination, and those images imbue feeling, often good and lasting. Many times after finishing a story I had to put it down and sit in blissful, disarming stupefaction. Only the best stories make this happen. And it’s with joy and amazement that I can say all twenty-five stories in this collection provoke such alleviation. Perhaps it is an overused sentiment, but it is one full of truth: these stories inspire. They are an awesome reminder of fiction’s restorative powers. With the thought of God in the heart, things are always better.
Alan R Massey 