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A review by gabesteller
Red Cavalry by Nathalie Babel, Isaac Babel
5.0
I heard on a Podcast that Denis Johnson claimed he’d been ripping this off when when he wrote Jesus’s Son, and I can definitely see the inspiration. The stories in both are short, featuring deep depravity, violence, silly and absurd humor, a constant feeling of the ground shifting under you, and then sudden bits of total vividness and poetry.
In a way it is kinda jesus son but with war instead of heroin and pills. Or maybe Johnson mixed with Cormac McCarthy except it came before both.
Some really wonderful lines throughout i wish I’d underlined more so some of these favorite quotes are from the author of the introduction:
“The orange sun is rolling across the sky like a severed head”
“Let’s go die for a pickle and world revolution!
“The Moon hung in the sky like a cheap earring”
“His long legs looked like two girls shoved up to their shoulders into riding boots
“Night, pierced by flashes of the cannonade, is stooping over the dying man”
“The song drifted like smoke. We rode toward the sunset, its boiling rivers pouring over the embroidered napkins of the peasants fields The silence turned rosy. The earth lay like a cats back. covered with the thick gleaming coat of grain… a light battery came riding up the hill. Bullets unfurled like string along the road.”
An interesting note through line is that how much the Cossaks interact with the Jewish Community in Poland and Ukraine, and the extent to which they do and don't respect them as people, as well as the fact that Babel himself is jewish tho he hides this from the Cossaks. Babel’s himself (or his fictionalized versions of himself) seems to feel alternatively kinship, revulsion, and a a vague ambivalence or distance from the Fellow Jewish people he comes across. but this is an entirely an emotional portrait of the experience so nothing particularly conclusive is drawn as it never is in almost any of the stories. Other than war is hell i guess.
Favorites:
Crossing the River Zbrucz, Road to Brody, Tachanka Theory, Prischepa, Salt, Squadron commander Trunov, Zamosc, the Widow, The Rabbi’s son.
In a way it is kinda jesus son but with war instead of heroin and pills. Or maybe Johnson mixed with Cormac McCarthy except it came before both.
Some really wonderful lines throughout i wish I’d underlined more so some of these favorite quotes are from the author of the introduction:
“The orange sun is rolling across the sky like a severed head”
“Let’s go die for a pickle and world revolution!
“The Moon hung in the sky like a cheap earring”
“His long legs looked like two girls shoved up to their shoulders into riding boots
“Night, pierced by flashes of the cannonade, is stooping over the dying man”
“The song drifted like smoke. We rode toward the sunset, its boiling rivers pouring over the embroidered napkins of the peasants fields The silence turned rosy. The earth lay like a cats back. covered with the thick gleaming coat of grain… a light battery came riding up the hill. Bullets unfurled like string along the road.”
An interesting note through line is that how much the Cossaks interact with the Jewish Community in Poland and Ukraine, and the extent to which they do and don't respect them as people, as well as the fact that Babel himself is jewish tho he hides this from the Cossaks. Babel’s himself (or his fictionalized versions of himself) seems to feel alternatively kinship, revulsion, and a a vague ambivalence or distance from the Fellow Jewish people he comes across. but this is an entirely an emotional portrait of the experience so nothing particularly conclusive is drawn as it never is in almost any of the stories. Other than war is hell i guess.
Favorites:
Crossing the River Zbrucz, Road to Brody, Tachanka Theory, Prischepa, Salt, Squadron commander Trunov, Zamosc, the Widow, The Rabbi’s son.