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100 books Master and Margarita I remain shocked that I had never heard of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita before my sister sent it to me in the mail, insisting that I read it. Not that Margarita is the type of book I would expect to be popular in the small towns of Kansas where I had resided up until that point. However I had always been a collector of lists of books. If anyone anywhere published a list proclaiming to be the "Best Books of the Century!", "Best Books of All Time!", or even "Best Books About Belly Lint", I copied the list down and hoarded it away somewhere, religiously checking off the pathetic few that I had read from each list. I don't recall ever seeing Margarita on any list until we made our list. Which is a damn shame, because if they taught Margarita in high schools, I bet you the mortgage on my new house that suddenly teenagers across America would find a new interest in reading. Not that Margarita could ever be taught in any public school in this country. If the fundamentalists worry about dear Harry Potter promoting witchcraft and sorcery -- well, then, they must have never laid eyes on this little gem. Witches riding their brooms naked over the streets of Moscow, people of all sorts being duped by the devil, a heretical account of the meeting between Jesus and Pontius Pilate, and (my personal favorite) a witch who in lieu of a broomstick turns her neighbor into a pig and rides him through the skies of Moscow. But what could be gained by requiring our teenagers to read such filth, I can hear you asking. The simple joy of reading an interesting book, I would answer. Like Ethan Frome was such an important book with such an important message. Hardly. It was simply the most tedious book I have ever read. While Margarita may have some slow spots, you could hardly call the book tedious. Large sized talking cats confounding police offers and setting buildings on fire are not tedious. Of course, not knowing anything about Moscow, its history, its politics, or otherwise, I surely missed a lot of things in this book. (I have since clued myself at Professor of Russion of Middlebury College, Kevin Moss's, excellent site on the novel.) But it was never bewildering at any point. Knowledge of Russian history is not a requirement. I am curious, however, if there was actually once a literary club like MASSOLIT, and if writers in it really did have special amenities not available to the general public. Though if such a club did or did not exist, it would hardly take away from the story. And what a story it is! The devil appears in Moscow to give his annual springtime ball of the full moon. While preparations are under way, the asylums start filling, and the phones at the police station start ringing off the hook. Authority figures tend not to do well in this book, whether they are the police, government officials, or landlords. The vanity of women and the greediness of all are taken advantage of and exposed. There are only three in the city who do not seem to lose all composure and sanity when in the presence of the devil and his assistants are The Master, his lover Margarita, and her maid, Natasha. In the meantime there is nudity, religious debate, magic, literary elitism, and a lot of foreign currency. Many of what are regarded to be the classics are fairly heavy-handed
and dismal, as if a book has to be depressing to be good. Margarita
is well-paced and often hilarious, so much so that a reader might forget
that they are learning about a different culture, or thinking about serious
themes, like morality, religion, and greed. This book should be on everyone's
"to read list."  |
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