Book Description
Following the historic publication of Norton's The Complete Works of Isaac Babel in the fall of 2001, The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel appears as the most authoritative and complete edition of his fiction ever published in paperback. Babel was best known for his mastery of the short story form—in which he ranks alongside Kafka and Hemingway—but his career was tragically cut short when he was murdered by Stalin's secret police. Edited by his daughter Nathalie Babel and translated by award-winner Peter Constantine, this paperback edition includes the stunning Red Cavalry Stories; The Odessa Tales, featuring the legendary gangster Benya Krik; and the tragic later stories, including "Guy de Maupassant." This will be the standard edition of Babel's stories for years to come. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Babel is not for everyone
Reviewers on Amazon tend to self-select; I've noticed that people (including myself) seem more willing to write reviews of books they loved than of books they disliked. This makes sense; I usually don't even finish reading a book I strongly dislike.

But I had to read this book for a class. It was possibly my least favorite work of literature that I have ever read. Babel's writing is sparse, dry, and frequently cryptic; often I struggled to figure out what was actually going on in the stories. I also found his characters opaque and mysterious, and not in a good way. And all his stories are gloomy, and apt to induce misery in an unsuspecting reader. Babel's writing is rich with layers of meaning, but its about as enjoyable to crack as a caluculus textbook. The difficulty I encountered in reading this book just made Russia seem insurmountably foreign to me. Instead of serving as a bridge to another culture, this book aroused a feeling of alienation in me.

I will not be so presumptuous as to say that Babel is a bad writer. But I must attest that Babel is not for everyone. On my scale--1 star.

After Chekhov comes Babel
How late I learned the essential things in life! In my childhood, nailed to the Gemara, I led the life of a sage, and it was only later, when I was older, that I began to climb trees"
So we have the image of Babel the pale scholarly youth with 'spectacles on his nose and autumn in his heart" He after Chekhov is the great Russian short story writer.
Babel's greatness as a short-story is related to his realistic precision, and observational power. He sees often it seems into the heart of his characters with an objective and penetrating eye. He portrays soul- wrenching scenes of great violence, deprivationwith a kind of detached objectivity. His stories like those of Chekhov perhaps like those of Russian writers especially often involve incidents of great cruelty.
It is interesting that the opening story tells of an eighty-six year old old-time Jew who living with his son and daughter- in law.The son is about to adopt the new faith of the Revolution.The old man realizing that he will have no place in the new order hangs himself- an act which Babel portrays as an act of courage and faith in God. And this while it seems to me showing a certain regrettable contempt for the Torah world to which the old man is bound.
Babel's early stories , the childhood tales of which the most famous is 'On a Dovecote'already have his characteristic realistic precision. The stories which make him most known , "The Red Cavalry " stories in which he tells of the Cossacks he rode with are another important part of the oeuvre.Here there is felt especially the great divisionin Babel between the world of power and physical force, and a kindsensitive inner life.Then there are the Odessa stories ofBenya Krik, the world of Jewish gangsters, and of a colorful and yet cruel life once again precisely observed.
The tale of Babel's later years when under the shadow and threat of Stalin he spoke of himself writing 'in the genre of silence', and of his being murdered is the tale of a great writer cut down too soon.
We don't have all the stories we might have from this great master. But what we dohave are the axe which breaksthrough the icy soul within.

HAS TO BE READ BY EVERYONE !!!!!!!!!
There is little more I can say about this astonishing piece of work that has not already been said, but I will add my piece in the hope that it will encourage more people to read what is a genuinely important piece of writing.
Buy this book to appreciate Babel's portrayal of real and raw emotion, his comprehensive understanding of human character, his sparse, tight writing style that is both painfully lucid and beautifully poetic.

The one new thing I think has to be said is a defence of the picture on the front. What has to be understood is why this picture is there and why it looks the way it does; The cheek and mouth are sticking out that way for a very good reason! My only advice is to say if you do not know the full story don't comment on it. In any case, this is a wonderful, life-changing book that needs to be read by everyone.

Short Story Master Stakes Claim to History
Reading Babel is no picnic in the park. His words are often hard to understand, let alone relish. In Red Cavalry, as he evokes heartrending scenes of torture, deprivation, and corruption, it is often hard to read without almost begging the author for a point of view, a call to arms. Yet in his sharp, vivid--yet terse, accounts (somewhat naturalistic as characters succumb to the hideous corollaries of civil stife--hunger, unbridled violence, senseless cruelty, inhumanity) his compact, frugal stories are never sentetious or tendetious.

The Odessa Tales, the second part of his ouevre, is nearer and dearer to my heart. Immediately, I fell in love with a rabbi's narration of mythical gangster hero Benya Krik. Benya, a Jewish thug with a code of values, who no doubt has the power to empower the young minds of Jewish boys, commands respect as a charismatic desperado, so alien to the preconceptions of Jews as victims and middle-class pushovers, always dependent on themercy of the ruling elite. Benya wends his way around authorities--whether monarchist or Bolshevik, not only marching to the beat of a different drum, but subjugating others to the beat. Scenes of Odessa, my hometown, are sumptuous though sparing in descriptions of wealthy and lowly merchants, sailors, criminals, and lackeys.

Having read these and other stories in Russian, I look forward to reading the translation in hopes of better understanding them in my adopted tongue. Babel is not the most facile read, but an important and long ignored voice in the Soviet literary canon. Enjoy.

Fascinating Book
A superbly written insider's look at the Russian revolution. Babel can convey the horrors of war with very few words. I enjoyed the best his sarcastic treatement of the bombastic communist rhetoric in such stories as "Salt" and "Treason" (maybe because I was exposed to it myself at one time). ... Read more

Amazon.com
Arguably the best book of short stories published in 2001, The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, expertly translated by Peter Constantine, should affirm Babel's place among the top Russian short story writers. Like Chekhov, Isaac Babel primarily wrote odd, tightly wrung little stories in which he displays a variety of convincing styles and tones, with each piece having an immediacy and weight that exceeds its brevity.

Babel's writing life lasted approximately 20 years. (He was executed by Stalin after a few military subjects unflatteringly portrayed in his "Red Cavalry" stories gained positions of influence.) His most notable stories depict the Russian civil war and Jewish soldiers, his childhood, and Jewish thugs in his native Odessa. Often journalistic in style, his stories provided gripping war accounts to Russians eager for news from the front, as in this passage from "The Church in Novograd":

We drank rum, waiting for the military commissar, but he still hadn't come back from the headquarters. Romuald had collapsed in a corner and fallen asleep. He slept and quivered, while beyond the window an alley seeped into the garden beneath the black passion of the sky. Thirsting roses swayed in the darkness. Green lightning bolts blazed over the cupolas. A naked corpse lay on the embankment. And the rays of the moon streamed through the dead legs that are pointing upward. So this is Poland...

Customer Reviews (12)

The Greatest Jewish Writer
For my money, Babel is the greatest Jewish writer. Kafka comes close, but he's going in a completely different direction. While Kafka couches the nightmare and loneliness of modern life in fable and fantasy, in dream and allegory, Babel serves it to us straight, covered in blood and shredded paper and feathers.

eh
I just don't know, man . . . a solid writer (mostly), an enthusiastic writer (always), somewhat ahead of his time (in places), but I would stop WAY short of the commentators' seeming consensus that Babel stands alongside the matchless Franz Kafka. Notably, when reading many of Babel's "Benya Krik" anecdotes--which I deign not so grandiosely to classify as "stories"--I often found myself asking, "Huh? Where did that come from?" or, "But wasn't he just talking about Joe a minute ago?" or, "Who spoke that last sentence?" And a fellow who scored 12H+ on the standardized N.Y. state reading test at age seven has difficulty placing the blame in his own lectorial debilities: I also note that I can blaze through Kafka like it's a "Peanuts" cartoon.

Essential
Babel's output was relatively small.His reputation rests on his short stories, particularly the stories about his hometown of Odessa and the remarkable Red Cavalry sequence describing the Soviet invasion of Poland.This work is, nonetheless, a high point of 20th century literature.Babel was a great writer, putting more into short stories than many talented writers can put into whole novels.His descriptions of life under the Czar, seen particularly through the prism of Jewish gangsters in Odessa, are remarkably gripping accounts of a repressive society.The Red Cavalry sequence, a tour de force of vivid narration and psychological insight gets right to the heart of the brutality that characterized much of the 20th century.

A master storyteller
Babel is one of the great storytellers. The man who according to his description as recorded by Lionel Trilling had ' spectacles on his nose and autumn in his heart' was a pale Yeshiva- boy type thrust into the world of Cossack violence. He recorded that violence and the horror of it with chilling accuracy in his 'Red Cavalry' stories. More ebullient are the stories of the Odessa Jewish underworld and its Robin- Hood Benya Krik. Babel was a writer of the mot juste who grew up on Flaubert and Maupassant. He wrote and rewrote his stories, thirty or fortytimes. "No steel pierces the heart more poignantly than a period in the right place'.
The most memorable of his stories for me is one of his childhood 'For my Dovecoat' about the experiencing of a pogrom, the murder of a grandfather.
Babel has been celebrated by many of the most distinguished modern writers and critics. Deservedly so.
He is a true master.

Masterful
Babel is a masterful teller of short stories.His stories, most of which do not exceed a few pages, speak volumes about the extraordinary times in which he lived.For me, the most interesting aspect of Babel's writing is his ability to convey how the onset of Soviet power changed everything--and yet changed nothing (ie, the cossacks of the Red Army seeking to spread world communist revolution in Poland, and simultaneously reprising past cossack wars and pogroms in the region).Babel lived in a fascinating, uncertain time, and his vivid diaries describe the Red Army's exhilaration as they sweep westward into Poland--seemingly as the vanguard of a world revolution--and their confusion and dejection as the Polish pans push them back.

This book was too intense and too homogeneous for me to read all at once:many of Babel's stories feature the same themes (chiefly Jewish life and red cavalry) and after a few hundred pages a definite sense of deja vu sets in as Babel reworks various characters, scenes, etc.Nonetheless, a fantastic book to read in smaller chunks. ... Read more

Book Description
From the early Soviet period, the impassioned short fiction of the great Russian-Jewish writer

One of the most powerful short-story writers of the twentieth century, Isaac Babel expressed his sense of inner conflict through disturbing tales that explored the contradictions of Russian society. Whether reflecting on anti-Semitism in stories such as “Story of My Dovecote” and “First Love,” or depicting Jewish gangsters in his native Odessa, Babel’s eye for the comical laid bare the ironies of history. His masterpiece, “Red Cavalry,” set in the Soviet-Polish war, is one of the classics of modern fiction. By turns flamboyant and restrained, this collection of Babel’s best-known stories vividly expresses the horrors of his age.

“Amazing not only as literature but as biography.” —Richard Bernstein, The New York Times
“Marvelously subtle, tragic, and often comic.” —James Wood, The New Republic
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Amazing Russian Modernist Writer
This is a wonderful collection of Isaac Babel's stories. His writing is terse, image laden and thoroughly engaging. Recounting his experiences with Cossack cavalry in Poland, Babel's tales offer a unique and firsthand perspective into these Russian campaigns.
Babel's style and his short stories (many times as short as half a page) ask to be read with a level of engagement that many are incapable of. Luckily the stories are both easy and enjoyable to re-read and offer much to be considered and mulled over - though his stories are in prose they demand the attention and interaction of poetry.
Babel is a unique and interesting writer, and his stories are by no means light reading. Presenting moral questions of persecution, violence and conflicting identities (ethnic, religious, political - to name a few) Babel is a Russian writer to be savored.
One note on this Penguin edition: the notes are lacking compared to most Penguin Classics publications and the translation begs for these notes to have been better compiled and expanded. Many words are left untranslated and many times translations are made in an attempt to maintain a Polish or Russian sound - which though wonderful for those that have the knowledge or time to appreciate it is for anyone else an unnecessary distraction from Babel's writing. ... Read more

Product Description
Follows the 1934 Russian edition, with censored sections restored except for the last five stories. "The End of the Old Folks Home" is from a collection published in 1932, "Through the Fanlight" was never published; "The Kiss" and "Line and Color" were taken from the French and "DiGrasso" has only appeared in an emigre magazine. ... Read more

Product Description
Introduction by Lionel Trilling. This 1972 paperback copy includes 57 pieces of Babel's fiction. ... Read more

Book Description
Hailed as the first great Soviet writer, Isaac Babel was at once a product and a victim of violent revolution. In tales of Cossack marauders and flashy Odessa gangsters, he perfectly captured the raw, edgy mood of the first years of the Russian Revolution. Masked, reckless, impassioned, charismatic, Babel himself was as fascinating as the characters he created. At last, in renowned author Jerome Charyn, Babel has a portraitist worthy of his quicksilver genius.

Though it traces the arc of Babel’s charmed life and mysterious death, Savage Shorthand bursts the confines of straight biography to become a meditation on the pleasures, torments, and meanings of Babel’s art. Even in childhood, Babel seemed destined to leave a mark. But it was only when his mentor, Maxim Gorky, ordered him to go out into the world of revolutionary Russia that Babel found his true voice and subject. His tales of the bandit king Benya Krik and the brutal raids of the Red Cavalry electrified Moscow. Overnight, Babel was a celebrity, with throngs of admirers and a train of lovers.

But with the rise of Stalin, Babel became a living ghost. Charyn brilliantly evokes the paranoid shadowland of the first wave of Stalin’s terror, when agents of the Cheka snuffed out artists like candle flames. Charyn’s chilling account of the circumstances of Babel’s death–hidden and lied about for decades by Stalin’s agents–finally sets the record straight.

For Jerome Charyn, Babel is the writer who epitomizes the vibrancy, violence, and tragedy of literature in the twentieth century. In Savage Shorthand, Charyn has turned his own lifelong obsession with Babel into a dazzling and original literary work. ... Read more

Book Description
One of the great masterpieces of Russian literature, the Red Cavalry cycle retains today the shocking freshness that made Babel's reputation when the stories were first published in the 1920s. Using his own experiences as a journalist and propagandist with the Red Army during the war against Poland, Babel brings to life an astonishing cast of characters from the exuberant, violent era of early Soviet history: commissars and colonels, Cossacks and peasants, and among them the bespectacled, Jewish writer/intellectual, observing it all and trying to establish his role in the new Russia.

Drawn from the acclaimed, award-winning Complete Works of Isaac Babel, this volume includes all of the Red Cavalry cycle; Babel's 1920 diary, from which the material for the fiction was drawn; and his preliminary sketches for the stories—the whole constituting a fascinating picture of a great writer turning life into art. ... Read more

Product Description
The Lonely Years, a collection of private correspondence, is essential to an understanding of Isaac Babel's life and works. Babel rose to fame in 1920s Russia for such books as Red Cavalry and Odessa Stories. But as Stalin's regime grew repressive, he found it increasingly difficult to write or publish. He was finally arrested in 1939, never to be heard from again. Alternately tender and biting, and accompanied by nine stories from the "lonely years," these letters show an individual laboring against all odds to remain true to his craft and ideals. This edition contains a new introduction, based on previously unreleased information from the KGB files. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (2)

terrific debut novel
Rosenstone takes on the daunting task of imagining the life of Soviet writer Isaac Babel, whose literary reputation was lost/destroyed during the Soviet regime's darkest and most repressive days. In this fictitious re-creation of Babel's return to his hometown before being arrested and executed as a spy, Rosenstone creates the possibility that Babel was actually involved in a plot to help political dissidents flee. This is a tragic cautionary tale, a must-read for those interested in the genre.

A cleaver and imaginative novel
Rosenstone examines a well known literary character, Isaac Babel, and creates a novel that is quite magical. Babel, who is already a famous writter, goes back to his hometown of Odessa, leaving behind a wife and child in France. While there, he encounters much excitement and intrigue with the many people and places he encounters.Using the letters, postcards and knowledge of the life of Isaac Babel, Rosenstone weaves together fact, fiction and farce, andcreates a book which is as ejoyable to read as it is beautifully written. Up until the last pages, the reader is unaware if what he/she is seeing is fact, fiction or both, or if it really does not make any difference in the end. A must for anyone interested in intelligent literally fiction with a unique twist. ... Read more

Book Description
This diary by the famed twentieth-century Russian writer recounts Babel's experiences with the Cossack cavalry during the Polish-Soviet war of 1919-1920.The basis for Red Cavalry, Babel's best-known work, it records the devastation of the war, the extreme cruelty of the Polish and Red armies alike toward the Jewish population in the Ukraine and eastern Poland, and Babel's own conflicted role as both Soviet revolutionary and Jew. Selected as a Notable Book of the Year (1995) by the New York Times Book Review. Winner of the 1997 American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) award for the best translation of a work from a Slavic or East European language ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

JOTTINGS OF GENIUS
The journal Isaac Babel kept when he rode with the Cossacks in the 1919-20 war the Soviet Union waged against Poland served as source material for the stories in his brilliant collection, RED CALVARY.The diaries are a gem in themselves, displaying Babel's immediate response to the situation at hand, later to be transmuted by the writer's alchemy into the gold of the stories.It is a little slice of history in the raw, viewed through the eyes of a great writer, a writer who refused to conform to "socialist realism," a writer who 20 years later would be executed by the State Security Apparatus of the USSR. ... Read more

Book Description
About the Series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Midstream, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2006. The length of the article is 2276 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Plucking the heart out of Isaac Babel's mystery.(Review Essay)(Savage Shorthand: The Life and Death of Isaac Babel)(Book review)
Author: Sanford Pinsker
Publication: Midstream (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 52Issue: 1Page: 36(3)

Article Type: Book review

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from New Criterion, published by Thomson Gale on February 1, 2006. The length of the article is 1773 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Autumnal heart.(Savage Shorthand: The Life and Death of Isaac Babel)(Book review)
Author: Jeffrey Meyers
Publication: New Criterion (Magazine/Journal)
Date: February 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 24Issue: 6Page: 74(3)

Article Type: Book review

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from New Criterion, published by Foundation for Cultural Review on January 1, 2002. The length of the article is 2716 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Isaac Babel's genre of silence. (Books). (book review)
Author: Gary Saul Morson
Publication: New Criterion (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2002
Publisher: Foundation for Cultural Review
Volume: 20Issue: 5Page: 61(6)

Article Type: Book Review

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from Midstream, published by Thomson Gale on September 1, 2005. The length of the article is 4375 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Mingled biographies and mangled lives: Isaac Babel--a first glance.(Book Excerpt)
Author: Jerome Charyn
Publication: Midstream (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 51Issue: 5Page: 5(5)

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