I think what bothers me is to condemn legitimate works so viscerally - as if having no merit whatsoever, just because, I suspect, she doesn't agree with their point of view. Personally I think writers like Gorky, Chernyshevsky, Gladkov, Sholokhov, etc. should be strongly encouraged to anyone interested in Russian literature, if only because they provide a lesser known and much broader spectrum to a tremendous literary tradition. A wider range in point of view is vital - I would argue - to our understanding of Russian culture and history. Certainly, like them or not, none of these novels are "laughable, in a bad way" or "unreadable". I don't find that sort of criticism to have any constructive value whatsoever. Are they flawed? Sure. But so is "Dead Souls"...
Dear J. Storey, obviously I've offended you with my frank comments on certain authors and books, but I fear that you are crediting me with much more influence over members of this forum than is actually warranted. I don't think that my personal opinions about Gladkov's
Cement would matter one jot to a person who is determined to read that novel, especially if he or she is at all interested in Soviet prose of the 1920s (and please do note, that I mentioned that Gladkov was a well-known practitioner of Soviet ornamentalism, which is not a criticism, but merely a fact, and BTW, one of great interest to anyone studying the development of literary style in the years immediately following the October Revolution).
I also did say, as I recall, that I regard Gorky as a writer of real talent, and that I do recommend his autobiographical novels. I simply don't happen to like or admire his novel
Mother. Unlike his autobiographical novels, I find it soppy, sentimental, and didactic. How on earth can you describe this as a "visceral" reaction?
I also quite like Sholokhov's
And Quiet Flows the Don. (Even if it's not by Sholokhov, but by some anonymous Don Cossack writer lost to posterity.) I would, again, highly recommend it.
So excuse me for saying so, J Storey, but you are really not being at all fair to my judgments and opinions. There are plenty of literary works where I don't agree with the author's so-called message but I take real aesthetic pleasure in his/her style and genius. Mayakovsky is a good example. I think he was a superb poet, and even though I condemn his politics, I still enjoy reading his poems, whether or not they're highly political (they usually are).
We just don't agree on what level of literary expertise constitutes a great writer. I don't think Gladkov was anywhere near being a great writer, he was a moderately competent one, the kind who gets his books published every day in the United States by virtue of their sensationalism and immediate relevance to present-day political and social events. (But nowhere did I say one shouldn't attempt to read Gladkov, precisely for this historical immediacy - I only said that I personally found him unreadable.) But I honestly don't believe that one should compare writers like Gladkov and Chernyshevsky in the same breath with writers like Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, or even Chekhov. It's the equivalent of comparing Lawrence Durrell with Shakespeare. (And I happen to like Lawrence Durrell, or I did the last time I read him, which was a good twenty years ago!)