Towards the end of the first UK lockdown (circa May/June 2020, who really remembers), I started seriously reading Platonov. As a lover of Russian writing, I found myself ashamed not to have read him before. As translator Robert Chandler notes:
“in his mature work Platonov seems to delight in eliding every conceivable boundary—between animal and human, between the animate and the inanimate, between souls and machines, between life and death. He was almost certainly an atheist, yet his work is full of religious symbolism and imbued with deep religious feeling. He was a passionate supporter of the 1917 Revolution and remained sympathetic to the dream that gave birth to it, yet few people have written more searingly of its catastrophic consequences.” (Read Chandler’s full article here.)
I could not possibly provide an impressive analysis of Platonov’s work so I painted it, or at least one story: the very short but mind-blowing Lobskaya Hill.
I would love for you to join me in appreciating this incredible story. I have therefore, with permission, reproduced it with some doodlings of my own. There are options of an immediate download as a PDF or a printed copy. I appreciate all and any support of this!
Have a look here: https://gumroad.com/thequietroom
Direct links:
PDF download: https://gum.co/ZumrE
Real book posted in real life: https://gum.co/vvbeW
The story ‘Lobskaya Hill’ is published in the volume THE RETURN, first published in Great Britain in 1999 by The Harvill Press (ISBN 1 86046 516 1).
Platonov later incorporated part of ‘Lobskaya Hill’ in the story ‘Among Animals and Plants’. This story, one of his masterpieces, is included in SOUL AND OTHER STORIES (Vintage Classics and NYRB Classics).
the quiet room 