theuncultured 's review for:

Orosz napló - Robert Capa 70 fotójával by John Steinbeck

4.0

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The first time I read Steinbeck, really read Steinbeck, and not yawned in my English Literature class during The Pearl, I was generously offered culture in a teacher’s small office in University. He handed me Cannery Row and it changed the way I looked at everything from then on. I too wanted to live a simple life amongst big characters, I too wanted to experience friendship the way Steinbeck tells of it. For some reason when I’m asked the question, “who is your favourite writer,” his name is the one that casually comes to mind, even though it’s a false presumption; it’s simply impossible to have just one favourite writer. A Russian Journal is different from Cannery Row but Steinbeck is still there, soaking his bad knee in a hot bath, asking people questions about their worlds, poking and prodding into all the similarities that bring humans together despite race, age, and economical status. He writes the way a warm cup of tea feels in the pit of your stomach when you feel cold and desperate. In A Russian Journal we leave for the Soviet Union during the Cold War with Steinbeck and Robert Capa - Steinbeck to write about the world they experience and the frustration of travelling to and around an unfamiliar country and Capa to anxiously take photographs that never seem to satisfy him but which later prove to be more storytelling than you’ve prepared for. Their aim was to get to know the Russian people and hear them talk about their lives and where they came from. Their quest had little to do with the war and more to do with the everyday life of ordinary Russian folk. The Soviet Union must have made its impression on the men because they returned from their travels with full, high Russian-folk spirits, a Stalin-replete mental atmosphere and vodka that their stomachs couldn’t stomach anymore. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book about people where the main course of action was eating and drinking all the time but that was the Russian world when they got to it, a world of joy and community despite the war ruins in the backdrop, despite the silly foreigners asking ridiculous questions and pointing a lens at a world they will barely begin to understand with their elementary and careless attempts. The Russians are people made for the misery of the world because they’re probably one of the few who are able to take it with a basket of black bread, toasting for peace in the warmth of their simple homes. Think about it: when you’re able to go out dancing after working the skin off your hands, and display a blind yet formidable faith in your government, and to do it with great joy in your heart and love for the night, then wouldn’t you say that you’ve reached the epitome of what it means to be flesh and bone? I don’t know but I’d like to believe it, and Steinbeck certainly helps me with that.