Down at the rocky swimming spot in Ballycotton sat a man reading a novel by Mikhail Sholokhov—I couldn't see which one—a day or two after I finished Happy Moscow. A spicy synchronicity. Stalin approved of Sholokhov, while Platonov was deemed unpublishable. Ballycotton can take them all—the choppy blue water and the thoughtful rope for hauling yourself out—and a reader down here who is not me, which is comforting, luxurious.
Back home I looked out Sholokhov's Virgin Soil Upturned on the bedroom bookshelves—reserved for childhood books and early independent purchases—one of those sunset-flavoured paperback covers with horses and wooden wagons and workers and scythes marching into the blaze of soviet realism—yes, if you can name it it probably doesn't exist. Any nation whose chief newspapers claim to be Reality and Truth must be deceived and deceiving much of the time.
I don't think I can read it now. I can catch the flavour (there are too many epithets, a forced grandeur, tons of moral imperative, yellowed cracky paper, tight print), read a few chapters, groan through the worthy translation, weary with the urgency of it all. What did I make of it in 1965? Why did I buy it? It was Russian and I identified with that, plus the title had an allure for a future gardener. I could not yet place the politics, the allegiances. Some writers work for a barely-knowing larger audience, a readily mythifying public. And Quiet Flows the Don is his most read book. Another alluring title. Don't be fooled. Even if did take 28 years to write.
Platonov is a desert writer, an urban writer out of the desert. Sholokhov is a romantic ruralist. Nothing like a good Cossack struggle. I would rather take Platonov to my desert island.
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