The Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita is not the Faustian temptation story that I thought it would be. Nor is it the story you'd expect from "Satan appears in modern city, wreaks havoc". It's not a tragic love story, either, even if it hints at veering in that direction.

What we do get is Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem (first as a story a character is telling, then later as excerpts from a novel a different character had written). One of the fascinating things about this is how Bulgakov uses different, more obscure translations than we would expect; it's "Yershalaim" rather than "Jerusalem", "Yeshua Ha-Notsri" rather than "Jesus of Nazareth", and "Judas of Kerioth" rather than "Judas Iscariot." This device signals that this isn't quite the story as represented in the Gospels. Instead, it's a (plausible) accounting of a potential historical Jesus, his disciple (only one in The Master and Margarita), his betrayal, and his eventual execution. This story is interspersed with the contemporary action of the novel, that is the Prince of Darkness himself, and his retinue in 1930s/40s Moscow.

Said action entails the actions of the retinue of Professor Woland (a mysterious foreigner we meet in the first chapter, and who appears to be Satan): a man-sized cat, a fanged assassin, a freakishly tall fop, and a witch in and around Muscovite society. In short order, they take over an apartment (of a man who Woland corrects on the historicity of Jesus), organize a magic show which ends with half the audience in a state of undress, expose hypocrites, and get the one man who sees through it committed to an asylum.

Our title characters are introduced later in the narrative: we meet the Master in the asylum, when he's the neighbor of the character who's committed. We hear of Margarita through the story of his life he tells, but we don't meet her until much later in the novel.

Would recommend, as this is a variety of novels in one: that of the historical Jesus in Judea, a not-quite bildungsroman of the poet we meet early, a political satire, and a madcap adventure.

Civilwarland in Bad Decline

Sometimes it's interesting to see how a writer thinks, how their experiences shape their stories. The afterword to Civilwarland in Bad Decline is a little on the nose in that regard; George Saunders details what he was going through as he was writing these stories, how he was relatively broke, working a job he wasn't entirely enthused about, and worrying about how he would be able to provide for his family. In that light, the stories here about parents working a job they hate to support their children, worrying about failing their family, and actually failing to support their family are a lot more poignant.

Out of seven stories in this collection, four ("Civilwarland in Bad Decline", "The Wavemaker Falters", "Downtrodden Mary's Failed Campaign of Terror", and "Bounty", as well as the bonus story "A Lack of Order in the Floating Object Room") are set in amusement parks. Saunders cover this in the afterword, as well, as well as in an interview:

The truth is, I started writing theme park stories not out of thematic or political interest. I was just trying to divest myself of a certain tendency that I had, which was to be a stodgy, Hemingway-esque realist. I really loved Hemingway, so I wrote a lot of stuff in grad school that was kind of like Hemingway transplanted into my life, but somehow it didn't work. I noticed as a device if I set the story in a strange place, the language got a little more oomph in it. At first it was a way to keep myself honest, to keep me from falling back into this reactionary realist mode that I couldn't pull off. And at the time that I was working on the first book, I was also working at a company that was kind of squeezing the life out of me. It was one of those artistic accidents where I thought I was just doing something to be pragmatic, and then when I did it I could see all the political ramifications. So now I'm actually trying not to do those stories as much, but every so often one will hit me and it will seem like so much fun. It's a step up into that kind of weird fiction that's irresistible.

 The theme park stories are all a little different, of course: "Civilwarland in Bad Decline" is both funny and tragic as hell, as we see through the eyes of a downtrodden verisimilitude inspector who both hates and is lousy at his job, but sticks it out for the sake of his children (with a wife who no longer respects him). "The Wavemaker Falters" concerns a man who caused a tragedy losing the respect of his wife through dealing with it. Of the others, "Bounty" is the longest, and the most memorable; it deals with a dystopian future where society has broken down and where mutants, called "Flaweds" are second-class citizens: working menial jobs, or even enslaved. Unfortunately, it's the least tight of the stories here.

I would highly recommend this; all the stories are imaginative and effective.