On Tick, by Varlam Shalamov

BIOGRAPHY
Varlam Shalamov was born in Vologda, that is 500 km north of Moscow, in 1907, and died in Moscow when he was 74, seven years before the fall of the USSR.
He was the son of a priest and of a teacher. His father went to Alaska (when it still belonged to Russia) as a missionary, but returned after the 1905 Revolution.
Although he was a religious man, he didn’t oppose the October Revolution in 1917.
Varlam took part in the revolutionary process as a Trotskyist activist; however he couldn’t go to university because he was the son of a priest, and at that time, workers and labourers were given preference.
For some time, he worked in a leather factory as a tanner, but eventually he could study and get a degree in Law in Moscow.
In 1929 was arrested for Trotskyist activities, and in 1932, he was released. He was imprisoned again in 1937, during the Great Purge, and released in 1942. But, because he praised the writer Ivan Bunin, anti-bolchevik and winner of the1933 Nobel Prize of Literature, he was arrested again and remained imprisoned until 1951.
He was a journalist and a writer, but while he was imprisoned in Kolyma, a labourer camp in one of the coldest places in Russia, he had to do different jobs, usually very hard, but also as a nurse in the camp hospital.
His most famous book is Kolyma Tales. He started to write these short stories in1954 and finished in 1973. Some people consider it the best description of the life in a labour camp. They are written in a dry style, devoid of all literary ornament (there are no metaphors, no allegories, no deep meanings, no ambiguity of any kind), and, what it’s more important, devoid of all political references.
The stories overlap one on another and the same characters appear in different scenes and different times. This way of narrating creates the feeling of a symphony of different voices.
There is a big difference between his narrative and the books by Solzhenitsyn: in Solzhenitsyn the labourers are heroes that suffer martyrdom, and the government is the villain of the story. What is important in Shalamov stories is the human dimension: guards, prisoners, criminals, members of the Party…, all of them are human beings, all of them have their own reasons.

Shalamov remained committed to his ideals throughout the time he was in the labour camp and perhaps that is what gave him the strength to go on living and the power his writings have.
As you can imagine, the Kolyma Tales were forbidden in the USSR, but they were distributed via samizdat (that is, in handwriting copies) and smuggled abroad. In 1960, they were published in an English translation. In 1978 in London, they were published in the original Russian version, and finally in the USSR three years before their dissolution.

ON TICK

This is really the first story of Kolyma Tales, as the first tale works as a prologue. It tells us about the moments of leisure of a group of prisoners in a labour camp after their long and hard workday. In the camp, the criminals have a higher status than the political prisoners, who usually are their servants, or at least, who must obey their orders.

The non-political prisoners are playing cards and betting high. But what do they bet if their belongings are close to nothing?The language is very simple, the descriptions are very precise and minimalist, but every object depicted seems to have a deep meaning. And the outcome of the story is so abrupt and unexpected, that you have to read it twice in order to understand it fully.

QUESTIONS

-Which diffeences do you think there were between German concentration camps and the Gulag?

-What do you know about Mao Cultural Revolution in China?

-According to your opinion, punishments and penitenciary systems are useful? What is it better for the justice, a jury or a judge?

-What can you tell us about Victor Hugo, Yesenin, Gogol?

VOCABULARY

berth, gas, deftness, wizards, stencils, card-sharp, duds, orderly 

The Rocking-Horse Winner, by D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence at the Wikipedia

The Rocking-Horse Winner at the Wikipedia

A Summary and Analysis of D. H. Lawrence’s The Rocking-Horse Winner

The Rocking-Horse Winner Study Guide

Audiobook

Written by Adriana Cruz

BIOGRAPHY
David Herbert Richards Lawrence, his birth name, was born in Eastwood, England, the 11th of September 1885, and he died in Vence, France, on the 2nd of March 1930 (the cause of death was tuberculosis). He was married to Frida von Richthofen, a German literate.
Lawrence was an English writer, author of novels, poems, plays, essays, short stories, travel books, paintings, translations, and literary criticism. His literature exposes an extensive reflection on the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. Lawrence views on all these matters caused him many personal problems. As a consequence, he had to spend most of his life in voluntary exile, which he himself called a “wild pilgrimage”. Among his most notable works there are Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. He got distinctions like the James Tait Black Award.
In his childhood, he studied at Beauvale Board School, becoming the first local student to win a county council scholarship to Nottingham High School.
He also studied at the University of London, where served as a teacher and received a teaching diploma in 1908. In the autumn of the same year, Lawrence left the home of his youth for London, although he continued to work as a teacher for a few more years.
Lawrence had a very close relationship with his mother. 
He had an affair with a married woman six years older than him with three small children, and they flew to Freida’s parents’ home in Metz. Afterwards, they got married.
He spent the rest of his life travelling in the company of his wife around several countries. Finally, they arrived in the United States in September 1922, where they met Mabel Dodge Luhan, a public figure, and contemplated establishing a utopian community on what was then Kiowa Ranch near Taos, New Mexico.
They acquired the property, known today as the D. H. Lawrence Ranch.

SUMMARY
The story tells of a middle-class family with three children (a boy and two girls), who live in a good house with a garden, with discreet servants. Although so that everyone could notice, they kept up appearances. The mother is haunted by a sense of failure, always thinking that she needs more than she has. Her husband did not earn as much as she wanted and the life he would like to have with her luxuries and extravagance. Her children feel this anxiety, even claiming they can hear the house whisper, “There must be more money.”
The boy Paul was playing with his wooden horse in search of luck and ordered his horse to take him where the luck is.
Basset, the gardener, told him about horse racing and the two became partners.
One day, the boy is questioned by his uncle on the subject, and he is surprised when he tells him the name of the winner. Uncle Oscar, intrigued, asks how he knows who will win, but Paul tells him that he only knows who wins and doesn’t tell him his secret. That’s how the guy finds out about his earnings and successes.
Uncle Oscar Cresswell becomes a partner with them. The boy and Bassett make huge bets on the horses Paul names.
When Paul decides to give the mother a gift of £1,000, on her every birthday, for five years, so that he can ease her commitments, but only makes her spend more.
Disappointed, Paul tries harder than ever to be “lucky.” As the Derby draws near, Paul is determined to meet the winner.
The mother, returning from a party, discovers his secret; She has spent hours riding his rocking horse, sometimes all night, until he “arrives”, in a clairvoyant state where he can be sure of the winner’s name.
Her uncle and the Gardener bet and won big on the investment of 14 to 1 of everything he had.
The mother now had a lot of money, but she did not have her son.
The boy told his mother, “Mom, I’ll ever leave you: I’m lucky”.

QUESTIONS
Talk about the main characters:
Paul
His mother
His father
His uncle
The gardener
Why do you think the mother couldn’t love her children?
Do you think money can make happiness?
And what about luck? Can it make you happy?
Being lucky is something that depends on the causality, or can you do something to be lucky? Remember the saying “Fortuna helps the brave”.
Are you pro or against lotteries? Why?
Paul’s mother became unlucky when she got married? Do you think marriage can change people so much?
Mantra is a commonly repeated word or phrase, especially in advocacy or for motivation. In the story we can find two or more mantras (“There must be more money”, “I want luck”). Do you think mantras can be useful or effective? (Perhaps you remember old people saying the rosary.)
Why do you think uncle Oscar is lucky?
Do you believe in intuitions or hunches?
The mother got some money for her birthday. Was she happy then? Why?
Does our childhood determine the way we are as adults?
Some interpretations of this story say that the boy has the Oedipal complex and that his rocking on the horse is like a kind of masturbation. What is your opinion about this interpretation?
What is the symbolic meaning of the story according to your point of view?

VOCABULARY
thrust, grinding, racked, champing, smirking, pram, brazening it out, peer, careered, steed, batman, blade, sport, honour bright, daffodil, romancer, fiver, spinning yarns, writs, writhed, drapers, sequins, overwrought, quaint, prance, uncanny, Master, as right as a trivet, tossing