Large Print Reviews - Gogol and Russian Literature

Large Print Reviews

Gogol and Russian Literature
Compiled by Richard Seltzer

Gogol and Russian Literature
Gogol's Art by Tikos, plus great books by Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Chekhov, etc...
Compiled by Richard Seltzer
B&R Samizdat Express - March 29, 2003
(Gogol's Art, Laszlo Tikos - 1996)
ISBN: 0-931968-25-9
Genre: Russian Literature

Reviewed by Rochelle Caviness - May 23, 2003

Gogol and Russian Literature is a masterful CD collection of classical works of Russian literature in English translation, along with the addition of the modern work, Gogol's Art: a Search for Identity by Laszlo Tikos. This collection was compiled by Richard Seltzer, and it will equally serve the general reader as it will the academician as a phenomenal personal library of Russian Literature. This CD, which costs less than $30, contains the full text of forty works of fiction, plus a variety of plays and short stories. This text is further enhanced by the inclusion of a number of works on Russian History, a teacher's and student's guide to the collection, and Country Studies on Russia and Belarus. The Country Studies were issued by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress and each study provides a detailed overview of each country's history, society, environment, economy, government, and politics.

Gogol's Art: a Search for Identity

The focus of this collection is the critical work on Nikolay V. Gogol, Gogol's Art: a Search for Identity. This text was written by Laszlo Tikos, a professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures who currently teaches at the University of Massachusetts. This text offers intriguing insights into Gogol's life through a detailed analysis of Gogol's literary works. The text also explores the impact that he had on other Russian writers, and Russian Literature in general. This text is fully footnoted, and is an outstanding reference for anyone wishing to examine Gogol's life and works.

Classic Works of Russian Literature

In addition to the full text of Gogol's Art: a Search for Identity, this collection also includes works by the "Russian Masters," including:

Nikolay V. Gogol
Leonid Andreyev
Anton Chekhov
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Maxim Gorky
Alexandra Kuprin
Mikhail Lermontov
Alexander Pushkin
Leo Tolstoy
Ivan Turgenev

This collection offers you access to the full text of such well-known masterpieces as Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, and the play, Uncle Vanya. It also offers you access to other equally outstanding, but perhaps lesser known works such as Gorky's Creatures that Once Were Men and Andreyev's Seven Who Were Hanged an unforgettable story about capital punishment.

Russian History

In addition to offering an unprecedented, and economical source of the major works of Russian Literature, this collection also includes several works on Russian history. These works help to put the literary texts into historical perspectives, and they will help you to understand the political and social conditions that gave rise to many of the literary works contained in this collection.

Reading the Texts

The text can be read via your computer, or they can be printed out. Visually impaired, and other interested readers, can access these texts with most screen reading programs. In addition, this CD includes the ReadPlease screen reading program. ReadPlease is a windows-based screen reading program, and two versions of the ReadPlease program come with the CD, a free version and ReadPlease Plus, a commercial shareware version. To use the program, you simply highlight the text you want read to you, and the computer will read it aloud. In the free version you can only highlight 16,000 bytes of text at one time, whereas with the commercial version you can set the program to read an unlimited amount of text at one time. Instruction on how to use both programs can be found in the CD's 'readme' file, as well as in each programs Help file.

Most of the texts in this collection are provided in ASCII plain text formats, however a few texts are furnished only in the HTML format. Both formats, however, can be opened with almost any web browser or word processing programs. As long as you are using a Windows-based PC, you should not have any problems accessing these texts.

In Conclusion

The Gogol and Russian Literature CD collection is an excellent resource for anyone wishing access to the major works of Russian Literature. For students, this collection offers you access to a wealth of books (many of which are required reading in college) for the mere cost of a single hardback book. For readers in general, this collection offers you entrance into a riveting and dramatic form of literature that will provide you with years of reading material.

System Requirements

Windows PC
A web browser such as Explorer or Netscape, or a word processing program such as Word or WordPerfect.

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