Moscow to the End of the Line by Venedikt Erofeev

The end of Moscow to the End of the Line is fairly terrifying, although I would hardly toss out the word sobering. There are some more disturbing fun and games to be had on the train, although it all comes crashing down as Erofeev paints a picture of insanity that would be more comfortable if it could be taken for a case of serapionism rather than a hallucinatory bout with the DT’s. He was an alcoholic, he was an alky, your Privy Counselor, Johann von Goethe, and his hands shook, as it were” (85). Schiller would serve him something, but he would refuse – and how. Comparing Goethe to a comrade who didn’t drink but all the same poured it down the throats of his friends, Erofeev solves the conundrum “The same goes for your vaunted Johann von Goethe.

Not content with this, they come to the conclusion that Goethe was of course an alcoholic – albeit a cowardly one who drinks vicariously through his characters. After a litany of famous drunk authors are bantered about, Erofeev and his partner find themselves stumped by the case of Goethe – who supposedly never touched the bottle. Plenty of this makes for hilarious reading. On the train, where tickets are paid in grams of vodka, Erofeev finds himself a few drinking buddies and begins to wax both prosaic and poetic about the nature of hiccups and the connection between creation and the bottle. The bulk of the novel recounts his subsequent trip from Moscow to Petrushki where, supposedly, a beautiful woman who bore him a child awaits at the station. He measures everything in grams and their portents, beginning with a bizarre diagram delineating the connection between worker productivity and libation that ultimately loses him his job. The physical and mental slavery of addiction, in this case to spirits, is presented to the reader in ways that are both humorous (with a heavy dosage of the pitch-black) and horrifying.Įrofeev stars in his own novel as the obsessive compulsive (but chaotic) alcoholic writer who finds himself waking up in hallways and lamenting the hours that will pass until the liquor stores open their doors. Moscow to the End of the Line is a harrowing look at the link between addiction and madness with a sense of desperation akin to that of Hamson’s Hunger or, indeed, Dostoevsky’s Notes From Under the Carpet (as my Russian speaking professor use to insist was the actual title).

Moscow to the End of the Line by Venedikt Erofeev