File this under “books that make your palms sweaty”. Daniil Kharms is a semi-forgotten writer born in St. Petersburg in 1905 who published vignettes, mini-plays, poems, stories, philosophy and fragments notable for their absurdist streak and black-as-coal humor. Kharms was arrested a bunch of times and generally suffered under Soviet censorship, but his sister and a friend named Yakov Druskin managed to drag the writer’s works from a bombed-out apartment in a suitcase during the blockade of Leningrad, thereby preserving them for future readers.
Their foresight is our gain, as writers like George Saunders have pointed out: “Kharms belongs on your bookshelf with Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Babel…In that company his stories will be the briefest, the funniest, and in some ways, the truest….they are near-formless, violent, sad, hilarious and frightening all at once.”
It’s hard to describe the appeal of the stories, but let’s just say that Kharms consistently manages to turn the boring details of everyday life into exploding pockets of visionary wisdom. That enough to turn your wheels? His classic collection, Incidences, is available used for about three bucks if you know where to hunt online, and we say its well worth the price of an ice cream cone.
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