Hah! I'm not a Russian speaker and I had the same thought upon seeing the headline. The Master and Margarita is good, but deeply depressing and pessimistic about human society and the world. This obviously reflects the conditions in which it was written, but I wouldn't recommend it as a pick-me-up!

There is an obvious attempt by the author to make the novel fun. It works - it is impossible for me to read this novel without guffawing multiple times.

Most people will describe a book that makes them laugh out loud as "fun", regardless of whether they observe the darker undertones.

"Fun" also doesn't need to be funny - there are many scenes of spectacular awe and wonder (like in the final chapter!) that are extremely fun.

"Fun" is such a broad word that it's hard to really draw a conclusion IMO. It's not exactly the first word that would come to mind when I describe the book but I suppose that it is, in fact, pretty fun even though the story being told is extremely bleak.

You have witches, the devil, a talking cat, magic performances where people end up running around naked like headless chickens, a ball in hell etc... That's entertaining regardless of the morale of the story. I think that's one of the reasons this book is so very well liked, it combines fantasy with a very strong message. The Lord of the Rings is fun but it's not exactly known for its very strong political message and criticism of an authoritarian regime from within. Karl Marx's Das Capital is politically and historically very interesting but about as fun as reading the phone book. Master and Margarita manages to do both at the same time.

Of course if you only focus on the "fun" stuff then you're missing a lot that the book has to offer but if you want to get people to read the book you'll probably have a better chance if you talk about those fantasy elements than if you describe it as a bleak criticism of the soviet union with bits of the crucifixion of Jesus spliced in between.

English-native speakers have a strong affinity for irony in humor, so any sharp combination of that with bleak hopelessness is 'black humor,' aka 'gallows humor,' and will be quite popular with those who enjoy that flavor in their laughter.

i read it as the psychedelic version of Faust. (it turns out that Bulgakov was addicted to morphine)

(However I never liked this motive of 'Ich bin ein Teil von jener Kraft, Die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft' - never got that.)

It is just signaling of intellectualism. Most of English translations of classic Russian lit suck -- for example one is highly unlikely to get by reading English translation of "The Master and Margarita" that it is satire even if one gets hundreds of pages of foot notes.

Volokhonsky and Peavar do the best but one still needs those hundreds of pages of footnotes which are just not there. Reading TMAM pretty much requires jumping off the TMAM train every few paragraphs and venturing into Literaturnaya Gazeta, history of KPSS, lore of the MGU, etc just to realize the mood of those paragraphs.

That's pointless projection. I read The Master and Margarita a long time ago because I read somewhere that it was one inspiration for the Rolling Stone's Sympathy for the Devil, so I wasn't exactly driven by pretentious intellectualism. It still managed to become one of my favorite novels and I even started learning Russian because of it (still working on that actually). I hope someday I'll be able to read it in the original language.

In hindsight I only regret starting with an English translation instead of a French one as I suspect that Russian maps better (although obviously still very imperfectly) with French grammar.

Now if you want signaling of intellectualism I've also seen Simon McBurney's adaptation of the novel as a play at Avignon's theater festival a few years ago and it was absolutely magnificent.

IIRC the English translation of Master & Margarita was first published in 1968. Marianne Faithful pass her copy to Mick Jagger, who read it in one sitting, overnight, then write Sympathy for the Devil. What Jagger wrote was a long way from the final recorded version [1]. When Jean Luc Godard filmed the Stones recording in 68 for his One Plus One movie he was lucky enough to capture the evolution of the song in the studio: the tempo was cranked up, samba drums and woo-woo vocals added, and Keef did the bass and guitar parts.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEtM576c8Ik

> I read The Master and Margarita a long time ago because I read somewhere that it was one inspiration for the Rolling Stone's Sympathy for the Devil, so I wasn't exactly driven by pretentious intellectualism.

I have a hunch you do not discuss The Master and Margarita at parties.

Edit: The downvotes on this is the exact reason why McDuff is popular - it is intellectual masturbation. The one mocked by Russian writers. One, of course, should read it in Russian on in V&P translation to notice this plot twist. It is always fun to watch.

The downvotes are because you keep making a non-sequitur strawmen instead of contributing anything of value to the discussion. Why wouldn't I be talking about it at parties?

What's your point exactly? Do you think that Master and Margarita is overrated or do you think people like it for the wrong reasons?

> Why wouldn't I be talking about it at parties?

For the same reason why you would not be discussing "Confucius, Philosopher of the Chinese" -- wrong audience.

> Do you think that Master and Margarita is overrated or do you think people like it for the wrong reasons?

I gave the answer above - fawning over TMAM among the western population is signaling of intellectualism targeting their friends. TMAM actually addresses it.

Volokhonsky and Peavar translations are a meme carried out to sell more books. There are other translations that are better and truer to the original text.

Such as?

Complaining without providing alternatives is not especially productive.

David McDuff