page_title: A Common Story
section_title: Success
hierarchical_section_title: A Common Story / Background / Success
context_page_description: A Common Story is a debut novel by Ivan Goncharov written in 1844–1846 and first published in the 1847 March and April issues of Sovremennik magazine.
context_section_description: "Goncharov’s novel caused furore in Saint Petersburg, its success was unheard of. And how much good will it bring to our society, what a massive blow will it administer to romanticism, dreaminess, sentimentality and provincialism," Belinsky wrote to critic Vasily Botkin on March 17, 1847. "Goncharov's debut novel was very successful both in literary saloons and with wider audience," according to biographer Gavriil Potanin. Avdotya Panaeva remembered: "My God, and how agitated all the curious men of letters became all of a sudden! Everybody wanted to know details of the new author’s life, past and present, which class did he come from, what circles did he belong to, et cetera." 
  Years later, explaining the plot's major dilemma, Goncharov wrote in his "Better Late Than Never" essay: "This nephew versus uncle opposition was the reflection of the process that has been just starting at the time, when system of old concepts and customs was beginning to crumble down – and with it sentimentality, grotesque expression of feelings of love and friendship, poetisation of idleness, nets of domestic lies, knitted from preposterous, totally groundless emotionalism." 
  The novel had an immediate effect upon its readers. Critic Aleksander Skabichevsky remembered: "Instantly I recognized myself in its main hero, Aleksander Aduev, for as him, I used to be sentimentally complacent, and was taking great care to keep hair locks, flowers and other 'material symbols of immaterial relations'. And so ashamed was I of this similarity as to gather all the little souvenirs that I was keeping at my house, threw them into the fire and give on oath to myself never to fall in love again, ever." In his "Better Late Than Never" (1879) essay  Goncharov wrote: "While working on A Common Story I had in mind, of course, myself and people like myself, young men who were first studying at home or at the University, leading peaceful lives under their kind and protective mother's wings, then breaking away from all this tenderness, coming through lots of tearful farewells to find themselves in Saint Petersburg, this arena for all activity… And only there to experience this first spark of consciousness, this still dim realization that one needs to work, not go through some kind of bureaucratic motions, but real work to overcome this all-Russian stagnation."
caption: Portrait of young Goncharov by Kirill Gorbunov, 1847
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