An Uncommon Story () is an autobiographical literary memoir by Ivan Goncharov, written in 1875–1876 (with an 1878 addendum) and first published in 1924. Parts of it were later included into The Complete Goncharov (1978–1980, Vol VII).
According to the Gale Encyclopedia of Biography, An Uncommon Story "…confirmed the psychopathic side of [its author's] personality; it is an account of imagined plots against him and imagined attempts by others to plagiarize his work." Many researchers disagreed, finding there was much more veracity to Goncharov's claims than had previously been reported.
An Uncommon Story had one single agenda: to prove that Ivan Turgenev has not only borrowed major ideas, character types, and conflicts from Goncharov's The Precipice to use in his Home of the Gentry, but also (in the author's words) "infused the best European literature with them."
An Uncommon Story caused much debate; that it was published at all caused some controversy, for according to its author's special request, these memoirs were to be issued only in case plagiarism accusations were brought against him after his death. Since no such allegations have ever been made, Goncharov's book was formally published contrary to his will. In this same note, however, the author mentioned that he wished for future "historians of Russian literature" to take hold of it.
It was the latter who deemed the publication advisable since (according to scholar N. F. Budanova) "it shed an important light upon Goncharov and Turgenev's relations," and also provided researchers with "valuable material for making a comparative analysis of both classic novels which, indeed, had striking similarities."
Background
In the mid-1850s, Ivan Goncharov and Ivan Turgenev were on friendly terms. Goncharov, who'd launched his career in a spectacular fashion and was declared by some a "true Nikolay Gogol heir", had no serious rival as a novelist on the Russian literary scene until the late 1850s; Fyodor Dostoyevsky was still in exile, Leo Tolstoy was writing novelets and short stories, and Turgenev was considered a master of miniatures.
The success of Home of the Gentry must have come as a surprise to Goncharov, who'd never considered Turgenev a novelist. In a letter dated March 28, 1859, he wrote: "Would it be permissible for me to comment on your talent? I'd say you've got a gift for drawing tender landscapes, and have a keen ear, but you seem to be eager to erect monumental structures [...] and give us drama.<ref>Russian: Если смею выразить Вам взгляд мой на Ваш талант, то скажу, что Вам дан нежный, верный рисунок и звуки, а Вы порываетесь строить огромные здания... и хотите дать драму.</ref> Goncharov's opinion seemingly never altered.
Literary historians argued later that Turgenev's overnight success might have seemed totally undeserved for Goncharov, who, for quite a while, felt like he was the only master of his field. Goncharov produced one novel in a decade, but his new rival did it in a seemingly fleeting manner, which must have made the injustice look even more gross.
Of all the possible explanations for the improbable manner in which Turgenev, a master of miniatures, could have suddenly re-invented himself as a novelist, only one for Goncharov looked plausible: the younger man must have nicked his own ideas, structures, conflicts, and character types, and "with these pearls started to play his own lyre."
Some commentators later dismissed such claims as born out of jealousy, aggravated by Goncharov's natural suspiciousness, impressionability, and general hypochondria. Others argued that this would have been too simple an explanation, for while many of Goncharov's allegations were far-fetched, some were not altogether groundless. At least one fact was undisputed: in 1855, having returned from his long sea voyage, Goncharov laid out before Turgenev, his then good friend, the whole plan of his future third novel, which he has conceived as far back as 1849.
In 1887, four years after Turgenev's death, Goncharov attached a note to this novel's original text, which read: "This manuscript contains the material for a novel which in 1869, as Vestnik Evropy was about to publish it, I gave the title The Precipice. Before that I used to refer to is as Raisky, the Artist and was freely expounding upon it to my fellow writers, mostly to Turgenev. It was to him that in 1855, soon after returning from my around-the-world journey, I recounted in detail, in the course of several meetings, all the details of it [...] because he, being a perceptive and sensitive man of art, seemed to be most sympathetic to those of my works that he promised a great future for."