Why I wish Bulgakov had stopped after Part I of The Master and Margarita

I very rarely do this. Almost always, I read the introduction after I've finished the novel. Because they're very rarely introductions - they "give away" too much plot of assume too more foreknowledge of the book, and I find I get a lot more out of the intro when I read it as a post-script - though, also, I like to wait till I post on the book before reading the intro or any criticism, so I can get my own thoughts into words before letting another's take on the novel guide or steer my thinking. Anyway, as noted in yesterday's post I've been at a complete loss in efforts to make sense of at least some of Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita," so puzzled and frankly kind of bored by the weird surreal turns of events in the 2nd part of the novel I read Richard Pevear's introduction - he's always smart and a good reader of literature as well as an excellent translator - I can't say that reading what he wrote made me love The M&M, but he does emphasize the importance of the novel in its time - an amazing statement to the Soviet reading public in 1966 about the possibilities of fiction - one of their own had produced an experimental, post-modern work not only in Russian but a good 25 years before the American and European writers got there. The M&M was a huge breakthrough and Soviet readers were drawn to it like heat-scorched men to water. So I appreciate what a shock it must have been and what a powerful effect it had - but really is it a great novel beyond its peculiarity? It started out so, I was for a while really enjoying the whimsy and the multiple layers of meaning - but the 2nd half goes in a wrong direction, at least for me - long surreal, dream-like episodes in which a character wreaks vengeance on behalf of the Master, a writer without an audience, silenced by critics and editors - Bulgakov, of course. I salute his bravery and his willingness to devote years to a work they he knew would never be published in his lifetime - but if the first half of the book is about life in an oppressive, terrorist state and the second half is about the writer as hero - which do you think is more interesting? Or more significant? We'll see where it goes in its final 70 pages.