Tag Archives: book review

Of Russians: Returning to Babel’s Verve

Posted on by

My Russian kick (first Chekhov, then Vladimir Sorokin) has led me back to Isaac Babel, and the rogue is finally starting to get interesting. As I mentioned in a previous post, I ambitiously took out Babel’s collected short stories from the library, then found one story might have been enough for me. On a second perusal, I find his lively verve thrilling and terseness masterful.

Babel’s folksy tales are rollicking in a way Sorokin’s The Queue was not. (To The Queue‘s credit, it ended with a hilarious dialogue of sex sounds.) Babel writes the Jewish experience in Odessa in the 1920s and 30s, so he isn’t dealing with Communism as Sorokin is. Yet he critiques society in a way that suggests he must poke fun at life because he must somehow bear the status quo. These Russians attempt humor through criticism, or criticism through humor, but I’m not sure to what effect, as I haven’t laughed out loud as of yet.

I flipped through Babel’s collection again, hopping from Odessa stories to Red Calvary stories to autobiographical stories. There’s always a joke on someone by the end, and with a modicum of detail he suggest a world of characterizations. His people don’t always have great depth, but they fit in their role in society that grows increasingly complex as we read his cycles of stories. His portrait is one of Russia rather than an individual. Humble lives are transformed into red-blooded exercises in existence. What I’m trying to say is, Babel is a great storyteller.

Babel, photographed upon his arrest

Babel’s life is a story unto itself: he survived the 1905 pogrom that killed his grandfather. He became a journalist and fiction writer, only after fighting in wars and studying finance for lack of other options. He become silent under Stalin’s tightening control. Accused of being an aesthete, Babel would pay for his artistic licence (see Wikipedia article here):

After the suspicious death of Gorky in 1936, Babel noted: “Now they will come for me.” …In May 1939 he was arrested at his dacha in Peredelkino, and eventually interrogated under torture at the Lubyanka….After a forced confession, Babel was tried before an NKVD troika and convicted of simultaneously spying for the French, Austrians, and Leon Trotsky, as well as “membership in a terrorist organization.” On January 27, 1940, he was shot in Butyrka prison.

Reportedly, while Babel confessed under torture, “once he realised he was doomed, he recanted” but “it made no difference.” His last recorded words were,

“I am innocent. I have never been a spy. I never allowed any action against the Soviet Union. I accused myself falsely. I was forced to make false accusations against myself and others… I am asking for only one thing — let me finish my work.”

Maddening Queues of Soviet Russia

Posted on by

Imagine you’ve been waiting in line to buy a pair of shoes. Imagine you’ve waited all day and all night with hundreds of people. Can you imagine how dull that is?

This is the subject of the book I’m reading, The Queue by Vladimir Sorokin. If you went to school in the U.S., you probably came across the book 1984 by George Orwell. Well, I’m halfway through a Russian novel written in 1983 the follows much the same line of poking fun at the communist system. The Queue was the debut of this popular contemporary Russian author, and in it he tackles form with an absolute appropriateness to the subject that exploits every angle, or rather the straightness, of the line.

How does the subject of waiting in line influence the structure? Brilliantly, that’s how. The narrative is actually nameless dialogue of innumerable people in line, making conversations and noises as they stand there. One comes to recognize certain voices, like a little boy and his mother and a young man hitting on a girl named Lena. Even so, it feels like overhearing the hum of the crowd, as people complain about the sun or their feet in short, colloquial snippets. The chain of dialogue moves as the line moves. For example, a segment of the line twists itself to a courtyard with benches where they nap. After settling in, the reader finds page after blank page while they sleep. The text on the pages even looks like a line.

Yet as the reader finds, this farcical line in the Soviet Union is anything but straight. The humor of the book comes from the deadpan depiction of people moving backwards instead of forwards in the queue. Humor, immediately recognizable as it is, is difficult to pin down. The Queue rests on a recognition that waiting in line in a perhaps futile attempt to purchase anything, of the difficulties of merely waiting to do so, such as the Georgians cutting in front and pushing the whole crowd back, is not reasonable, and is incongruous with the society that Communism purported to establish. The absence of the author’s voice keeps the novel from taking on a didactic or even very dark aspect. The Queue is a comedy, but a rather dull one, as waiting in line has little to recommend itself.

Despite the cleverness of the structure, it’s also difficult to become involved in fiction without engaging characters. The struggle of the line seems the struggle of faceless individuals, but not of people despite hearing their voices speak throughout. It’s also because the characters do not act–they wait and wait in line. Following orders is not the inspiring stuff of novels, though it is perhaps truer to life. Only halfway through, and here I am critiquing the novel. This is less unfair that you might think. A disappointment of the novel is the extended stasis of the plot, and leaves me thinking the line will continue forever, without them ever buying the shoes of rumored American-make and brown leather.

Ah, Russians on the joys of communism..The novel really is interesting in itself, but believe me when I say it fully explores its chosen topic. No one, no where need ever write about queue in Soviet Russia ever again. Sorokin has filled that niche.

Factious Fiction: Alan Bennet’s The Uncommon Reader

Posted on by

Perhaps you know the term ‘factious’? No? A blank slate are we? Then memorize the second italized definition, for that is the one that will be useful in this book review.

fac·tious (fak′s̸həs): adjective. 1. producing or tending to
produce faction; causing dissension 2. adding facts to fictious
stories or things, characterized by the misplacement of
fact

Alan Bennet’s new novella, The Uncommon Reader, is a light read about a dutiful Queen, a most pratical and attentive Queen, who takes to reading, of all things. Her servants put it down to dottiness, as at a ripe old age she begins thinking, noticing people, and reconsidering her duties and life.

The term factious is handy here, because Alan Bennet seems to be writing an imaginary fable about the joys of reading and self-discovery, except its about the real Queen of England with oodles of corgis and Diana’s death thrown in. A peculiar mix of fact and fiction, that is to say, factious. The dramatization of living people with stories that have nothing to do with them strikes me as a little odd, as if the Queen was a bird that wanted stuffing, if I may be so factious as to say so.

The Queen’s tone determines the whole novella, as it should since its her point-of-view, but it’s a pity her tone happens to be plain, uninsightful, and purely functional. Only at the end does the Queen take on some elegance and humor in her speech, and one gleans its a function of her reading. Novella-sized is the perfect length for its easily digestable but not inspiring tale. Amid teas and prime ministers and rain, it lacked only one British thing: that wicked sense of humor.

However, this homage to the written word did have its fun plot elements, such as the gay kitchen boy, and a neat ending, and its a pleasure to find something a little bit different on the shelves of Barnes & Noble. One also found the use of the impersonal royal tone never failed to please. Alan Bennet is a succesful author, whose most recent play is the The History Boys currently on Broadway. No doubt this little red book will find its way into many stockings come Christmas.