Alta Ifland's Blog: Notes on Books
May 16, 2012
Vertical Motion by Can Xue (Open Letter, 2011. Trans. from the Chinese by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping)
The Beijing of Possibilities by Jonathan Tel (Other Press, 2009)
I had read Five Spice Street—one of the most original novels I’ve ever come across—by Can Xue, so I knew what to expect when I opened Vertical Motion. The latter is a rather eclectic collection, from the title story, written in a dry, impersonal tone, in the voice of a “little critter” that lives deep under the earth, to more emotionally-colored stories, such as “Cotton Candy,” in which a child, fascinated with a cotton-candy machine, daydreams about being a vendor.
This collection, although less captivating than Five Spice Street, confirmed my impression that Can Xue is one of the most interesting contemporary world writers. Several months later, the power of her novel is undiminished: I am still thinking about it, in spite of a less-than-average translation (which makes it all the more impressive). Surprisingly, Vertical Motion, which has been translated by the same team, is quite a good translation. I am not sure how to explain this: a better editor, more revisions, or simply the fact that the translators are now more experienced?
Immediately after finishing Vertical Motion, I discovered The Beijing of Possibilities by Jonathan Tel. Considering that this too is about contemporary China, and the stories in both collections have been published roughly around the same time, I thought that a parallel discussion might be interesting.
Tel lives in both Beijing and New York, and, if one is to believe his bio note, he has worked as a quantum physicist and an opera librettist. I am a little skeptical simply because the tone and style of the book are those of someone who could make up his bio. On the other hand, Tel’s writing is so different than that of his American (MFA-ized) contemporaries that maybe he is telling the truth.
The Beijing of Possibilities is one of the wittiest books by an American writer I’ve read in a while. The writing often sounds journalistic (if this were a film, I would say “like a documentary”): few adjectives and apparently simple sentences, but which delve into the described reality in an immediate way (that is, a way that sounds un-mediated, raw and honest); but this narrative approach sometimes takes unexpected turns and veers toward the fairy tale mode or the allegoric-fantastic. I can tell that Jonathan Tel lives in two parallel worlds because the structure of his stories is often “bipolar”: he would start with a story about ancient China, and then move to a story about contemporary China. Little by little the reader realizes that the two are different versions of the same story.
Because of his unusual approach to storytelling, Jonathan Tel has been compared to Sebald and Calvino, but, frankly, I don’t see many parallels, except for the photographs inserted in some of the stories. Personally, I think he is a very original writer, and I am at a loss regarding a possible comparison (which is impressive: how many writers do you know who don’t write like anyone else?)
Whether you are looking for an intelligent book of fiction, or a book on cotemporary China, The Beijing of Possibilities is a great read: as in many places undergoing profound transformations, contemporary Chinese reality is sometimes more surreal than fiction (I’ll only mention the Gorilla man, i.e., a man dressed as a gorilla, whose job is to sing celebratory songs on special occasions to office employees all across the city).
The Beijing of Possibilities by Jonathan Tel (Other Press, 2009)
I had read Five Spice Street—one of the most original novels I’ve ever come across—by Can Xue, so I knew what to expect when I opened Vertical Motion. The latter is a rather eclectic collection, from the title story, written in a dry, impersonal tone, in the voice of a “little critter” that lives deep under the earth, to more emotionally-colored stories, such as “Cotton Candy,” in which a child, fascinated with a cotton-candy machine, daydreams about being a vendor.
This collection, although less captivating than Five Spice Street, confirmed my impression that Can Xue is one of the most interesting contemporary world writers. Several months later, the power of her novel is undiminished: I am still thinking about it, in spite of a less-than-average translation (which makes it all the more impressive). Surprisingly, Vertical Motion, which has been translated by the same team, is quite a good translation. I am not sure how to explain this: a better editor, more revisions, or simply the fact that the translators are now more experienced?
Immediately after finishing Vertical Motion, I discovered The Beijing of Possibilities by Jonathan Tel. Considering that this too is about contemporary China, and the stories in both collections have been published roughly around the same time, I thought that a parallel discussion might be interesting.
Tel lives in both Beijing and New York, and, if one is to believe his bio note, he has worked as a quantum physicist and an opera librettist. I am a little skeptical simply because the tone and style of the book are those of someone who could make up his bio. On the other hand, Tel’s writing is so different than that of his American (MFA-ized) contemporaries that maybe he is telling the truth.
The Beijing of Possibilities is one of the wittiest books by an American writer I’ve read in a while. The writing often sounds journalistic (if this were a film, I would say “like a documentary”): few adjectives and apparently simple sentences, but which delve into the described reality in an immediate way (that is, a way that sounds un-mediated, raw and honest); but this narrative approach sometimes takes unexpected turns and veers toward the fairy tale mode or the allegoric-fantastic. I can tell that Jonathan Tel lives in two parallel worlds because the structure of his stories is often “bipolar”: he would start with a story about ancient China, and then move to a story about contemporary China. Little by little the reader realizes that the two are different versions of the same story.
Because of his unusual approach to storytelling, Jonathan Tel has been compared to Sebald and Calvino, but, frankly, I don’t see many parallels, except for the photographs inserted in some of the stories. Personally, I think he is a very original writer, and I am at a loss regarding a possible comparison (which is impressive: how many writers do you know who don’t write like anyone else?)
Whether you are looking for an intelligent book of fiction, or a book on cotemporary China, The Beijing of Possibilities is a great read: as in many places undergoing profound transformations, contemporary Chinese reality is sometimes more surreal than fiction (I’ll only mention the Gorilla man, i.e., a man dressed as a gorilla, whose job is to sing celebratory songs on special occasions to office employees all across the city).
May 13, 2012
The Moon over the Mountain by Atsushi Nakajima (Trans. from the Japanese by Paul McCarthy and Nobuko Ochner, Autumn Hill Books, 2011)
You may be as surprised as I was to find out that stories on classical Chinese topics are a special literary genre in Japan, and their writers enjoy great respect. Atsushi Nakajima is one such writer. Although he died young and published almost nothing during his lifetime, he became very popular after his death in 1942.
The recurrent characters in many of the stories in this collection are representations of famous Chinese historical characters from eras going as far back as the eighth century. Readers somewhat familiar with Chinese classical tales may recognize some of the names and some of the events narrated.
Three stories, in particular, have stayed with me: “The Moon over the Mountain,” in which an unsuccessful poet who keeps complaining about his unhappy fate is turned into a tiger; “The Master,” in which an archer, after having studied this art with two great masters, achieves perfection only when he understands that “Perfect action lies in inaction, perfect speech abandons words, and perfect archery means never shooting;” and “The Disciple,” which tells the story of a disciple of Confucius. For those of us who don’t know much about the latter (whose Chinese name was, apparently, Kong Qiu), the story skillfully presents the life and philosophy of this world-famous man through a captivating narrative. I now understand why it is said that his philosophy is pragmatic: whether he served the rich and powerful (for a while he was a minister) or wandered aimlessly in relative poverty together with his disciples, he tried to do good, but never in an idealistic way. In extreme situations, he always advised his disciples to save their own skin rather than sacrifice themselves for a higher cause. In today’s parlance, he would be called a “realist.”
Last but not least, this is, as far as I can tell, a very good translation. My only objection is that, occasionally, it sounds too contemporary.
You may be as surprised as I was to find out that stories on classical Chinese topics are a special literary genre in Japan, and their writers enjoy great respect. Atsushi Nakajima is one such writer. Although he died young and published almost nothing during his lifetime, he became very popular after his death in 1942.
The recurrent characters in many of the stories in this collection are representations of famous Chinese historical characters from eras going as far back as the eighth century. Readers somewhat familiar with Chinese classical tales may recognize some of the names and some of the events narrated.
Three stories, in particular, have stayed with me: “The Moon over the Mountain,” in which an unsuccessful poet who keeps complaining about his unhappy fate is turned into a tiger; “The Master,” in which an archer, after having studied this art with two great masters, achieves perfection only when he understands that “Perfect action lies in inaction, perfect speech abandons words, and perfect archery means never shooting;” and “The Disciple,” which tells the story of a disciple of Confucius. For those of us who don’t know much about the latter (whose Chinese name was, apparently, Kong Qiu), the story skillfully presents the life and philosophy of this world-famous man through a captivating narrative. I now understand why it is said that his philosophy is pragmatic: whether he served the rich and powerful (for a while he was a minister) or wandered aimlessly in relative poverty together with his disciples, he tried to do good, but never in an idealistic way. In extreme situations, he always advised his disciples to save their own skin rather than sacrifice themselves for a higher cause. In today’s parlance, he would be called a “realist.”
Last but not least, this is, as far as I can tell, a very good translation. My only objection is that, occasionally, it sounds too contemporary.
May 6, 2012
The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto (trans. from the Japanese by Michael Emmerich, Melville House, 2011)
The Lake confirmed the impression I was left with after having read Asleep and N. P.: Yoshimoto is one of those contemporary writers situated at the border between what one could call (for lack of a better word) “serious” literature and pop fiction. The fact that The Lake was better received than N.P. in this country is at least in part due to the fact that its translator, Michael Emmerich, is considerably more skilled than N. P.’s translator. Still, while reading The Lake, I felt, as I often do when I read translations from the Japanese or the Chinese, that the language shifts in abrupt ways, from the very casual to the very poetic. I know that Yoshimoto has been praised for both her poetic language and her hipness (expressed in the very contemporary style of her dialogues), but I wonder if certain awkward transitions sound the same in the original.
I confess that my feelings about Yoshimoto in general and this book in particular are ambivalent. On the one hand, she does have a gift for creating atmosphere and identifiable characters with only a few simple strokes. She gives the impression that she has hurriedly jotted down some notes, which grab the reader in spite of herself. But then, one also finds passages that seem taken from some teenager’s blog—which may explain the huge following the writer has among young people.
The novel’s plot is simple: a young woman whose mother has recently died begins a relationship with a mysterious young man about whom she knows that he had suffered a big trauma in his childhood. Yoshimoto is very skilled at maintaining the suspense until the very end, when she reveals what had happened in the man’s childhood. More than anything, Yoshimoto’s enormous success among the Japanese comes, I think, from her strong sensibility whose dark side is popular not only for its “gothic” associations, but also because in traditional Japanese culture there is something noble about melancholy and sadness. The same fascination with melancholy characters and dreamlike atmosphere can be found in Yoko Ogawa’s books, but the latter is a much better writer than Yoshimoto.
The Lake confirmed the impression I was left with after having read Asleep and N. P.: Yoshimoto is one of those contemporary writers situated at the border between what one could call (for lack of a better word) “serious” literature and pop fiction. The fact that The Lake was better received than N.P. in this country is at least in part due to the fact that its translator, Michael Emmerich, is considerably more skilled than N. P.’s translator. Still, while reading The Lake, I felt, as I often do when I read translations from the Japanese or the Chinese, that the language shifts in abrupt ways, from the very casual to the very poetic. I know that Yoshimoto has been praised for both her poetic language and her hipness (expressed in the very contemporary style of her dialogues), but I wonder if certain awkward transitions sound the same in the original.
I confess that my feelings about Yoshimoto in general and this book in particular are ambivalent. On the one hand, she does have a gift for creating atmosphere and identifiable characters with only a few simple strokes. She gives the impression that she has hurriedly jotted down some notes, which grab the reader in spite of herself. But then, one also finds passages that seem taken from some teenager’s blog—which may explain the huge following the writer has among young people.
The novel’s plot is simple: a young woman whose mother has recently died begins a relationship with a mysterious young man about whom she knows that he had suffered a big trauma in his childhood. Yoshimoto is very skilled at maintaining the suspense until the very end, when she reveals what had happened in the man’s childhood. More than anything, Yoshimoto’s enormous success among the Japanese comes, I think, from her strong sensibility whose dark side is popular not only for its “gothic” associations, but also because in traditional Japanese culture there is something noble about melancholy and sadness. The same fascination with melancholy characters and dreamlike atmosphere can be found in Yoko Ogawa’s books, but the latter is a much better writer than Yoshimoto.
May 2, 2012
Sunflower by Gyula Krúdy (NYRB, trans. from the Hungarian by John Bátki, introduction by John Lukacs)
Krúdy has been hailed by his fellow Hungarians as not only one of the greatest Hungarian writers, but maybe the greatest. He has been compared to Robert Walser and Bruno Schulz because, like them, he is unclassifiable, and his greatness has been described by Sándor Márai as “almost past comprehension.” Given all the above, the reader may be slightly disappointed by his novel, Sunflower (written in 1918 and published for the first time in English in 1997). Lukacs’s introduction warns us about the difficulties to translate Krúdy’s poetic prose not only because of his style, but also because of the hidden allusions (cultural, historical) that only a Hungarian can understand. With an ambiguous formulation, he tells the reader that the translator “has tried” and “largely succeeded.”
As I read the book, I tried to find in my mind literary equivalents for it, and the only one I came up with was Craii de Curtea Veche by the Romanian writer Mateiu Caragiale, a novel written around the same time and hailed by Romanian writers as an unequaled masterpiece. What these books have in common, aside from a poetic, archaic style, is an atmosphere of fin-de-siècle, of a gone world that the narrators are trying to bring back through the power of words. The world they describe and which triggers their nostalgia is one in which men drink their fill and reminisce about past lovers—in other words, a world that is itself prone to nostalgic remembrance. In this world, the inn is the emblematic space of dramatic encounters, a microcosm from which stories about other worlds unspool, where an old woman spotted at a nearby table triggers a long story about a bygone beauty and the drama that had once surrounded her. This nostalgia about nostalgia creates a dreamlike universe, but this universe is far from being depicted as some kind of idyllic space; on the contrary, there is a crudeness and even an ugliness to the people in it. The apparent contradiction between this nostalgia and the world that is its object makes me think that these two authors may be impossible to translate for an American audience.
And this brings me to the issue of translation, and to whether translating a book from a very different culture and historical time is possible. In this case, I think the answer is no, not because translating the author’s words might be impossible. What is impossible to translate is what the author hasn’t said, and which is, nevertheless, present in the book: a sensibility circumscribed to a certain culture and historical time. The idea of a bygone world and the accompanying nostalgia may be to some degree universal (in American literature, Gone with the Wind is a great example), but what differentiates an American and a Hungarian is that loss gives the latter a perverse pleasure. Compare the spirit of Scarlet O’Hara who, undeterred by all she’s lost, declares courageously, “Tomorrow is another day,” hopeful that she can start all over again, to Krúdy’s characters who will do tomorrow what they are doing today: reminisce about yesterday.
Add to the above the fact that, unlike most novels, Krudy’s novel has several centers from which radiate several stories. For the first half, a woman, Eveline, seems to be the main protagonist, but then, the focus shifts to her neighbor, Pistoli, who becomes the main character. Pistoli is the incarnation of the “old Hungary” whose loss the narrator (and the author) deplores, and with whom most American readers, especially women, would find it hard to identify: an ugly yet impressive man, presumably in his sixties, who venerates the bottle, takes himself for a philosopher (and doesn’t spare the reader his numerous “witticisms”), thinks with nostalgia about the dozens of mistresses from his past, and sometimes visits his former wives, now locked up (by him) in mental institutions. On the other hand, the mating dance of cruelty between Pistoli and Miss Maszkeradi, a wild woman and feminist avant la lettre, is fascinating, as is the relationship between her friend, the suave Eveline and her suitor, Andor Almos-Dreamer (who is, indeed, a dreamer). The novel doesn’t have a plot per se, but a series of events, which don’t really develop toward a climax; rather, they go up and down, and right and left until Pistoli’s death restores a lost equilibrium and brings some hope for the future of Eveline and Almos-Dreamer.
Krúdy has been hailed by his fellow Hungarians as not only one of the greatest Hungarian writers, but maybe the greatest. He has been compared to Robert Walser and Bruno Schulz because, like them, he is unclassifiable, and his greatness has been described by Sándor Márai as “almost past comprehension.” Given all the above, the reader may be slightly disappointed by his novel, Sunflower (written in 1918 and published for the first time in English in 1997). Lukacs’s introduction warns us about the difficulties to translate Krúdy’s poetic prose not only because of his style, but also because of the hidden allusions (cultural, historical) that only a Hungarian can understand. With an ambiguous formulation, he tells the reader that the translator “has tried” and “largely succeeded.”
As I read the book, I tried to find in my mind literary equivalents for it, and the only one I came up with was Craii de Curtea Veche by the Romanian writer Mateiu Caragiale, a novel written around the same time and hailed by Romanian writers as an unequaled masterpiece. What these books have in common, aside from a poetic, archaic style, is an atmosphere of fin-de-siècle, of a gone world that the narrators are trying to bring back through the power of words. The world they describe and which triggers their nostalgia is one in which men drink their fill and reminisce about past lovers—in other words, a world that is itself prone to nostalgic remembrance. In this world, the inn is the emblematic space of dramatic encounters, a microcosm from which stories about other worlds unspool, where an old woman spotted at a nearby table triggers a long story about a bygone beauty and the drama that had once surrounded her. This nostalgia about nostalgia creates a dreamlike universe, but this universe is far from being depicted as some kind of idyllic space; on the contrary, there is a crudeness and even an ugliness to the people in it. The apparent contradiction between this nostalgia and the world that is its object makes me think that these two authors may be impossible to translate for an American audience.
And this brings me to the issue of translation, and to whether translating a book from a very different culture and historical time is possible. In this case, I think the answer is no, not because translating the author’s words might be impossible. What is impossible to translate is what the author hasn’t said, and which is, nevertheless, present in the book: a sensibility circumscribed to a certain culture and historical time. The idea of a bygone world and the accompanying nostalgia may be to some degree universal (in American literature, Gone with the Wind is a great example), but what differentiates an American and a Hungarian is that loss gives the latter a perverse pleasure. Compare the spirit of Scarlet O’Hara who, undeterred by all she’s lost, declares courageously, “Tomorrow is another day,” hopeful that she can start all over again, to Krúdy’s characters who will do tomorrow what they are doing today: reminisce about yesterday.
Add to the above the fact that, unlike most novels, Krudy’s novel has several centers from which radiate several stories. For the first half, a woman, Eveline, seems to be the main protagonist, but then, the focus shifts to her neighbor, Pistoli, who becomes the main character. Pistoli is the incarnation of the “old Hungary” whose loss the narrator (and the author) deplores, and with whom most American readers, especially women, would find it hard to identify: an ugly yet impressive man, presumably in his sixties, who venerates the bottle, takes himself for a philosopher (and doesn’t spare the reader his numerous “witticisms”), thinks with nostalgia about the dozens of mistresses from his past, and sometimes visits his former wives, now locked up (by him) in mental institutions. On the other hand, the mating dance of cruelty between Pistoli and Miss Maszkeradi, a wild woman and feminist avant la lettre, is fascinating, as is the relationship between her friend, the suave Eveline and her suitor, Andor Almos-Dreamer (who is, indeed, a dreamer). The novel doesn’t have a plot per se, but a series of events, which don’t really develop toward a climax; rather, they go up and down, and right and left until Pistoli’s death restores a lost equilibrium and brings some hope for the future of Eveline and Almos-Dreamer.
April 24, 2012
Jubilee by Roxane Beth Johnson (Anhinga Press, 2006)
How can one distinguish between authenticity and fakeness when the latter is shrewd enough to give the appearance of the former? There are no rules for this, and in the world of poetry, fakeness—that is, clever lines giving the semblance of depth, but which, in fact, are hollow; or, seemingly “poetic” structures, which are nothing but imitations of other poets—often rules and fools. So, I can’t tell you how I know that Roxane Beth Johnson is an authentic poet, but I know it.
After reading Jubilee, a collection of (mostly) prose poems, the reader is brimming with Johnson’s world—parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, holy men and bums—and a certain religious feeling that can only come from the union of personal/familial history and the sacredness of a book (an “old black Bible”). “Religion” comes from the Lat. “religare,” i.e., to unite, to tie together, and Johnson’s religiosity is the kind that unites all the above into a whole carried under her skin. Even when she focuses on the formal aspect of a poem, there is something that transcends the surface. Listen to this:
“That old house arrives pure as tea having rinsed off its orchard and crawling vines. Windows are asterisks.”
Jubilee
How can one distinguish between authenticity and fakeness when the latter is shrewd enough to give the appearance of the former? There are no rules for this, and in the world of poetry, fakeness—that is, clever lines giving the semblance of depth, but which, in fact, are hollow; or, seemingly “poetic” structures, which are nothing but imitations of other poets—often rules and fools. So, I can’t tell you how I know that Roxane Beth Johnson is an authentic poet, but I know it.
After reading Jubilee, a collection of (mostly) prose poems, the reader is brimming with Johnson’s world—parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, holy men and bums—and a certain religious feeling that can only come from the union of personal/familial history and the sacredness of a book (an “old black Bible”). “Religion” comes from the Lat. “religare,” i.e., to unite, to tie together, and Johnson’s religiosity is the kind that unites all the above into a whole carried under her skin. Even when she focuses on the formal aspect of a poem, there is something that transcends the surface. Listen to this:
“That old house arrives pure as tea having rinsed off its orchard and crawling vines. Windows are asterisks.”
Jubilee
April 19, 2012
The Twelve Chairs by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, and its sequel, The Golden Calf, have enjoyed an immense popularity in Russia and Eastern Europe. I had read (and greatly enjoyed) The Golden Calf many years ago in Romanian, and as a consequence, I was very excited by the recent publication of a new English translation of The Twelve Chairs (Northwestern, 2011, translated from the Russian by Anne O. Fisher). I wondered, however, whether a satirical Russian novel set in 1927 and published a year later could be understood by a contemporary American reader. Now that I read all its 500 plus pages, I can say that, surprisingly, the answer is yes. The American reader won’t understand all the references, of course, but most of the humor is fairly universal.
The plot is set in motion by the confession of Ippolit Matveevich Vorobyaninov’s mother-in-law on her deathbed: before the Soviet regime forced them out of their home she’d managed to hide her jewels, including her diamonds, in one of the twelve upholstered chairs that were part of a Gambs furniture set. All their possessions, including the chairs, were confiscated by the regime and allocated to various individuals and institutions. The problem is that the woman confessed to both her son-in-law and Father Fyodor, so both of them set out on a journey across the Soviet state, during which their paths sometimes cross, causing hilarious encounters. Vorobyninov is accompanied by Ostap Bender, “the smooth operator,” a self-appointed “technical director” who is one of the greatest crooks in the history of literature (a more vulgar version of Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull). The tragicomic demise of Father Fyodor is paralleled by the absolutely unexpected ending of the novel and of the diamond search. I won’t reveal it here, but suffice it to say that the Communist censors might have had something to do with it.
This journey across nations, cities, mountains and sea(s) allows the writers to depict all the social strata of Soviet society, and to give the reader a good understanding of its functioning in the 1920s. This novel proves, once again, that reading literature is the best way to understand history. Thanks should be given to Anne O. Fischer for her (mostly successful) effort to translate this huge and difficult novel, and for the research she’s done in the process. The book has a long, helpful and non-intrusive list of notes at the end.
[This is not the edition I read, but the link to the new edition is broken]
The plot is set in motion by the confession of Ippolit Matveevich Vorobyaninov’s mother-in-law on her deathbed: before the Soviet regime forced them out of their home she’d managed to hide her jewels, including her diamonds, in one of the twelve upholstered chairs that were part of a Gambs furniture set. All their possessions, including the chairs, were confiscated by the regime and allocated to various individuals and institutions. The problem is that the woman confessed to both her son-in-law and Father Fyodor, so both of them set out on a journey across the Soviet state, during which their paths sometimes cross, causing hilarious encounters. Vorobyninov is accompanied by Ostap Bender, “the smooth operator,” a self-appointed “technical director” who is one of the greatest crooks in the history of literature (a more vulgar version of Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull). The tragicomic demise of Father Fyodor is paralleled by the absolutely unexpected ending of the novel and of the diamond search. I won’t reveal it here, but suffice it to say that the Communist censors might have had something to do with it.
This journey across nations, cities, mountains and sea(s) allows the writers to depict all the social strata of Soviet society, and to give the reader a good understanding of its functioning in the 1920s. This novel proves, once again, that reading literature is the best way to understand history. Thanks should be given to Anne O. Fischer for her (mostly successful) effort to translate this huge and difficult novel, and for the research she’s done in the process. The book has a long, helpful and non-intrusive list of notes at the end.
[This is not the edition I read, but the link to the new edition is broken]
April 9, 2012
Dubravka Ugresic’s Baba Yaga Laid an Egg (trans. from Serbo-Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursac, Celia Hawkesworth, and Mark Thompson, Grove Press, 2011) retells the Slavic myth of Baba Yaga (literally “old woman”) as a modern (or postmodern) story about old age and women. The book’s first section is devoted to the narrator’s relationship with her aged mother; the second tells the story of three old women, Pupa, Beba and Kukla, framed within the setting of a luxurious spa in post-communist Czech Republic; and the third is a sort of deconstruction or a “fairytale turned inside-out” of the previous section, penned in the form of a study by a specialist in folklore (Aba Bagay, an obvious anagram of Baba Yaga).
As a former East European who has been fascinated by the American obsession with youth, the preservation of the body, and the myth of immortality—all of which are reflected in the fitness culture on the one hand and the pop mythology built around the myth of Dracula on the other—I read with passion Ugresic’s meditation on all these themes via what appears to be a story at the spa. The spa itself (or its older version, the sanatorium) is one of the most fecund loci in early 20th-century European literature: think of Thomas Mann, to mention only the most famous name. But Ugresic, who is well aware of her predecessors (she herself mentions several writers who have chosen the spa as their setting, among them Milan Kundera), uses it in order to illuminate contemporary mores and obsessions, associating this “healing spring” with the myth of the fountain of youth, and creating a funny satire of the industries centered around the body (vitamin industry, cosmetic surgery, etc.) with their “physics and metaphysics” that reflect an “archetypal dream” of humanity and the “fundamental obsession of our age” with youth and the body.
Structurally, the book’s second section follows the flow of fairytales in that each chapter ends with a rhymed zinger in which the storyteller intervenes to remind us that this is, after all, only a story, and occasionally to comment on the story itself: “What about us? While life may land us in a dreadful plight, the tale speeds to be home in daylight.” This is a translation challenge, as folk and fairytale rhymed zingers are so ingrained in us in that unique form that any translation would sound fake; it is hard to tell whether Ugresic uses here “authentic” zingers from tales she has read as a child—which could never sound “authentic” for an English-speaking reader—or whether she actually invents them (my guess would be the latter).
Lovers of myth, folklore, and anthropology will relish the third section, a hundred-page study of the myth of Baba Yaga, in spite of the fact that one is not entirely sure how to read it in relation to the rest of the novel—an ambiguity the author probably intends. The folklorist Aba Bagay gives us here a mythological (and occasionally psychoanalytical and feminist) interpretation of the story we have just read in the book’s second section. This interpretation is not simply a general reading of “what happens” in the story: it is a symbolic reading of various scenes, sometimes down to the most trivial and apparently inconspicuous (“camouflaged”) details (for example, a little girl’s playful motion to step inside a big boot is compared to a regression into the maternal womb).
Whether Ugresic uses her skills developed while working as a researcher at the Institute for Theory of Literature at Zagreb University in order to make fun of Aba Bagay’s pedantic knowledge and pretentious interpretation, as some American reviewers have opined, is open to debate. While it is obvious that the author has an ironic distance toward Aba Bagay, it would be hard to say that she entirely dismisses her, since the facts presented in the third section are not invented but describe the history and the specialized literature pertaining to this myth, and are verifiable. The question is: how seriously does Ugresic take the folklorist’s interpretation of the second section (especially since she tells us in the first section that she dislikes specialists in folklore)? Is Aba Bagay the opposite of Baba Yaga (as the order of the letters y-a-g-a-b-a-b-a might suggest), or, on the contrary, is she a Baba Yaga herself who turns the myth upside down or inside out? It seems to me Aba Bagay is here merely a pretext (or a post-text) that Ugresic uses in order to give us the “facts” of the myth.
On the other hand, it is evident that Ugresic intended to rewrite the myth from a feminist perspective. The difference in perception triggered by the third section may be caused by the caesura between Aba Bagay’s symbolic logic and the feminist perspective, which belong to two different worldviews, insofar as symbolic logic attempts to find some kind of hidden, universal meaning behind a particular situation. It will be interesting to see the kinds of reading this book will inspire. It is the type of book that can be open to multiple interpretations because it unites within the same space mythological and postmodern thinking. As Susan Sontag has said, Ugresic is “a writer to follow, a writer to be cherished.”
As a former East European who has been fascinated by the American obsession with youth, the preservation of the body, and the myth of immortality—all of which are reflected in the fitness culture on the one hand and the pop mythology built around the myth of Dracula on the other—I read with passion Ugresic’s meditation on all these themes via what appears to be a story at the spa. The spa itself (or its older version, the sanatorium) is one of the most fecund loci in early 20th-century European literature: think of Thomas Mann, to mention only the most famous name. But Ugresic, who is well aware of her predecessors (she herself mentions several writers who have chosen the spa as their setting, among them Milan Kundera), uses it in order to illuminate contemporary mores and obsessions, associating this “healing spring” with the myth of the fountain of youth, and creating a funny satire of the industries centered around the body (vitamin industry, cosmetic surgery, etc.) with their “physics and metaphysics” that reflect an “archetypal dream” of humanity and the “fundamental obsession of our age” with youth and the body.
Structurally, the book’s second section follows the flow of fairytales in that each chapter ends with a rhymed zinger in which the storyteller intervenes to remind us that this is, after all, only a story, and occasionally to comment on the story itself: “What about us? While life may land us in a dreadful plight, the tale speeds to be home in daylight.” This is a translation challenge, as folk and fairytale rhymed zingers are so ingrained in us in that unique form that any translation would sound fake; it is hard to tell whether Ugresic uses here “authentic” zingers from tales she has read as a child—which could never sound “authentic” for an English-speaking reader—or whether she actually invents them (my guess would be the latter).
Lovers of myth, folklore, and anthropology will relish the third section, a hundred-page study of the myth of Baba Yaga, in spite of the fact that one is not entirely sure how to read it in relation to the rest of the novel—an ambiguity the author probably intends. The folklorist Aba Bagay gives us here a mythological (and occasionally psychoanalytical and feminist) interpretation of the story we have just read in the book’s second section. This interpretation is not simply a general reading of “what happens” in the story: it is a symbolic reading of various scenes, sometimes down to the most trivial and apparently inconspicuous (“camouflaged”) details (for example, a little girl’s playful motion to step inside a big boot is compared to a regression into the maternal womb).
Whether Ugresic uses her skills developed while working as a researcher at the Institute for Theory of Literature at Zagreb University in order to make fun of Aba Bagay’s pedantic knowledge and pretentious interpretation, as some American reviewers have opined, is open to debate. While it is obvious that the author has an ironic distance toward Aba Bagay, it would be hard to say that she entirely dismisses her, since the facts presented in the third section are not invented but describe the history and the specialized literature pertaining to this myth, and are verifiable. The question is: how seriously does Ugresic take the folklorist’s interpretation of the second section (especially since she tells us in the first section that she dislikes specialists in folklore)? Is Aba Bagay the opposite of Baba Yaga (as the order of the letters y-a-g-a-b-a-b-a might suggest), or, on the contrary, is she a Baba Yaga herself who turns the myth upside down or inside out? It seems to me Aba Bagay is here merely a pretext (or a post-text) that Ugresic uses in order to give us the “facts” of the myth.
On the other hand, it is evident that Ugresic intended to rewrite the myth from a feminist perspective. The difference in perception triggered by the third section may be caused by the caesura between Aba Bagay’s symbolic logic and the feminist perspective, which belong to two different worldviews, insofar as symbolic logic attempts to find some kind of hidden, universal meaning behind a particular situation. It will be interesting to see the kinds of reading this book will inspire. It is the type of book that can be open to multiple interpretations because it unites within the same space mythological and postmodern thinking. As Susan Sontag has said, Ugresic is “a writer to follow, a writer to be cherished.”
April 5, 2012
I discovered Steven Millhauser several years ago, when I found his collection of short stories, The Knife Thrower, at a library sale. Milhauser’s technique is very particular in that it uses a realist-psychological approach only to better thwart it by infusing it with elements of fantastic fiction. For example, in “A Visit,” the narrator is introduced to his friend’s wife, who happens to be a gigantic, ugly frog. A different writer would have described the scene in a surrealist style, but Millhauser’s character ponders with a straight face the implications of his friend’s marriage to a frog. This encounter between the means of psychological realism and fantastic literature creates a disruptive tension and provokes in the reader a feeling that transcends the literal description.
Millhauser has the very rare genius of giving us the pleasure of reading that captivating stories usually arouse in us, while reflecting and engaging the reader in a reflection not only on the story itself and on the act of storytelling, but also on some serious topics, such as the relationship between technology and morality, the American obsession with technological progress and the extremes to which this obsession is carried. Yet he does this in such an oblique way that the reader may not even notice that the stories “The Dream of the Consortium” and “Paradise Park” are essentially two critical essays on American lifestyle done in the guise of storytelling. I believe that he manages to weave his ideas so smoothly into the fabric of the story—indeed the ideas are the story—for two reasons: 1) the narrator doesn’t judge from the outside, but is himself one of the crowd and, like the crowd, goes through a series of conflicting feelings, from nostalgia for the charm of the old department stores to being seduced by the new world of mega-malls, in which the old stores and pretty much everything on the planet is copied and transformed into a replica that can be purchased and sold; 2) the child in Millhauser is fascinated by all the incarnations of amusement parks, which, in turn, are incarnations of old fairs and freak shows—a magic world reminiscent of an Oriental bazaar, which is best represented in the story “Flying Carpets.”
It is no accident that the dream store in “The Dream Consortium” and the dream amusement park in “Paradise Park” are extremely similar. Both utopias are built on the desire to replicate life, that is, to transform everything into a copy that ends up taking the place of the original. For the business people in the dream store there is no distinction between a wristwatch and a Roman villa. In the dream store one can order and buy an entire European city, which is, of course, more convenient than traveling all the way to Europe. Sounds familiar? A cross between Las Vegas and Disneyland, Millhauser’s dream store and Paradise Park remind us of Baudrillard’s reflections on technology and simulacra. In “The Dream of the Consortium,” the entire world, or rather its replica, can be bought, sold and possessed by consumers. In “Paradise Park,” the consumers of increasingly titillating forms of entertainment descend into labyrinthine structures that imitate the real world from which they are trying to escape. But the search for ever more titillating amusements eventually turns onto itself like a snake biting its tail, and Paradise Park becomes a sort of Devil’s Park in which the ultimate pleasure is pain.
If one wants to find out more about Millhauser’s understanding of art one should read the story “The New Automaton Theater,” an ars poetica that should be compulsive reading in all creative writing classes. The narrator distinguishes between a “Children’s Theater,” built on a naïve realism that wants to keep the illusion of fiction at any price, and a theater for adults—the “new automaton theater”—in which the artifice of fiction is exposed for what it is, and the realist characters become “automatons.” The new automatons lack the grace of the realist ones from the Children’s Theater, but they are “profoundly expressive in their own disturbing way.”
Millhauser walks the very tight rope between the Children’s Theater and the New Automatons Theater, and he walks it brilliantly.
Millhauser has the very rare genius of giving us the pleasure of reading that captivating stories usually arouse in us, while reflecting and engaging the reader in a reflection not only on the story itself and on the act of storytelling, but also on some serious topics, such as the relationship between technology and morality, the American obsession with technological progress and the extremes to which this obsession is carried. Yet he does this in such an oblique way that the reader may not even notice that the stories “The Dream of the Consortium” and “Paradise Park” are essentially two critical essays on American lifestyle done in the guise of storytelling. I believe that he manages to weave his ideas so smoothly into the fabric of the story—indeed the ideas are the story—for two reasons: 1) the narrator doesn’t judge from the outside, but is himself one of the crowd and, like the crowd, goes through a series of conflicting feelings, from nostalgia for the charm of the old department stores to being seduced by the new world of mega-malls, in which the old stores and pretty much everything on the planet is copied and transformed into a replica that can be purchased and sold; 2) the child in Millhauser is fascinated by all the incarnations of amusement parks, which, in turn, are incarnations of old fairs and freak shows—a magic world reminiscent of an Oriental bazaar, which is best represented in the story “Flying Carpets.”
It is no accident that the dream store in “The Dream Consortium” and the dream amusement park in “Paradise Park” are extremely similar. Both utopias are built on the desire to replicate life, that is, to transform everything into a copy that ends up taking the place of the original. For the business people in the dream store there is no distinction between a wristwatch and a Roman villa. In the dream store one can order and buy an entire European city, which is, of course, more convenient than traveling all the way to Europe. Sounds familiar? A cross between Las Vegas and Disneyland, Millhauser’s dream store and Paradise Park remind us of Baudrillard’s reflections on technology and simulacra. In “The Dream of the Consortium,” the entire world, or rather its replica, can be bought, sold and possessed by consumers. In “Paradise Park,” the consumers of increasingly titillating forms of entertainment descend into labyrinthine structures that imitate the real world from which they are trying to escape. But the search for ever more titillating amusements eventually turns onto itself like a snake biting its tail, and Paradise Park becomes a sort of Devil’s Park in which the ultimate pleasure is pain.
If one wants to find out more about Millhauser’s understanding of art one should read the story “The New Automaton Theater,” an ars poetica that should be compulsive reading in all creative writing classes. The narrator distinguishes between a “Children’s Theater,” built on a naïve realism that wants to keep the illusion of fiction at any price, and a theater for adults—the “new automaton theater”—in which the artifice of fiction is exposed for what it is, and the realist characters become “automatons.” The new automatons lack the grace of the realist ones from the Children’s Theater, but they are “profoundly expressive in their own disturbing way.”
Millhauser walks the very tight rope between the Children’s Theater and the New Automatons Theater, and he walks it brilliantly.
April 1, 2012
Sweet Money by Ernesto Mallo (Trans. from Spanish by Katherine Silver. Bitter Lemon Press, 2011)
I normally don’t read mysteries, so when I was offered this book I was sure I wouldn’t read more than a few pages. I ended up reading the whole book, and was surprised that not only was it suspenseful (which I had anticipated), but it was also fairly intelligent, well structured, and written in a minimalist style that goes well with the plot. The background is that of the 1980s Buenos Aires, and, as expected, the criminal and the political world are intertwined. Add to this Silver’s great skills as a translator, and you’ll have a very enjoyable read.
I normally don’t read mysteries, so when I was offered this book I was sure I wouldn’t read more than a few pages. I ended up reading the whole book, and was surprised that not only was it suspenseful (which I had anticipated), but it was also fairly intelligent, well structured, and written in a minimalist style that goes well with the plot. The background is that of the 1980s Buenos Aires, and, as expected, the criminal and the political world are intertwined. Add to this Silver’s great skills as a translator, and you’ll have a very enjoyable read.
Notes on Books
Book reviews and occasional notes and thoughts on world literature and writers by an American writer of Eastern European origin.
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