Nate's comments (member since Aug 11, 2008)

Nate's comments from the Russian Readers Club group.

You guys are way ahead of me. I've enjoyed and been provoked by all written here so far.

Can I also say how much I loved the intro stuff (to the Natasha Randall trans.). I especially love it when a translater actually leaves a note talking about how they approached the translation. In any novel, but especially one so styllistically weird, that's important to have, I think.

So, question: Through these first chapters we see D-503 coming loose. His world view is changing. He used to be the model cifer, but since meeting I-330 all kinds of thoughts and attitudes, all kinds of √-1 (irrationalities), keep emerging from his character to that chafe against that world view. Does anyone have a clear sense of what it is about I-330 that's causing this behavior?

I mean, I understand that she is the smoking, drinking, dress-wearing, chaotic-piano-playing, living emblem of the irrational past. Is it simly that he's got a crush her and that if he has a crush on her he has to make room in his mind for everything about her that contradicts his world view? Hm. I dunno. Truthfully I don't think it's explained very well, and that makes me think, deliciously, that there's something mysterious and unconcious going on. Something about I-330 has reached down and pinched nerve hidden somewhere in the repressed territory of D-503's mind (which for a man who's given in to such a rigidly controling totalitarian system, I imagine it's a pretty vast territory). Of course this is just my take, and I doubt Zamyatin had something so specifically Jungian in mind. Though the √-1 that wells up out of D-503, beyond his control, almost as if there were another person inside him, makes me think that Zamyatin was tapped into the same themes of repression in human nature.

Oh yeah, this was a question: So what do you guys think? What's the big deal about I-330?

Wow. I feel like I was the swing vote on that one.

I'm excited for this book. The title says it all: wee!

Goodreads has informed me that I have successfully joined your group. Hurray, success.

I vote for We, only because I just ordered it. But I do love those other ones. Especially Tolstaya.