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I have to give this book 4 rather than 5, because some of the stories are weaker than others, seeming rushed and forced. However, this collection definitely has more than its share of 5-star stories. I'm not sure "Hygiene," for one, will ever stop creeping me out.
Petrushevskaya's writing style (at least, translated) is so sparse and understated that it blends easily between the utterly horrifying and the everyday. The most cringe-worthy lines are so because they are completely unadorned, just stated as straightforward fact so that you're left to expand the image beyond the words themselves.
In many ways, Petrushevskaya's themes mirror her style. Her great accomplishment is a seamless mixing of Gogol-style literary folk-tales with the horrors of life in Stalinist Russia. One gets the sense in these stories of the last few centuries being ones not of progress but decay, and often the most horrifying aspects of the story are those that would normally seem disjointed from the folk-tale world of witches and spells. Certain stories (including the one that lends its title to the book) smack of lurid newspaper articles on inhumane killers. But they are made even more unsettling by being couched in otherwise innocuous folk-tale terms (There once lived a woman...). In several stories, compulsory drafting threatens the characters. Refugees play the role of amorphous but certain doom in another.
The overall effect of this grafting of styles is that the entire book falls into the category of Freud's Uncanny--terrifying and unsettling because it is a mixture of something we are comfortable with, something we recognize, and something else that just doesn't seem to belong. It is like Frankenstein's monster--made up of parts that are unexceptional on their own but that make your skin crawl to think of how they're sewn together.
It's beautiful, brilliant, and just plain fun to read if you're the type of person who has ever gotten a charge from a good horror flick. I'm so happy to have picked this one up. And I've already recommended it to a friend, my sister, and my girlfriend, all of whom heartily agree (fortuitously, my friend had just finished reading The Road and was looking for another piece of literary spine-tingling).
I recommend, I recommend, I recommend. ]]>
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This book provides an interesting and well-wrought history of graverobbing, skulduggery, and in many ways, the birth of modern anatomical science.
While the macabre tales following the heads of Haydn, Mozart, Swedenborg, and others are all interesting in their own rights, I found this book's greatest contribution to be its treatment of phrenology's rise and fall.
Often, when we talk about phrenology now, it's as this crazy idea that the fringes of society held and that somehow factored into the holocaust as a method the Nazi's used to "prove" that Jews were inferior. And while this is certainly all true, to a point, it doesn't set the psuedo-science in its proper context.
While pointing out the ridiculous basis for phrenology, Dickey also highlights the factors that made it so enchanting to people in the 19th century, including the leading writers of the day. Further, he shows how, as something that needed to be disproved and passed through, phrenology impacted modern medical practices.
One thing that struck me, while reading, was that the impulses behind phrenology are still alive and well, though they go through genetics or other, more reputable sciences. The idea of physical determinism, where genius or its opposite is something that can be measured, has never entirely vanished.
But the book, I would point out, does not read as a bone-dry history. The historical anecdotes vascillate between the creepy and moribund and the downright funny.
All in all, if you're a history buff with a dark sense of humor, you'll enjoy this book. ]]>
Evan
read and liked
Greg's
review of Notes on Democracy:
"Another reviewer made a point that everyone who reads this will agree and think that they are part of the non-mob / rabble that makes democracy so terrible. That is probably true. The same reviewer, or maybe it was another, blames this book for not...more "
"Another reviewer made a point that everyone who reads this will agree and think that they are part of the non-mob / rabble that makes democracy so terrible. That is probably true. The same reviewer, or maybe it was another, blames this book for not...more "
by H.L. Mencken
Is it weird to "like" a review that contradicts my own? A well written and well-thought out review, definitely.
But I do have to point out, in response to Nick's suggestion, "But at least under an aristocracy, scientists, artists, and activists would have to win the approval of a secure and educated group, not demagogues and puppet-masters," that this forgets a few key points: 1. Even a monarch or aristocrat must maintain the support, to some degree, of his or her people and is therefore given to as much demagoguery and puppeteering as any populist. 2. While some families, like the Medici in Italy, did support and nurture the arts, plenty of others imprisoned, beheaded, or excommunicated artists/scientists/activists for not agreeing with them (in fact, I'm pretty sure you won't find the word "activist" in any pre-democratic texts, because people were generally heretics or traitors). 3. Though some aristocrats were well educated, a lot were nasty, brutish, and sadistic, which is why so many countries ousted them in the first place.
Further, for a great example of aristocracy in the 20th century, one only has to look at British colonial rule in India, Africa, and the Caribbean. Some study of post-colonial art and literature is informative in trying to understand how artistic impulse relates to a stable, well-educated aristocracy. Suffice to say, they don't always play well together. ]]>
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This is one of those nearly perfect books. Beautiful and tragic in completely unexpected ways. Eugenides may have written the first suburban fairy tale worth writing (more in the tradition, obviously, of the uncensored Grimm's stories than the neutered Disney versions). And the narrator(s) are going easily into my list of favorites alongside Humbert Humbert, Henry Smart, and John Dowell (of The Good Soldier).
If you're a sucker for pretty prose and morbid tales, pick it up and read two pages--that's about all you'll need before you'll completely ignore my words and be determined to finish it for yourself. ]]>