Law of Desire: Stories

by Andrej Blatnik, Tamara M. Soban (Translator)

Following his short story collection, You Do Understand?, is this expansive collection of sixteen tales about “urban nomads” lost in a labyrinth of pop culture: “We go to the movies. We read books. We listen to music. No harm in that, but it’s not real.”

A best-seller in Eastern Europe, Law of Desire is Andrej Blatnik at the height of his powers. He is one of the most respected and internationally relevant post-Yugoslav authors writing today.

Genres: Short Stories, Contemporary, Fiction, Literature

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Andrej Blatnik was born on May 22nd, 1963, in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he studied Comparative Literature and Sociology of Culture and got his Masters in American Literature and PhD in Communication Studies. He started his artistic career playing bass guitar in a punk band, was a free-lance writer for five years, and now he works as an editor in Cankarjeva publishing house, teaches creative writing and is on the editorial board of the Literatura monthly since 1984. He is currently the president of the jury for the Vilenica prize.

Reviews

[Samadrita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short stories are such a tricky thing to get right and such a hassle to review.
Before you have even settled down into the comfort of one minor narrative, a new one with brand new settings is silently demanding your undivided attention. A tiny slip in your concentration could result in that elusive thread of some unnameable, intangible emotion that you are struggling to disentangle from the jumble of lives and internal monologues, zipping past you with the agile grace of an eel.
And having turned over the last page, you are facing the difficult prospect of making out all the discordant notes from the individual stories and combining them into a common refrain which captures the general mood of the collection. Unless the author can profess to being at par with one of those world-renowned masters and mistresses of the short story format (Munro, Maupassant, Carver, Lydia Davis, Gogol and so on) who have got it down so pat that each one of their stories stand out and leave permanent markings etched on to the slippery sands of memory, he/she has an uphill task ahead.

I can vouch for the fact that Andrej Blatnik's stories cannot be shoehorned into any known category of writerly acuity. There's no single overarching theme that strings the whole collection together. And not all the stories can be commended on their execution or even thematic clarity. While some of the short stories give off a surrealistic Italo Calvino-esque vibe by blurring the boundaries between real and absurd, some of the others remind me of Murakami with their efficient juggling of nameless, wryly witty narrators who shirk responsibilities, intriguingly secretive women and emotional isolation. The remaining deal with themes as varied as PTSD-afflicted, psychologically scarred young men returning from the battlefield, the beauty and terror of fatherhood, the tragedy of young children adjusting to a newly motherless household and even something as eerie and nihilistic as a runaway convict resigned to his fate of being turned into a human sacrifice in an African village.

"The man feels the open dome of the sky descending, embracing him, he senses the universe closing in, he smells the brittle tail of comets, the gravity of distant worlds brushes his cheek. Galaxies open up and beckon him in. The man knows: This is the beginning; this is just the beginning."

The stories seem to be weakly delineated on purpose, the characters having no qualities that make an impression worth remembering, their lives appearing to be hazy silhouettes that never truly come into focus, just remaining out of reach for you to draw your own conclusions, which is precisely how short stories should be. But there's something more which accentuates their uniqueness, a disorienting effect that Blatnik manages to induce in the reader - an all-too-familiar sorrow, a feeling of unfulfillment arising out of a failure to communicate, and the concomitant cruelty of everyday lives of people trapped in the labyrinth of the urban jungle.

So even though I had my mind virtually made up to go with a 3.5 stars rounded off to a 3, I am conceding another one in the hopes that an above-average rating will help this Slovenian writer gain a wider readership, especially now that he has been translated. He really does deserve all the attention he can get.

**I received an ARC from the Dalkey Archive Press via Netgalley**

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I read the first story in Law of Desire and then the beginning of the second, my immediate reaction was dislike. I didn't like the characters or the way their relationships were portrayed and I felt very what's the point about the whole thing. Still, I decided to press on, because I had challenged myself to read more translated fiction and more 'difficult' modern fiction, and I'm glad I did, as I came to realise this is one of those books which requires a certain understanding of its own context to be properly appreciated. Once I had adjusted to the specifics of the world created by Blatnik, I was able to enjoy it far more easily.

The description in the blurb isn't quite accurate, though. It describes the collection as 'sixteen tales about “urban nomads” lost in a labyrinth of pop culture', and I wouldn't say that's true of all of them; actually, it might only be true of a couple. I kind of feel like that's a catchy soundbite that fits far better with the accompanying quote ('We go to the movies. We read books. We listen to music. No harm in that, but it’s not real' - which I'll admit is beguiling) than it does with the book as a whole. The strange thing is that, at the end, there's an advert for Blatnik's previous collection You Do Understand, with another blurb which seems to serve far better as a description of Law of Desire. '[You Do Understand] addresses the fundamental difficulty we have in making the people we love understand what we want and need. Demonstrating that language and intimacy are as much barriers between human beings as ways of connecting them, Andrej Blatnik here provides us with a guided tour of the slips, misunderstandings, and blind alleys we each manage to fall foul of on a daily basis - no closer to understanding the motives of our families, friends, lovers, or coworkers than we are those of a complete stranger... or, indeed, our own. Partly parables, partly fairy tales, partly sketches for novels that will never be written...' All of this is so spot-on that I can only imagine the two volumes are very similar. The theme of (lack of) communication and understanding was already the main thing I'd noticed throughout Law of Desire before I even read this.

In the first story, and one of the longest, 'What We Talk About', the protagonist meets a woman whose job it is to listen to people telling their untold stories over the phone. There is clearly an attraction between them, but their interaction is more complex than that; also, it seems that all of the characters are in unusually open and fluid relationships with few boundaries. 'Closer' has a similar dynamic: again there is a male protagonist, who, having temporarily left his wife and child, meets up with a female acquaintance who tells him about prank phone calls she has been receiving. When he receives a similar call himself, he is led into a sexually tense encounter with another man and ultimately becomes the victim of misdirected homophobic abuse. It's also significant that throughout the story, his only communication with his family occurs on the phone. The other stories are a diverse bunch, some just a few pages long, occasionally shocking, sometimes more ordinary slices of life. There is often a surreal touch - the environments here are much like our own, yet slightly off-kilter, although the stories also explore more exotic settings - and the theme of 'desire' is broad-ranging, covering unspoken desires, ambitions and beliefs as well as the more obvious interpretations of lust, sex and love.

There's a short interview with the author here which provides some further explanation of the author's inspiration for these stories, and is a better summing-up of the book than its blurb.

[Tuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

From “what we talk about” story, these two folks just met in the library of the “American Center” (whatever THAT is)

“………..I asked her if she was interested in female literature. She said that was the only kind of literature she was interested in.
Talking about literature is o e of the few things at which I excel. I jumped at the opportunity. I said I wasn’t all that sure there was such a thing as female literature. She gave me a stern look. I spread my arms, like: You know what I mean? She said she’d known straight away I was just another typical phallocratic reader.
I couldn’t help myself, her directness sent blood rushing to my head. I swallowed and said I’d translated two books by Anias Nin. She nodded and said that she’d read them.”

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

stories of teenagers, or adults who are drifters or unsettled, electric guitars, open marriages, night clubs, returning soldiers and war or the threat of war in Slovenia. Mostly set in Ljubljana, although there's one in an unnamed country (most of the characters are unnamed too). I liked most of them, particularly the ones dealing with uncertainty, the region's wider instability reflected in relationships and communication, along with coping with the heavy influence of the West. It's all done laconically, and rather beautifully in places.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Global Read 177- Slovenia

I found this, like all short story collections, mixed. His stories ranged in length from 2 pages -30 pages. The longer ones, where he had time to create characters and stories were much better than the under 10 page stories. The mini stories just seemed like rushed ideas and did nothing for me. The first two stories which had time to breathe were my favorites.

[Frank Karioris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating read, and even more fascinating to meet the author. Extremely congenial and delightful. The stories speak a quiet critique of masculinity's more fickle, foibled, and fragile sides; which is a delight to see. To me, this is what many of these stories do so well.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free electronic advanced reading copy of this from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

True to its title, Law of Desire is a collection of short stories revolving around the condition of desire. The inclusion of the word ‘law’ implies the controlling influence that desire has over the characters and situations in the stories. Desire is something beyond control, immutable and compulsory. The type of desire explored in each story varies from the physical to the abstract and the stories themselves vary from short, surreal vignettes to more nuanced and longer explorations of character.

The longer stories tend to have distinct plots rather than simply prose that conveys a state of being, and I found I appreciated these the most. Among these, “Electric Guitar” is perhaps the most powerful, a ‘gut-wrenching’ subtle story of abuse that extends beyond a simple meditation on the collection’s theme.

However, “What We Talk About” is the leading, and most effective story in the collection. Here, a man meets a fascinating, but mysterious woman and the two have a rapid connection. The desire between the two (particularly from the point of view of the male protagonist) is palpable, but extends beyond mere sexual desire or even a desire for friendship. The two dance those steps of relationship that balance sharing and keeping secrets, where the man becomes compelled to discover the exact nature of the woman’s job which involves clients paying to talk to her on the phone.

These interactions reveal the corollary to the desire featured in all these stories, and that is ‘dissatisfaction’, a state of being that almost by definition must be present in order for engendering desire. The characters in Blatnik’s stories all exhibit some degree of intense dissatisfaction, sometimes internal, or sometime coming from external factors. Either way, this dissatisfaction ultimately arises from that theme that generally characterizes modern ‘literature’: a failure to communicate.

Thus, Blatnik’s stories all focus on some part of a circular chain that defines humanity. Failures to communicate (honestly to oneself or between individuals) leads to dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction leads to desires. If unmet, desires continue to compound dissatisfaction. Yet, even if attained, these desires at best only lead to greater desire. Additionally, even if attained, one desire often doesn’t coincide with the desires of others (or conflicting desires within oneself). This failure of desires to exist in harmony (to communicate properly in other words) leads us right back to the start of the circle. The desire can never be fulfilled.

Exploration of this vicious circle seems Blatnik’s desire as writer, and he successfully achieves that goal as far as possible – though as art primarily, not always in the most ‘entertaining’ of fashions. In interviews with Blatnik he discusses the freedom that writers within formerly Communist portions of Europe now have to focus on this modern literature of every-day conflict within and between individuals rather than producing works that have some specific political or cultural role (subversive or not). Interestingly though, this shift in Slovenian (and related) literature follows the same pattern of theme that Blatnik explores in this collection. The dissatisfaction of what was possible or relevant to artistically produce under a relatively oppressive regime has led to a desire to write simpler, modern literature of people failing to communicate. Given the enormous popularity of this collection in its native language, the desire to consume this kind of work is also abundant.

Within the confines of its culture and origins, Law of Desire likely resonates in the continued uncertainty of the future. Several of the stories even seem to take the characters out of time and place (out of plot) to represent something extremely relevant to the condition of its audience. For the general reader of the English translation, this poignancy may be lost, but the universality of that central dissatisfaction-desire loop make this a worthwhile literary read for those that appreciate more artistic writing. Even if not all stories connect, a few brilliant ones in this collection make it worth checking out.

[Tim Horvat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Električna kitara

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concise and singular short stories about pop culture and people never quite connecting as they should.