One-time lovers who share libertarian ideals find themselves on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain in the 1960s. They continue to seek a path to liberation and their letters record the repression and satisfactions they experience under different manifestations of the modern state. A beautiful, tender and inspiring collection. In all actuality, a collection of work from Fredy Perlman.
Eight years ago I listened to this book during Insurgent Summer, an effort to get a anarchists in the US to engage with the ideas in this book. The idea was that I would get together with comrades in my area and discuss the content. Instead, I listened to it alone, and cheered. I hungered at the time for this ultra-left politics. So much so that I shrugged off the really warped shit that in memory took up a small portion near the end of the book.
Eight years later, I listened to a podcast where one of the readers of the audiobook breathlessly recounted its importance. I have a job with a 45 minute commute, so I downloaded the audio files again and jumped back in.
The book is a series of straw-man arguments between a pretty impressive catalog of ideologies you might come across in your local anarchist infoshop: tankie leftist, classical anarchist, syndicalist, lumpenprole, primmie, pacifist, new-age hippie, medicine (the stupid straw-man argument from the book on this one would have drawn the most ire from me if it wasn’t for, uh... the other thing we’ll get to), transhumanist, academic, post-68 ultra-left. Each of these are ridiculed in turn, held up as a standard to which we are to compare with the book's golden ideology of insurrectionary incestuous pedophilia.
I wish I was kidding. The first go around, the incest and pedophilia was a quirk that I chose to ignore. The second round I knew what to expect, and I found the book to be so infatuated and saturated with incest and pedophilia that I found it entirely unignoreable. To the point where it crowds out other incredibly important things about the book. The book doesn’t just contain incest between brother and sister and father and daughter. It insists upon them. One of the protagonists initially resists fucking his own daughter. But through consistent browbeating by the other characters, in the climax of a global revolutionary moment, where people are throwing off their shackles and pursuing their desires, he gives in and fucks his own daughter. No, really. He is ridiculed for having social mores like not wanting to fuck his own daughter, they are compared to mores like wage slavery and capitalism, and he is accused of counterrevolutionary behavior for resisting fucking his daughter. “If you can’t see past what’s weird about fucking your own daughter” his brotherfucking wife tells him “then you’re the same person who would construct a global economic system that brutally oppresses billions of people and you would run tank treads across anyone’s face who dared question whether there should be police and prisons.”
What the actual fuck? How do you recommend this book to someone? It’s not subtle, it’s not some part at the very end thrown in. It’s alluded to throughout the book, and the incest writ large is pervasive.
Letters of Insurgents:incestuous pedophilia :: Atlas Shrugged:rape
This metaphor stacks up pretty well. Disturbing fucked up sex shit that is beaten into the reader in the middle of a book whose everyone-is-wrong-except-me worldview would most closely appeal to 19 year-olds. The fact that the politics are worlds better in the former doesn’t do it any favors, because, really, if a politic excuses (no! INSISTS on) incestuous father-daughter pedophilia, it’s also really shitty politics.
In seeking some reason for the inclusion (the saturation!) of incestuous pedophilia, I have read and heard others talk about how that is the risque conclusion that one should pursue all of their desires: that one inevitably comes up against a taboo like this one. I'm not so sure. First of all, that taboo is not nearly dealt with in the text. The character in question never deliberates on why one might not have this desire to fuck his daughter, other than that he is an uptight counterrevolutionary. Secondly, surely there are thousands of other taboos to breach. Why was this one chosen? I can't answer that honestly.
Letters of Insurgents is one of the more savage books I’ve read about anarchism. Told through a sprawling series of letters between two characters, one behind the Iron Curtain and one in the US, the exchange subjects the radical milieu of anarchists, various shades of red bureaucrats, professionals, liberals, hippies, etc. and most of all the characters’ own life goals and projects to unrelenting criticism. As the characters question each other and themselves, it in turn invites the reader to ask the same of themselves while offering no easy answers.
Part of its savagery is the uncomfortable mirror it holds up to the readers - in watching Sophia and Yarostan try and make their way in the world I was able to see some of my own story as well. Projects that begin with hope and often end in failure, the friends who ‘make it’ into the professional class, people who you underestimate who surprise you, the way we can mythologize our own past - all of these things and more spoke to me in ways that radical texts don’t often do. The larger themes in this work - trying to find one’s way in a world that challenges you at every turn and where you can easily find yourself as one of the biggest impediments to realizing some sort of radical existence; engaging in projects that fail and disappoint and may get you hurt and still doing stuff; conceiving of doing something at all and with people you love in a world dominated by capitalism, the state, and where so many of today’s radicals wish to be tomorrow’s bosses - are painted with the eye of an artist whose experience with all of these seeps through the pages and into his characters.
Though I enjoyed this book a lot, it can feel somewhat unwieldy at a length approaching 800 pages. The letter format is well-executed but one should expect a lot of ‘tell’ rather than ‘show’ when it comes to events in the characters lives as all of them are described by characters reporting to each other rather than in real-time. And while I appreciated the skewering of socialists, there were times when a character would start holding forth and it was ‘here we go again, another pages-long paragraph about dialectics and working class consciousness that’s going to end with them being told to go to hell for the same reason as the last one’. The dryness and repetitiveness of their arguments was I’m sure intentional, but perhaps there were a few too many stock ‘politicians’ in this work for my taste. That said, the arguments the characters have with them are incredibly quotable, and for all of the caricatures that surface there are many characters who are less straightforward.
The standout element of this work to me was its introspectiveness. Its guiding concept of liberation - the realization of one’s desires without law - is subject to constant criticism as Perlman asks ‘What do we mean by this? What would it mean in practice?’. That some of how this plays out is held as controversial or taboo by some readers is good, I think, because it shows some of the laws that readers may be operating within under in the guise of anarchism. If it doesn't encourage self-reflection, at the very least I think this book can be the start of a good (or at least interesting) conversation.
I think that this is the best anarchist text I've seen, and probably one of the better novels of all time as well. It takes the form of fictional letters between two eastern european workers who were separated after a failed revolution; one spent twelve years in statist jails, the other escaped to the west. After twenty-five years without contact, they begin to write each-other about their experiences, their lives, their hopes, and their memories of the past. The characters that emerge from these narratives tell a story that is both incredibly subtle and infinitely complex. Nothing is taken for granted, no assumptions are left unchallenged, and the reader is left with a set of questions that only a story about relationships could present.
A friend and I recorded it in its entirety for Audio Anarchy.
One of our favorite books. This amazing novel remains both prescient and controversial for a variety of things, including scenes that some think are child abuse and others liberatory (or at least, complicated-but-not-abusive), reflective of real life relationships and real life conundrums, whether those real lives are anarchist, criminal, leftist, revolutionary, hedonist, daughter, lover, burn-out, or all of the above. Written by Fredi and Lorraine Perlman in epistolary form, between two people who have been out of touch with each other for years but lived through intense events together, the writing is dreamy, odd; the characters are confusing and also funny. This book is a rubicon for those in certain subcultures, who won't necessarily like it, but will recognize a lot of the character types.
I finished this today. I’m not quite sure how to rate it, and I think I’ll eventually write a review. One thing I know for sure is that it had a profound impact, and subsequently, I’m left struggling to articulate my feelings about it.
[Spoiler Alert] I've had a really hard time thinking about how to rate this book. I loved it, and I loved the structure and intimacy of alternating letters between friends finding each other again. I loved Sophia and Yarostan's honesty with each other and their ability to look critically and challenge their perceptions and ideal abstractions of the past. The conversations culled from their retrospective storytelling seemed so relevant still, and I had flashbacks to numerous talks and people I've known who have been interested in other forms of life.
There is an interesting parallel investigation into the morality taught by the state as well as the family, and the framework of the family uses incest as a focus point. At times the relationships that try to undo the morality imposed by the family seem consensual, and this parallelism works well, but there is one particular scene that still bothers me in which Yarostan's wife, adolescent daughter, and best friend take him up a mountain to "play games." The scene turns sexual and his young daughter proceeds to try to coerce him into having sex while his wife and best friend hold him down. This serves as a mechanism for Yarostan to do some introspective work and realize the ways in which he lives hypocritically while condemning those who refuse to engage with their desires honestly. Ultimately he decides that his wife and daughter are right, and that he has been lying to himself about his desire for his daughter.
While I don't think it's the intent of the author that everything that happens to the characters is a personal statement about "how to live as a revolutionary," this scene struck me sourly for several reasons; the biggest is that I hate the idea that other people need to dogmatically teach us lessons about our hidden desires, particularly when it comes to any kind of sexual liberation. I MAY be taking that moment too seriously, but I haven't heard from anyone who could make sense of it. It bothered me as someone who is interested in liberatory praxis as well as someone who is the child of an incest survivor; it was hard to delineate what was actually going on for the sake of the story from the psychology of many child predators.
Despite the complicated feelings I had regarding that storyline, I have still been recommending the book to friends, and I was still sad when it ended. Much of the book reads as poetry. Even though it's an epic read at 800+ pages, I will probably read it again...just several years down the road.
What is it to be an "insurgent"? To become a pedagogue, preach an ideal? To be anti-social, rebel for rebellion's sake? This book effectively eliminates all the stereotypes and dead ends, although for me it is too artificial and didactic to really work as literature. And then what is one to make of what is held up as the true revolutionary path? Yikes. . . . it seems too convenient to believe that when desires are unleashed everyone will happily have sex with everyone else. Does it make sense to say we need no program, that everyone will simply act on their desires - isn't this also a program, and not a very good one? Not every raw desire should be made reality, I suspect.
Ultimately I prefer Perlman's theoretical essays, since I found this thought-provoking but also a slog to get through. The artifice of eliminating real historical events makes things seem generic, unreal. People simply start "waking up" and occupying factories and universities. Real motivations or causes, other than some deep-seated desire, are left out.
Letters of Insurgents is difficult to describe, appropriate given how one of its main themes is the difficult of communicating with other human beings, and the dangers miscommunication can cause.
I've been aware of this book for some time, everyone I've known whose read this book has been glowing in its praise, one even said it drove them to tears. But I was intimidated by the books length, thankfully there's a free audio version that's not hard to find to help.
The format, a series of correspondence between two revolutionaries in different countries can make keeping track of events and people somewhat difficult as the narrative jumps between them and in time, but this does give an excellent demonstration of complexity as events and people keep having layers added to them throughout.
The content is largely concerning humanity, what it means to be free and revolution in its purest sense and all the ways many fall short. Its very critical, but everything it criticises has its chance to have its say and its rare for a character or strategy to have no positive features and attractions.
Political parties, Unions, Communes, underground armies, and urban guerrillas are all scrutinised and appraised from the point of view of human happiness and freedom.
Included in this book's description, "One-time lovers who share libertarian ideals find themselves on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain in the 1960s." I'd like to correct that. Actually, the fictional Sophia and Yarostan are anarchists who've lived through a composite of many of the 20th century's major revolutions and uprisings.
The reader reviews here do the book more justice. Yes, the reviews are effusively glowing and for good reason. A complicated story with even more complicated ideas beneath it. Again and again, the characters reject dogma in their search for truth and question the very nature of their beliefs, loves, and ideals.
This book has come to me thread-bare and tattered, passed from hand to hand, touching the lives of those in my community fighting to liberate themselves and others.
The entire thing, God knows how many hours, is recorded on tape at http://www.audioanarchy.org/ In fact, a class was offered last winter through Free Skool Santa Cruz in which participants listened to the entire recording over a series of weekly classes, drinking tea, and sharing reflections and discussion afterward.
More here as I wade through this huge book by Freddy Perlman
if you like long, rambling diatribes, this is your book. you couldn't make this stuff up. all the drama, all the infighting, and all the idealistic passion, wrapped up in one tidy package. not necessarily structured for plot or character development, or course. just cut and paste, judy, cut and paste...
Definitely one of the more important texts I've read within the past few years. If anyone has any other recommendations for similar things please let me know.
at first i didn't realise this was fiction; perlman's name is nowhere to be found in book and it's published to look like sophia and yarostan are in fact the true authors of the letters therein. this is a long read, and i'd recommend it despite it's shortcomings because it is unlike anything else i've ever read or will probably read again. the letters are written by two ex-comrades who once took part in a revolution together in their home country, an unidentified state that seems to be in eastern europe. sophia emigrates to the states and yarostan spends most of the next decade in jail. at times the dialogue is illuminating, and i certainly had to bend my mind to take it in. perlman pushes all boundaries until they dissolve - and while i'm not convinced that's a good thing, it certainly is unique. it was a challenging novel in its ideas while the format of letters makes it an easy read. i'm going to warn potential readers that there are some scenes of incest which could cause upset and/or other bad reactions - a friend tells me he thinks it might be “a plot device”, but i'm not really sure what that means. letters of insurgents is a rare find, so if you do discover a copy then take advantage and read it - after all, it is an anarchist classic ;)
Although his name does not appear on the book. Over 900 pages of letters exchanged between Yarostan—just released from an 8 year stint in the prison of an unnamed eatern Bloc country (the book takes place in the late sixties and 20 years before)— and Sophia—now living in (unnamed) Detroit. She and others had emigrated after a worker’s revolution, while Yarostan was left behind to serve his first sentence. This book is long, yes, with many pages that read like political essays or history. But these are always tied into the character’s amazing lives—their histories together and apart, experiences, dreams, hopes, lack thereof, failures, lives. As a novel, it is pretty damn good. As a political/philosophical look at what constitutes liberation—examining worker models, criminal models, morality and more—it becomes a phenomenal book.
The brilliant Yugoslav-american thinker Fredy Perlman, who knew rebellion against communist and capitalist regimes, wrote this great story as a series of letters. My favorite part is actually his prescient commentary about technological progress: he examines the notion that technology will save us, and concludes that the easier it becomes to communicate with those who are far away, the harder it becomes to have community with those who are nearby.
The first day I got this book I was hooked and immediately read about 150 pages into the book. I didn't know what to think of it. It must be fiction, but who made this up? Then I read online it was Fredy Perlman and the mystery was kind of gone I guess. And when I continued to read I was just increasingly ignored by how characters are used as devices all portraying a certain ideology. Perhaps I should go back and read it someday.. I don't know.
this book is by far one of the best books i've read in ages. i highly recommend it. it covers a lot of the stuff i think about a lot. a number of the arguments i have in my head about various things are laid out on paper with much more coherent thoughts around them than i'm able to probduce in my head. i can't detail it more, or else i'll spoil it.
See Insurgent Summer for a ten-week, cooperative reading from the summer of 2010. There are character pictures, stories, links, and three weekly entries from the bloggers Gardens of Resistance, Aragorn!, and art noose. The full text and audio Is also available there, for free, and hopefully it can bring this important book back into print, eventually.
This is one of my favorite books. I don't care what you think of Perlman--read it. It's a great story and deals with questions that many in the circles of people who have heard of this book are always asking. And he doesn't give you the answer.
A great look into the anarchist mindset in the form of back and forth letters exchanged between characters that deeply crave freedom of mind and spirit.