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Europe Central
Europe Central - TVP 2014
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Discussion - Week Five - Europe Central - p. 411 - 531
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Jim
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Sep 14, 2014 08:56AM
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"Zoya" exemplifies several points:It is paired with "Clean Hands". Why? I assume from "Pincer Movements" that these two chapters approach the objective/theme from opposite sides. The question of choice is introduced in the first paragraph: "But what if she didn't choose...[to be a national heroine]?" Gerstein too is faced with a role he didn't choose (chemical expert for extermination use). Each one does choose to act courageously, however. Gerstein records, Zoya speaks out.
The question of the narrator comes up, of course. Here I hear a Soviet journalist's voice. References to photos, getting inside the heads of Zoya, Vlasov, even personal remarks..."...who commands my sympathy...". His sentimental rhetoric embracing the motherland ends his piece on Zoya with a flourish.
This is not to suggest that Volland's prose is sentimental, however. I think the last paragraph is an example of how the author transcends the narrator's voice. The language is poetic.
"Zoya's corpse...the Russian landscape...her arms and legs the ridges...her lips the antitank ditches...her womb...a bunker...her hair the frozen thickets...her breasts the points of strategic concentration..."
The pairing made me expect an equivalent to Zota's immortal line, "You can't hang all hundred and ninety million of us" to pop up in "Clean Hands".Instead, the theme just seems to be resistance against the indiscriminate slaughter. In Zoya's case, resistance serves to inspire her countrymen. In Gerstein's case, resistance serves to incriminate them.
As Zadignose said earlier, we haven't discussed Elena Konstantinovskaya yet. She doesn't seem real to me. How does she present in the book? I know compares her to Europe, but... I'm looking at The Second Front right now.
What I find most amusing about Elena is her unemotional dialogue. She is sensual without being passionate, and she always leaves those who have become too attached to her.Perhaps she is an ever-elusive Victory? Maybe at the close of the War, she'll end up with Patton.
Mkfs wrote: "What I find most amusing about Elena is her unemotional dialogue. She is sensual without being passionate, and she always leaves those who have become too attached to her.Perhaps she is an ever-e..."
Good description. "Sensual without being passionate" captures her well. So much sensual imagery is attached to her but it never sticks. She seems hard, cold. I think you've got it...Old Blood and Guts is the perfect match for her.
Just having, in John D'Gata's words, "a fucking temper tantrum" after reading "Ecstasy". The full quote:"At some point the reader needs to stop demanding that they be spoon-fed like infants and start figuring out on their own how to deal with art that they disagree with — and how to do so without throwing a fucking temper tantrum or banning that art from ever appearing again. . . . [We're] adolescent when it comes to art."
Read more: http://thephoenix.com/boston/arts/135...
Linda wrote: "Just having, in John D'Gata's words..."I generally try to approach each novel on its own terms. In the case of this one, I'm really not sure what Vollman is going for.
I expected a deep meditation on tyranny, the role of the individual in mass movements, that sort of thing. What I got instead was an account of the many men obsessed with Elena K, a half-assed biopic of Shostakovich, and a couple of character sketches (the generals, the artist).
I get the feeling that Vollman spent a few too many months at the library reading up on mid-century Germany and Russia, and this is his Book Report.
Y'know, this may end up becoming my review of the book.
Mod
Y'know, this may end up becoming my review of the book...."
Good one!
Oops...sorry, Mkfs.
Linda wrote: "in John D'Gata's words...Read more: http://thephoenix.com/boston/arts/135..."
Nice essay.
That John D'Gata is a real piece of work, btw. Check out his flimsy excuses for making up facts in the NYT review of his book.
My favorite:
His duty is not to accuracy, nor to Levi. His duty is to Truth. And when an artist works in service of Truth, fidelity to fact is irrelevant.
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Read more: http://thephoenix.com/boston/arts/135..."
Nice essay.
That John D'Gata is a real piece of work, btw. Check out his flimsy excuses for making up ..."
Let's post this kind of off topic stuff in the "Questions and Resources" thread.
Back again. I just thought I'd mention that the rather shortish chapter "Second Front" was the chapter that pleased me the least so far. In the context of what goes on around it, it seemed relatively trivial, but I guess the novel needed to give us a little reminder of the characters we hadn't seen in a while. Though I did appreciate the sudden vanishing of EEK, and the found letter of Roman... so it ended fairly well... just the body of the section was a bit... insubstantial... and some leitmotivs started to grate a bit.
That reminded me that the previous section, Clean Hands, which I liked overall and which I consider rather essential, since it finally deals with the biggest atrocities, also had some annoying elements to it... particularly that, after so many other characters who have their central, motivating fixation (and it hadn't yet bothered me), in this case too much was made of the character's obsession with what had happened to his sister-in-law. It would probably be fine if not for the fact that it reminded me of Vlasov's bullet-casing and Paulus' wife and Roman's Elena and Kathe's mother with dead-child. (However, Shostakovich was more complex).
Small gripe, still love the book, but these are the elements that raised a few doubts for me.
Oh, yeah, in Operation Citadel, I liked the novelty. This was finally a chapter with an entire first-person narrative. I had an "aha" moment as soon as the old one-eyed man showed up in an incongruous context, and thought Odin! But I still didn't anticipate the concatenated fairy-tale-mythology-fantasy section, which I did enjoy, though I had some slight hope that it would play out a bit differently... like maybe while he was in fantasy mode, he'd somehow actually crossed enemy lines and gotten taken in by some Russian woman who concealed him throughout the war or something... but yeah, this book is still to bleak and cynical to deliver such a fairy-tale ending to anyone... so far at least.
