The Dream Life of Sukhanov, A Novel by Olga Grushin, 2006

My first problem with this book is the way the author was introduced on the dust-jacket of the book – she turned out to be the first Russian to ever get a degree from an American University, an interpreter for President Carter during his visit in Soviet Russia, a descendent of a dissident social sciences professor who taught in the 60s in Prague, and finally – a Research Analyst at a law firm (after getting a BA from Emory). Well, anybody who is slightly familiar with reality (especially the East European one of the 60s-90s) can’t help noticing that there is something wrong with this glorious picture.

That set aside, Grushin is not entirely devoid of literary talent. Her style is good, although comparing her to Nabokov and Chekhov, as some of the (marketing) reviewers do is quite a stretch. Grushin has tried to write a novel about a Russian totalitarian typage, an artist who has sold his beliefs and his talent for material comfort and a secure position in the totalitarian hierarchical scheme of Soviet life. She is tracing his downfall at the time of the perestroika. An ambitious and complex task! The author is very deft describing the culture and mores of the totalitarian intelligentsia – a fact that suggests her first-hand knowledge of that culture. The attempt to seek a redemption for her character in religion – Sukhanov’s seeking refuge in a deserted Khram – is unconvincing and too much of a (Russian) cliche to provide closure for the drama of the hero…
There were some nice images here and there (although the general sense was of a dragging narrative) – for example, the well written scene of the hero observing the reflections of the totalitarian city in the Moscow river – and the shimmering reflections suggesting a city trapped down, under the water — the mystical alternative for a better world…

Absurdistan, A Novel by Gary Shteyngart, 2006

A satire of the new Russian oligarchy and the American dream as it flourishes in a post-Soviet, post-communist Russia and the oil-rich fictional ex-Soviet republic of Absurdistan. If you read the “Russian Debutante’s Handbook” by the same author , be prepared for more of the same. It is funny but you if take out half of the 350 pages of the book, it would definitely benefit from it. The best about the book is the language of the first person narrative of main character -the son of the 1,238th-richest man in Russia, Misha Vainberg. American educated (Accidental College), he has adopted the insider lingo of a multiculturalist politically correct American academia. Using this language to describe a totally absurd Eastern block reality, which combines totalitarian mentality, maphiotic culture and senseless fascination with capitalism, makes the book great fun (up to a point – and that point could be page 185.)

Lipstick Jungle, A Novel by Candace Bushnell

Very weak as literary skill – even “The Devil Wears Prada” is better…

Otherwise – it is just a therapeutic fantasy about a world where women rule, use men (for sex and career advancement) and dispose of them at will, oh…and female solidarity is stronger than ever…Add to this a glorification of the corporate back-stabbing mentality and the ruthlessness of the corporate-ladder climber and you will have a full bullet point list of the unisex corporate winner would be. There is nothing feminist or feminine about this.

The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Gary Shteyngart, 2002

A Russian-born author and an immigrant character. Through his main character, Vladimir Girshkin, a twenty something Jewish immigrant in America, Shteyngart traverses the world of successful, Americanized professional immigrants (the hero’s parents), the world of liberal New York academics (the hero’s girlfriend and her parents), the Russian mafia in America and Eastern Europe, and the crowd of American expatriates in post-communist Prague with one purpose only — to make fun of them. And he is very good at it! The witty monologue of his cynical hero is what holds the story together. The character’s trajectory in itself is not very original but his commentary is hilarious. If I have to compare Jonathan Safran Foer’s prose, another author who tries to capture the Russian idiom in English language, to Shteyngart’s – I have to admit that the task of the latter was much harder – he captures the hilarious mutation of the Americanized Russian idiom mixed with the cliches of the Americans’ notions of Russianness. And again – this was a winning approach.

Utterly Monkey. Nick Laird, 2005

The first novel of Nick Laird, (husband of Zadie Smith) is very entertaining and funny, but I am sorry to say he is no match for the talent of his beautiful wife. The language is witty and cool, and I enjoyed greatly the law firm experiences of the young Associate Danny, the main character. But thinking back about the book I wonder what its purpose is…Mr. Laird has the storytelling skill, no doubt, but he does not seem to know why he feels compelled to share his stories with reading audience.

Lulu on the Bridge. Paul Auster, 1998

The script for the directorial debut of Paul Auster is a genre-less highly cinematic text – a combination typical of everything penned by that author. It flows between the fantasmic and the literary-intertextual. The author explores an alternative train of events that follow the dramatic shooting scene at the beginning. The author traces the steps of the main character, the jazz musician Izzy, as he meanders into a parallel dream world of pain, guilt and true love. Is this the dream world preceding death–because the film ends with the actual death of the hero? Or just a “second chance”-story, an alternative plotting device for the author, which he needed to explore…The answer is not really of importance.
This plot line is cross-cut with a second one – the shooting of a film based on Wedekind’s Lulu. And there is the rub – because what does it all have to do with Lulu, as fascinating a literary myth that may be…? The inteprlay between the two stories is very obscure, if present at all. Lulu’s plot closes in on itself, and Izzy’s plot just unwinds arbitrarily as a loose end…Still, some scenes especially in the beginning (Izzy roaming the streets of New York, encountering the murdered man, the mystic stone) are fascinating — just because they contain so much promise…

The Amazing Adventures of Kavaliere and Clay, Michael Chabon, 2000

A very ambitious and quite finely written novel trying to emulate “Ragtime” or the “great American novel” as we know it… Not surprisingly, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2001. Unfortunately, learned and researched as it is, it leaves you cold and unengaged by its story and characters. The novel traces the life a two Jewish men – one an immigrant from the Czechoslovakian ghetto, the other a Brooklynite, during World War II — both artists and both involved in the rise of the graphic novel or the comics. They become the fictional creators of a popular comic book character “the Escapist” inspired by Houdini and imbued by the energy of 1940s freedom-fighters, opposing antisemitism in a world, which had become hopeless for millions. Chabon diligently depicts the ten cent world of the comics industry, parallel to the most dramatic events in world history but his characters lack life and his novel remains mostly decorative.

The History of Love. Nicole Krauss, 2005

One of the most overrated books I have come across! Belongs to what I would define as “learned graphomania” – a perfect sample of the latter. Obviously a lot of formal education and a lot of a labour went into creating the novel. Graphomaniacs are very industrious and sometimes the complexity of effort can pass for complexity of mind. Not in this case, anyway.

Nicole Krauss was a runner-up for the Orange literary award? She is so mediocre compared to Zadie Smith, the winner.

The story is convoluted and contrived. The very notion of “love” – the premise on which the whole book is supposed to build, is lacking. The book is tasteless in its efforts to imitate Borges, or Marquez, or Eco, or whoever she is trying to be. Images such as the man made of glass are preposterous, ridiculous – the character has to put a cushion on his behind when seating?! – how more helpless the imagery can get… Or, take for example, the whole idea of the “age of silence”, or the idea of a man dancing from grief (after learning about the death of his son…) – I can’t even comment on the lack of literary talent or originality that makes a book a helpless vehicle of narcissistic self-envisioning as a writer. Because, that is why N. Krauss has taken to writing – she wants to be a member of a highly regarded (by herself) club – that of writers. Well, unfortunately, membership is open to the public, but not necessarily to people with money or Oxford University degrees.

Brooklyn Follies. Paul Auster. 2006

Remember the story from Paul Auster’s film “Smoke” told by Harvey Caitel’s character towards the end of the film? It was a Christmas story about a man visiting a blind woman in the “Projects” and pretending to be her nephew…The new novel of Auster feels like it is being told by the same character — there is similarity in the narrative’s pace and style. The language is the everyday life conversational language of Brooklynites but Auster endows it with depth and beauty, which transcends the pettiness of the mundane. The narrator, Nathan Glass, is an insurance agent who goes back to his birthplace – Brooklyn, to spend the final stage of his life after cancer treatment. But the book is not dark — Nathan’s stories sound optimistic – sad but glorifying the beauty of life despite its tribulations.

The novel ends on a nostalgic note – a longing for a pre 9/11 innocence.

The plot is a “snowball” plot, which gradually involves more and more characters whose lives become entangled with Nathan’s. In addition to dramatically exploited relationships of lovers, spouses and parents-children, Auster pursues some unusually prosaic blood relations — uncle-nephew and uncle-niece. (I can’t recall of another recent novel that explores such relationships unless I go back to Dickens). In general, the narrative style itself reminds of nineteenth century techniques – for example, the device where the narrator injects suspense in the story with sentences like : “Had I known what would happen after that, I wouldn’t….” or “what happened next was very unusual and etc.” or “if I hadn’t made the decision to …, most of the events of this novel would have never taken place…” I am glad Auster returns to classic narrative techniques even though he has not entirely abandoned “post-modern” devices like self-references and hidden-quotations. And if the Kafka story worked beautifully, the “Book of follies” penned by Nathan seems unnecessary and does not contribute in a meaningfully way to the book. The mini-plots utilized by Auster involve scams — one that reminds of “Ripley Underground” (Patricia Highsmith), another (Hawthorne-related) – told with great enthusiasm for the Rascal and his/her life-loving energy. The book is definitely addressing a “reading” reader, who would probably derive the most of it, but its beauty lies beyond the literary references – it is in the intertwining small bitter-sweet events of life, the yarn of living and storytelling delivered with seriousness and an almost revelatory tone, which seemingly does not correspond to the pettiness of the subject matter – a waitress with a jealous husband, a perfect mother sending her kids on the school bus, a guy mowing his lawn…

All these miniatures perfectly tie together with Nathan’s idea at the end of the novel to start a publishing enterprise dedicated to recording the biographies of the forgettable — the ordinary people.

Quote:

“I want to talk about happiness and well-being, about those rare, unexpected moments when the voice in your head goes silent and you feel one with the world. I want to talk about the early June weather, about harmony and repose, about robins and yellow finches and blue-birds darting past the green leaves of trees. I want to talk about the benefits of sleep, about the pleasures of food and alcohol, about what happens to your mind when you step into the light of the two o’clock sun and feel the warm embrace of air around your body.”

Everyman. Philip Roth, 2006

This is a great book! It felt like a punch in the stomach – the sensation of reading it is almost physically painful…This is the American “Death of Ivan Ilych” written with the cruelty, and compassion, and lack of sentimental pity typical of a Tolstoy. The story of Everyman is the story of betrayal – the graduate betrayal of our body perpetrated on us with inevitability and indifference. It is also about the betrayal we commit against others and the loneliness of both – happy and unhappy creatures. There is a great scene towards the end of the novel, which compares to the grave-diggers scene in Hamlet. Yet, it the book is totally devoid of philosophizing. The language is matter of fact, simple, and bruising.

You have to have guts in order to read this book, let alone – write it.