Three on a Fuzzy Head -- Gazdanov, Kabakov, Ilf & Petrov

My head’s still pretty fuzzy from a cold but that feels perfect for writing up descriptions of three works I could describe, in one word each, as dreamy, nightmarish, and feverish. A bonus: the first two are available in English translation, and there’s something similar for the third…

Dreamy. Gaito Gazdanov’s Призрак Александра Вольфа (The Specter of Alexander Wolf) begins with the first-person narrator discussing his only murder. Events of the Russian Civil War connect with his later life in Paris in strange ways, resulting in a short novel that reads like Existentialism Lite and looks at life, death, duality, and fate.

The odd thing is that, despite philosophy that felt obvious to me, I thoroughly enjoyed Gazdanov’s clear, elegant writing and the places and states of mind he describes. He also includes strange little gifts of fate: a wind that carries a life-saving sound and a boxing match where the narrator meets his enigmatic girlfriend. I suspect that my impression of dreaminess may come in part from the fact that I usually read in Russian about Russia, not Paris.

Nightmarish. It was a bit of a shock to the system to follow the velvety writing of Alexander Wolf with Aleksandr Kabakov’s Невозвращенец (No Return), a gritty, chaotic 1988 novella that uses a researcher’s time travel to look at unrest in 1993 Moscow. I’m a sucker for dystopias, so I enjoyed some of the bits Kazakov throws in: I particularly liked a scene at a speakeasy of sorts that serves home brew made from Hungarian peas. (They must be Globus!) There are also repeated but failed attempts to blow up the Pushkin statue, strange goings-on in night Metro trains, and warnings about the intelligentsia being sick and in need of an operation. I thought the most telling lines of the piece, though, involved the narrator staying low to the ground in danger, sometimes crawling on all fours, like an animal. As dystopias go, I much prefer Makanin’s Лаз (Escape Hatch) (previous post) or Platonov’s Котлован (Foundation Pit), (previous post) but No Return made quite a splash when it was published, thanks to its visions of Russia’s future.

Feverish. When I finished Ilya Il’f and Evgenii Petrov’s 461-page Одноэтажная Америка (One-Storey America), my one nonfiction book for the year, I felt almost like I’d really ridden thousands miles around the U.S. in 1935-1936 with Il’f, Petrov, and their escorts, Mr. and Mrs. Adams (real name: Tron). The mysterious Becky Adams drives. So many places, people, and drugstore breakfasts! During the two-month trip, they take hitchhikers into their Ford and hear stories of hard-luck and hope. They witness incompetent bullfights in Mexico, visit American progressives, see segregation, speed down smooth roads, experience American service, and meet Henry Ford.

I loved certain passages of the book – I recognized New York, Sequoia Park, and White’s City, New Mexico, among other places – and found observations about Hollywood movies and the incuriousness of some Americans interesting. Other memorable sections describe American football, New York cafeterias, and a meeting with Russian milk drinkers in San Francisco.

The book left a strange sensation because it is, itself, like a house with multiple storeys of meaning. Though it reads like a travelogue, between the lines looms Soviet history, which had already included arrests and famine. I can’t, for example, read complaints about uninteresting but plentiful American food at face value.

Charles Malamuth’s English translation of the book, Little Golden America, is out-of-print, though partially available online here, where even the posters admit they’re infringing on the copyright. There is also Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip, translated by Anne O. Fisher, which contains English versions of I&P’s articles for Ogonek magazine; it appears to cover many of the topics in One-Storey America. The Road Trip book includes Ilf’s photos and was a 2007 Rossica Prize finalist. You can sample its words and images here.

No Return on Amazon
Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip on Amazon
Gazdanov on Amazon