I have a feeling this may be one of my least informative, least
conclusive, and most rambling blog posts ever: I haven’t been kidding when I’ve
used the word “mysterious” to describe Maria Galina’s Автохтоны (part one/part two)(Autochthons), a book that was shortlisted
for this year’s National Bestseller Award and Big Book Award. Pronouncing the English-language
title—which looks mysterious, at least to me—turns out to be easy enough, and I’ve
now come to think of the word as meaning “the locals,” in the sense of extraordinarily
peculiar long-term, indigenous locals. I have no earthly idea how I can possibly describe
the novel after presenting something of a plot summary below. At least I’m not alone:
Elena Vasileva, for example, writing on Prochtenie.ru, says the characters’
many unreliable accounts of events can cause schizophrenia (or suspicions of
such) among readers.
And so, a bare plot summary. Galina sets Autochthons in an unnamed city on the brink
of Europe (reader consensus seems to be that it sounds a lot like Lviv), where
an unnamed out-of-town visitor claiming to be a freelancer for the theater
journal Teatr settles in at a hostel
and gets to work, for an unnamed reason that is revealed later, on research
into some local—and very obscure—theater history from the 1920s by interviewing
a slew of local experts (ha). Among the juicy and dry details, there’s talk of
death on the stage, of philosophy, of one of anonymous man’s interlocutors
resembling Yuri Lotman,
and even of the use Spanish fly. Or maybe not.
Though I wasn’t quite self-diagnosing schizophrenia, all the
details and stories that anonymous man uncovers did make me wonder what was
happening to my head: Was my memory failing? Was I just confused? Was I reading
too much at a time? Too little? Or was I so caught up in the quirky and oddly, charmingly eerie atmosphere
and characters of Autochthons that I was
zipping through the more serious and, really, more technical material? I
suspect the latter but don’t regret, at all, having reading that way. Even
little details like the breakfast spot where the waitress always asks “the
usual?” («Как всегда?»)—because that establishes
both a past and a future—feel at least as important as anonymous man’s formal research.
There are clearly patterns here and the city’s legends (urban legends?) are said to include a little sex, fear,
violence, and morality, plus a sad ending. Of course everything ends up
blending anyway.
Meanwhile, Galina plays with a pile of cultural references,
Russian and otherwise. Every person is said to hide the maniac within and when our
unnamed hero confronts someone who’s following him in a wax museum, he steps out
from behind a Dracula figure. Jack the Ripper’s there, too, and no, of course, this
is not the only mention of vampires. Other variations on the human, hmm,
condition and form appear, too, perhaps most notably in someone who purports to
be a sylph… he asks unnamed man if he’s ever seen Angel Heart, which shows the hazards of pursuing oneself. I haven’t
even mentioned world history, meaning the non-theater part, (then again, all
the world’s a stage, right?), which also comes up plenty, perhaps most
memorably when one character is accused of having been a Nazi collaborator. In
any case, Galina twists and blends detective and fantasy genres with local myth
plus a figure who comes to a new place as a seemingly clean slate but turns out
to be nothing of the sort.
I mentioned in my “up next” sections of previous posts that Autochthons made me think a lot about my
own reading habits. For one thing, this is yet another novel complex and puzzling enough that I’d need to
reread to understand because I focused so much on one layer in my first
reading. I’m not alone here, either: in her
Meduza.io review, critic Galina Yuzefovich also mentions the need for a second,
slower reading. I always find it difficult to get to know lots of characters at
once, particularly when they’re offering up so much unreliable information; Autochthons is certainly appealing
enough to read again.
My second “thing” is odder: I most enjoyed reading Autochthons in the dark, with a new book
light. (Side note: it’s the Mighty
Bright Recharge, which I love and which is worth the extra money for its dimmer,
discrete light, very flexible neck, and easy (re)charging.) It didn’t even feel
right to read Autochthons using regular
lamp light. Somehow, sitting in the dark with a small pool of light from the
Recharge illuminating only two pages of the book felt just right for a novel as
slyly occult and metaphysical—not to mention slyly humorous—as Autochthons.
August is Women in Translation Month so I also want to note
that Maria Galina’s novel Гиви и Шендерович was translated by Amanda Love
Darragh, as Iramifications. Amanda won the 2009 Rossica Prize for the translation.
Up Next: Ludmila
Ulitskaya’s family saga Jacob’s Ladder,
which I’ve almost finished and will move up since Ulitskaya is another woman
who’s been translated. Then Alexander Snegirev’s Vera, which has been waiting so patiently…
Disclaimers: The usual.
I’ve translated excerpts from some of Maria Galina’s novels, including her Mole
Crickets, which I enjoyed very much four years ago.
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