2011 NOSE Long List

It’s been a long time since I’ve methodically gone through an entire long or short list for an award, adding links and descriptions… so here you go: the entire 25-member 2011 НОС/NOSE award long list, with a few notes, including links to previous posts about the four books I’ve read. As usual, I’m sure some of the title translations are awful due to lack of context. The NOSE award is a program of the Mikhail Prokhorov Fund.

I’m also sure more summaries, excerpts, and full texts are floating around in the Runet, but this warm fall day keeps calling me away from my computer! Though a few books sound interesting, I can’t say I found anything new on the list that I feel compelled to seek out right away, particularly since there seem to be a lot of short story collections and nonfiction books on the list. Marina Palei, whom I’ve been meaning to read for some time, is probably at the top of my list.

1. Andrei Astvatsaturov: Скунскамера (Skunskamera), a book that’s a veteran of long and short lists.

2. Karine Arutiunova: Пепел красной коровы (Ash from the Red Cow), a collection of very short stories.

3. Marina Akhmedova: Дневник смертницы. Хадижа (Diary of a Death Girl. Khadizha. [a key title word can mean a prisoner condemned to death or a suicide bomber]), a novel about a Dagestani girl that Akhmedova based on stories of real girls in the Northern Caucasus.

4. Nikolai Baitov: Думай, что говоришь (Think When You Speak). Short stories (41 in 320 pages) from a poet.

5. Il’ia Boiashov: Каменная баба (The Stone Woman) (previous post)

6. Iana Vagner: Вонгозеро (Vongozero), a debut novel about a nasty flu; the book grew out of Live Journal posts.

7. Igor’ Vishnevetskii: Ленинград (Leningrad), a novella set in Leningrad during World War 2 that Vishnevetskii says is a postscript of sorts to Andrei Belyi’s Petersburg because he imagined Belyi’s characters in his own book. For more: Svobodanews.ru interview with Vishnevetskii here.

8. Natal’ia Galkina: Табернакль (Tabernacle)

9. Dj Stalingrad: Исход (could be Exodus or something like The Outcome), apparently about leftwing skinheads.

10. Dmitrii Danilov: Горизонтальное положение (Horizontal Position) (previous post)

11. Nikolai Kononov: Фланёр (The Flâneur), a novel set in the 1930s and 1940s. (OpenSpace.ru review)

12. Aleksandr Markin: Дневник 2006–2011 (Diary 2006-2011), Live Journal posts from Russia’s first LJ blogger. (This seems to be a common thread this year…) Comments on Ozon.ru note Markin’s interest in German literature and European architecture.

13. Aleksei Nikitin: Истеми (İstemi), a novel about bored students who create a geopolitical game and get in trouble. (The description on the Ad Marginem site is much more complicated.) Risk, anyone?

14. Marina Palei: Дань саламандре (beginning end) (Tribute [the monetary kind] for the Salamander) was also long-listed for the National Bestseller award.

15. Viktor Pelevin: Ананасная вода для прекрасной дамы (Pineapple Water for the Beautiful Lady), a bestselling story collection.

16. Andrei Rubanov: Тоже родина (Also a Motherland), a story collection.

17. Maria Rybakova: Гнедич (Gnedich), a novel in verse about Russian poet Nikolai Gnedich, the first Russian translator of The Iliad. Rybakova is also a poet. Excerpt

18. Figl’-Migl’: Ты так любишь эти фильмы (You Love Those Films So Much), a NatsBest finalist that lost in a tie breaker vote when Kseniia Sobchak cast her vote for Dmitrii Bykov instead. Sobchak said in an interview that she doesn’t consider F-M’s book literature. She also compares Bykov to McDonald’s and says she hates his ЖД (Living Souls) (previous post). Take that!

19. Margarita Khemlin: Крайний (Krainii: my previous post explains the title)

20. Andrei Sharyi and Iaroslav Shimov: Корни и корона (Roots and the Crown), essays about Austro-Hungary. (OpenSpace.ru review)

21. Mikhail Shishkin: Письмовник (Letter-Book) (previous post)

22. Nina Shnirman: Счастливая девочка (Lucky Girl) (excerpt); a book about a girl’s childhood that includes World War 2. I’m not clear if it’s strictly memoir or somewhat fictionalized. Either way, it was a Cosmo book of the month!

23. Gleb Shul’piakov: Фес (Fes or Fez, as you prefer), a novel. The publisher’s description says Fes is about a man who brings his wife to the maternity hospital and, when left to his own devices, ends up in a basement in an unidentified eastern city… sounds like more warped reality.

24. Aleksandr Iablonskii: Абраша (Abrasha), a novel with a vague summary.

25. Irina Iasina: История болезни (Case History) appears to be a memoir about having multiple sclerosis.

Up next: I’m hoping to finish Sergei Kuznetsov’s Хоровод воды (The Round Dance of Water) in time for a post next week.

Boiashov’s Stone Woman

I’ll be blunt: Il’ia Boiashov’s Каменная баба (The Stone Woman, more on the title below) just isn’t my kind of book, and not liking it was especially disappointing after Boiashov’s wonderful The Tank Driver or “White Tiger” (past post). Subject matter probably has a lot to do with my disappointment. Tank Driver is about World War Two, which interests me, but Stone Woman looks at the phenomenon of strong Russian women through the prism of showbiz and celebrity.

The Stone Woman is a roaches-to-riches tale of a singer from an undetermined province, and Boishov constructs his story by layering Russian myth upon archetypes upon more myth as the woman rises from a squalid childhood to become a Russian TV star and singer. She reminds of Alla Borisovna Pugacheva: her hit song “Миллиард тюльпанов на площади” (“A Billion Tulips on the Square”) is clearly a parodic cousin of Alla Borisovna’s “Миллион алых роз” (“A Million Scarlet Roses”). I’m not an avid consumer of Russian or Western celebrity news, so I’m sure I missed out on plenty of references.

I think my problem with The Stone Woman is that it’s so overloaded with references to Russian and foreign culture, popular and historical, that it feels gimmicky even if the kitschiness of contemporary culture and the power of the entertainment industry is part of Boiashov’s point. Examples: Tom Cruise gets a cameo and our antiheroine has a granddaughter named Lisa-Marie. I did occasionally laugh at Boiashov’s portrayal of an overbearing Russian woman who attracts endless men, breastfeeds her son so long I wanted to call in Dr. Freud, and lives at the top of a swanky building (see image), but the exaggerated humor was a bit over-the-top for my delicate sensibilities.

I found Boiashov’s schematicness and use of italics annoying, too, especially when he refers to his title character as stone woman. Her real name is Maria Ugarova, which gives you Maria/Mary/oh-you-know-Madonna +ugar, which can be carbon monoxide fumes/poisoning, ecstasy and intoxication, or even industrial wastes of various types, according to my trusty Oxford Russian-English dictionary. Take that, Alla Borisovna: the pug- root of your name promises only fright and intimidation, and a pugach is just a toy gun or an owl. The term каменная баба, kamennaia baba, refers to a stone image of a warrior (or woman) that’s placed on a burial mound, giving Ugarova one heck of an ancient lineage.

But I shrug. That accomplished, I’ll say that The Stone Woman may be a love-it-or-hate-it book: I finished because it’s 158 small pages plus Boiashov’s Q&A session with himself about Russian women. (I won’t even begin to remark on that!) Comments on ozon.ru when I wrote were positive (five stars) but I wondered as I read the novel – as did reviewer mashona on Vaffly.ru – who’d want to read the book, given that (I’ll summarize some of mashona’s points) Boiashov doesn’t say anything new, most readers aren’t very interested in Alla Borisovna, and Alla Borisovna herself isn’t going to read that she’s being portrayed as (essentially) a prostitute. I suspect The Stone Woman would be most interesting and fun for casual readers and scholars who enjoy dissecting popular culture, excavating myths, fairytale themes, truths, and fantastical elements. There’s plenty there.

If you’re in the market for a novel about an overbearing Russian woman, I’m more likely to recommend Alina Bronsky’s The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, translated by Tim Mohr from the German original Die schärfsten Gerichte der tatarischen Küche. The Hottest Dishes leans toward character study and peters out in the last third or so, but I thought Bronsky did an admirable job portraying Rosa Achmetowna, a beautiful (or so she says) battleaxe who claims to mean well. I thought the book was much funnier than Boiashov’s Stone Woman, perhaps because Bronsky’s first-person narrative (from Rosa herself) juxtaposes humor with references to Soviet woes. As I wrote on my other blog, I’ve known plenty of women like Rosa. As bossy women, Rosa and Masha Ugarova certainly share plenty of characteristics, but Rosa, who’s larger than life but still feels real, is far more compelling to me than Boiashov’s grotesque and italicized stone woman.

Up Next: Andrei Platonov’s Ювенильное море (The Juvenile Sea), which reminds me of The Foundation Pit with its combination of difficulty and reward, and Catherynne M. Valente’s Deathless, which I’m just starting.

Disclosures: I received a copy of The Stone Woman at the Russian booth at BookExpo America. Thank you to Limbus Press for sending it over! I received a review copy of The Hottest Dishes from Regal Literary and have enjoyed speaking with Regal representatives in person and by e-mail.

Image credit: Sergei Kozhin via Wikipedia. The “vysotka,” tall building, at Kotel’nicheskaya Embankment in Moscow, is Ugarova’s home.

The 2011 National Bestseller Looooong List

I’ve grown to enjoy literary award long lists: I guess I like the fact that long lists are so long, meaning they serve up dozens of reading ideas. I’ve also found that many of my favorite books make it to multiple long and short lists but don’t win big prizes. Today there’s an additional long list benefit: posting about this year’s NatsBest gives me a nice reprieve from finishing my piece about Olga Slavnikova’s Лёгкая голова (Lightheaded). I’ve been struggling with it for days...

So! The NatsBest long list contains around 60 nominations; manuscripts and books, in journal or book form, are eligible. A few to mention:

The most popular book, with three nominations, is Andrei Astvatsaturov’s Скунскамера. The title, Skun(k)skamera, is a play on “Kunstkamera.” Astvatsaturov’s Люди в голом (People in the Nude) was a finalist for last year’s NatsBest. For his part, Astvatsaturov nominated Mikhail Elizarov’s Мультики (‘Toons); it’s the only book on the list that I’ve read so far (previous post).

The most-nominated author, by titles, is Andrei Rubanov, who has three books on the list: Тоже родина (Also a Homeland or Another Homeland), Йод (Iodine), and Психодел (I’ll call it Psychodeal: the book blurb says the title is a combination of two Russian words: psychosis and the verb делать, to do…). Homeland is a collection of stories; the other two books are novels. Roman Senchin nominated Iodine, which is apparently somewhat autobiographical; Senchin’s Изобилие (Abundance), a book of stories, made the list, too.

The NatsBest is intended to make a book into a bestseller – its slogan is “Проснуться знаменитым,” “Wake up famous” – but Pavel Krusanov nominated Viktor Pelevin’s Ананасная вода для прекрасной дамы (Pineapple Water for the Beautiful Lady), a book that’s already been at the top of bestseller lists; as of today, it’s at number 6. Oh well. Meanwhile, German Sadulaev’s Шалинский рейд (The Raid on Shali) was nominated twice but withdrawn for not fitting the competition’s rules because it was a 2010 Booker finalist. Elena Koliadina, who won the 2010 Booker, is on the big jury for the NatsBest.

Two more: Marina Palei’s Дань саламандре (Tribute [the old-fashioned kind] for the Salamander) (beginning) (end) is allegedly a Petersburg novel… I enjoyed Il’ia Boiashov’s The Tank Driver or “White Tiger” (previous post) so may give his Каменная баба (The Stone Woman) a try, particularly since the Russian phrase for “stone woman” refers to ancient statues and the book’s action, at first glance, anyway, looks thoroughly contemporary…

I’ll finish by saying that Viktor Toporov mentions in his commentary about the list that Boiashov is one of four nominees who’s already won the NatsBest. The other three are Dmitrii Bykov, Pelevin, and Aleksandr Prokhanov.

Up next: The afore-mentioned post about Slavnikova’s Lightheaded, which I enjoyed. Then Mikhail Shishkin’s Письмовник (Letter-Book), which I’m not so thrilled about.

A Tank Driver with an Idée Fixe

Il’ia Boiashov’s Танкист, или «Белый тигр» (The Tank Driver or “White Tiger”) is a curious hybrid of a book that blends World War 2 history, mostly about tank warfare, with fantastical fiction focusing on a tank driver who nearly burns to death. If that doesn’t sound appealing, please consider this: the book was a finalist for several Russian literary awards, including the Booker and the National Bestseller awards. Boiashov’s language, humor, and historical endnotes work together to make the book both entertaining and illuminating.

The Tank Driver’s main character is Ivan Ivanovich Naidenov, a tank driver whose T-34 tank is killed in the 1943 Prokhorovka tank battle near Kursk. Ivan Ivanovich miraculously survives, disfigured by burns and an erased memory. His last name is based on the verb найти, to find. Ivan Ivanovich returns to tank driving, occasionally muttering “Белый тигр” (“White Tiger”), the name of a ghostlike tank he tries to track down.

The book contains plenty of background on war and tanks – Boiashov has a personal interest in tanks – so readers learn features of Soviet T-34s, German Tigers, and Canadian Valentines, among others. The book notes that there was no White Tiger tank model, making Ivan Ivanovich’s idée fixe resemble Captain Ahab’s, though German troops did paint tanks white in the winter.

Ivan Ivanovich, whose nicknames include Череп (Skull) and Van’ka Smert’ (Van’ka Death), is all about tanks: he’s a flawless, fearless, and decorated tank driver who runs on instinct, hears tanks speak, and believes the Great Tank Driver in the Sky can’t exist without a personal T-34. Ivan Ivanovich lacks worldly possessions, including a decent coat, so another character compares him to Akakii Akakeivich, the main character of Nikolai Gogol’s “Шинель” (“The Overcoat”). (previous post)

The other members of Naidenov’s crew have their own troubles: one is a serial womanizer who also plunders gold and other valuables, storing them in the tank; the second is a heavy drinker. Although Boiashhov said in an interview that he intended The Tank Driver to be a story of good and evil, he also notes that people and nations involved in war have a tendency to misbehave.

What’s most interesting for me about The Tank Driver is that Boiashov’s combination of allegory and fact results in a book the feels both suffused with history, thanks to its accurate information, yet removed from the everyday because of its main character’s almost schematically tragic incompleteness. Still, it was Ivan Ivanovich that held my interest whenever he drove onto the page: as a resurrected amnesiac with an obsession, Vank’a Smert’ is both sketchy and vivid, a fascinatingly touching and mythical figure.

The Tank Driver is a strange and wonderful short book. Though I admit my interest occasionally lagged in some of the longer historical and tank-oriented passages, I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about tanks and even took out two of our books on World War 2 tank warfare to look at photos. I suppose I have a history of that, though: I was a very willing visitor to the Patton Museum outside Louisville two years ago, where I saw many tanks, including a King Tiger, one of the models mentioned in The Tank Driver.

I think part of Ivan Ivanovich’s appeal is that, in his seemingly impenetrable tank skin, he sums up so much about the fragility of the human condition, representing all of us. Boiashov certainly deserved his many nominations: it takes an impressive combination of historical knowledge and literary skill to write a book that conveys so much and makes the fantastic feel so real.

Tank photos via Wikipedia: Top is Russian T-34 destroyed at Prokhorovka; photo from Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive), author Koch. Second photo is of the sectioned King Tiger tank that I saw at the Patton Museum.

Gelasimov Takes NatsBest

Fontanka.ru reports that Andrei Gelasimov’s novel Степные боги (Steppe Gods) won the 2009 National Bestseller literary award. I’m a little surprised it won: beyond the fact that I found Steppe Gods disappointing, German Sadulaev’s Таблетка (The Tablet) won the most votes in the previous round of voting. (Previous posts: Steppe Gods and NatsBest short list)

In other NatsBest news, bloggers on Живой Журнал (Live Journal) gave their best book vote to Sergei Nosov’s Тайная жизнь Петербургских памятников (The Secret Life of Petersburg Monuments). They also awarded the new NatsWorst prize to Vladimir Makanin’s Асан (Asan). (Previous post on Asan)

I’m about to start Il’ia Boiashov’s Танкист, или «Белый тигр» (The Tank Driver or “White Tiger”), which was shortlisted for NatsBest, Booker, and Big Book… but didn’t win any of them. The Tank Driver is a thin volume that looks particularly inviting thanks to remedial material: a diagram of a T-34-85 tank on the endpapers and background on World War 2 in readable commentaries by Boiashov.

Edit: Here's a commentary from lenta.ru about Gelasimov's win: "Победа 'приятного писателя'"