Opening the Windows: Buksha’s Advent

Not long after the turn of the century, when I still wanted to be a fiction writer, I attended the Stonecoast Writers’ Conference, where one of my teachers, Michael White, liked to say something like “Open the window” when he thought we, his students, should somehow expand the material in our stories. I couldn’t help but think of Michael White’s advice when I sat down to write about Ksenia Buksha’s Адвент (Advent).

Buksha incorporates literal and figurative advent calendars into her novel about a young family – mathematician Kostya, music writer Anya, and their daughter Stesha – that is celebrating the holidays. Stesha opens little advent calendar windows but her parents open mental windows into accounts of past experiences, many of which were rather unpleasant for them. Their reminiscences include old friends, family members, and schoolmates.

Buksha varies her writing significantly in these two layers of her novel, writing about the present (which feels pretty much like our current present, given a mention of Zooming and repetition of the word “hipster”) in usual paragraphs, with sentences and punctuation, but writing about the windowed past in a form that looks a lot like poetry and contains minimalist punctuation. Buksha plays a lot with her words in these excursions into the past, often including laughter (for better or worse, I got so caught up in other aspects of the book that I didn’t think enough about the laughter, other than constantly recalling Khlebnikov’s “Incantation by/of Laughter”, perhaps just for the very fact of laughterness) and generally creating a nice run-on effect. I can’t say the past is always easy to read in Advent, particularly compared to the simple, spare prose of the other halves of Buksha’s chapters, but it left me thinking of spoken word and stream of consciousness. Bullying, suicide, and smoking too many cigars in one go are among the topics that surface from the past. These stylized accounts make for a perfect window-opening device, showing Kostya and Anya at various stages of their lives.

I particularly enjoyed scenes with Stesha, though. Particularly descriptions of Anya taking Stesha to kindergarten. The bus ride (people want to give Stesha a seat, though she’d rather stand), Stesha’s ritual tears upon parting, the teacher scolding Anya… it all felt very real to me, though I suppose that could be because I don’t have children. The whole book, by the way, feels both real and not-real, rather like Buksha’s Churov and Churbanov (previous post). Phantasmagoria wafts in and out of both books; both make good use of the feel of St. Petersburg. Advent mentions specific streets and places, including Piskaryovskoe Cemetery, frozen canals (since we’re in winter), and the Pribaltiyskaya Hotel (now a Radisson!), making the novel feel especially atmospheric. There are also small details linking Advent and Ch and Ch.

I confess that I doubted Advent a bit in the middle: there wasn’t quite a muddle there, though it felt like the book was losing energy. A couple chapters felt a tiny bit forced and I wondered if (cliché alert) the book might end up feeling less than the sum of its very decent individual parts: the dual/dueling stylistics, the laughter, the advent device, the characters. Fortunately, the succession of vignettes again begins to meld into something resembling a story arc and Buksha’s final chapters wrap things up nicely, using a formal difference plus the holiday calendar to signal a shift toward the future.

I suppose what counted most for me in Advent was Buksha’s ability to sum up life’s sadness, absurdity, and/or horrors in a few piercing sentences. As when Stesha recalls her kindergarten teachers’ story about children at Treblinka, prodding her to consider human evils and, perhaps more mundanely, reflect on daily routine and the passage of time, eventually leading, of course, to death. I reread that brief passage many times, wondering about the teacher, the child, and a lot of other things like the expectation of death. And could/would a teacher really tell such small children a story like that? And does the “really” matter when we’re reading fiction? Stesha’s reaction links with the advent theme and structure, too, not just because of the routines of opening the little and big windows but also through the expectation of things to come, be they a savior, a birth, or death. Even if Advent didn’t work quite as well for me as Churov and Churbanov, I appreciate Advent as an example of what I think of as everyday existentialism, here in the form of a novel that reads easily but contains many brief and memorable sections, such as this one, that dare look directly at life and death, with their joys and horrors. Advent is one of the unusual books that has grown on me since I finished reading.

Disclaimers and disclosures: Just the usual.

Up Next: Vodolazkin’s History of Island. And then, hm. (I’m feeling a little restless with my other reading, where vignette-like chapters don’t always accumulate and find story arcs this successfully.)

 

The Yasnaya Polyana Award’s 2020 Shortlist

The Yasnaya Polyana Award jury announced a six-book shortlist yesterday. I can’t say I think this list is especially inspiring or exciting – in large part because many of the titles are familiar from other award lists – though I can’t say I found this year’s YP longlist especially inspiring or exciting, either, for the same reason! Repetition. If you’re interested in jury views, Mikhail Vizel’s piece on the Год литературы site offers bits of commentary from jury members. And so here we go, in Russian alphabetical order by surname:

• Andrei Astvatsaturov’s Не кормите и не трогайте пеликанов (Don’t Feed or Touch the Pelicans), a novel concerning an urban neurotic who goes to London and gets suck(er?)ed into some sort of real-life (but fictional) detective story, was already a NatsBest shortlister.
• Sergei Belyakov’s Весна народов (Springtime of the Peoples or Spring of Nations are among the many variants for this title wording [edit]) isn’t concerned with European revolutions in 1848 but rather the Russian Revolution of 1917, which (borrowing from the book’s description) led to the establishment of various governments, including multiple entities in Ukraine. The book’s subtitle mentions Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgakov, and Petlyura.
• Ksenia Buksha’s Чуров и Чурбанов (Churov and Churbanov) is the only book on the list that I’ve read in full (previous post). It’s very good, a genuine bright spot in this year’s reading: it’s funny, smart, and skillfully constructed. Also a Big Book finalist.
• Sophia Sinitskaya’s Сияние “жеможаха” (which, sorry, I’m going to continue calling The “Zhemozhakha” Shining since the title’s more understandable word is the same as the Russian title of a certain Stephen King book) has already hit the NatsBest and Big Book shortlists, too. I still need to return to this one after having gotten stuck (twice!) in the first novella in the book, which is also the first novella in another Sinitskaya book. (!) It’s good, it’s interesting, I love the details and atmosphere… but somehow it just hasn’t held together for me, doesn’t impel me to read.
• Sasha Filipenko’s Возвращение в Острог (Return to Ostrog, where “Ostrog” is apparently a toponym; the word means “prison”) is a welcome surprise: I thought Filipenko’s Hounding, a Big Book finalist a few years ago, was very good (previous post) and have been meaning to read more of his work. This novel is apparently about a town where a prison is the primary institution.
• Evgeny Chizhov’s Собиратель рая (Collector of Heaven or Collecting Heaven?), which I read in part and have been known to call “good-natured,” is a slow, meandering novel about a woman with dementia and her son, who loves flea markets. Although it didn’t hit me (particularly after Chizhov’s truly wonderful The Translation), I do understand its appeal.

 

Up Next: Inga Kuznetsova’s Промежуток. Potpourri books still await, and who knows what else might pop up!

 

Disclaimers and Disclosures: The usual, which includes having translated two Yasnaya Polyana jury members’ books and having enjoyed talking with a couple of this year’s award finalists.

Big Book 2: Buksha’s Heartfelt Churov and Churbanov

Ksenia Buksha’s Чуров и Чурбанов (Churov and Churbanov) is the first Russian book I’ve read and really, truly enjoyed on multiple levels during this whole bleak quarantine season. Churov and Churbanov captured me so much that I a) wanted to begin rereading as soon as I finished but b) don’t particularly feel like writing about it, lest I break the novel’s spell. I will tread lightly.

Churov and Churbanov is both comforting and disquieting, telling the story of two schoolmates who grow up in the 1990s and take (mostly) divergent paths in life. Churov becomes a cardiologist and a family man. Churbanov becomes, hm, a businessman. They live in St. Petersburg: the novel’s description refers to the “Petersburg atmosphere” and I must say that I cannot picture the book taking place anywhere else, perhaps because of certain slightly mystical, mysterious, and grotesque elements. Buksha works mentions of Santa Barbara, giant icicles, George Soros, and a grocery list with chicken hearts into her chapters. There is naturalism (the period’s crime) and there is empathy and love (family life).

She writes some beautiful scenes. In one, Churov videos his dog as they walk along railroad ties; he later shows the clip to juvenile patients to entice them to open their mouths at appointments. In another, after sustaining some injuries in a fight, Churbanov goes to the frozen Neva, sits on the snow, and drinks vodka and eats sausage as the sun sets and snow falls.

One of the elements that draws the book’s vignette-like chapters into a novel is the heart. There’s a bread factory (with a giant mixer!) that’s the heart of the city, there are those chicken hearts, and there’s a geography teacher who claims to remember students with her heart, though she confuses Churov and Churbanov. There is also the oddity that Churov and Churbanov, who are opposite in most respects, have synchronized hearts, a phenomenon that becomes a strange, almost utopian, fixation since it’s seen as having curative potential. Synchronization is banned because of instant simultaneous death of an entire synchronized group if one member dies.

The true miracle of Churov and Churbanov lies in Buksha’s telling. The pacing is perfect, she offers just the right level of detail, and the book has lots of heart and soul. As well as comfort and disquiet. The book’s formal success alone is refreshing but there’s something about the novel’s combination of light and dark – here I’m recalling scenes, like the bread factory’s constantly glowing windows and Churbanov’s sunset on the river as well as figurative, character- and plot-based light and dark – that appealed to both my head and my heart. It’s a very satisfying book.

Up next: Potpourri. Alexander Belyaev’s Professor Dowell’s Head, science fiction from 1925. The odder the better right about now.

Disclaimers and disclosures. The usual. This is the second of this year’s Big Book finalists that I’ve read in full; I received an electronic copy but read a previously purchased printed copy.

Big Book Finalists for 2020: A Lucky Thirteen List for Lizok’s Summer Reading Plan

Well, this year’s Big Book shortlist came in an unusual way: the announcement was held on Zoom rather than at a GUM luncheon this time around so I dragged myself to my computer at seven in the morning to watch. Despite the early (for me) hour, it was fun to see some friends and experience (yet again!) the oddly voyeuristic feeling of observing people in their Zoom habitats.

Since there are thirteen finalists this year, I’ll get to the list without further ado, listing the shortlisters in the order they were named over Zoom. In a few cases, I’ll mention brief the authors’ brief answers to questions from Dmitry Bak, who served as the broadcast’s genial, smiling host.

• Timur Kibirov’s Генерал и его семья (The General and His Family) is a long family saga written by a writer who’s probably best known as a poet. (For his part, Kibirov says he has not switched to prose and is working on a new book of poetry.) The novel is set in the late Soviet period. My colleague Jamie Olson has translated some of Kibirov’s poetry; you can find a few of his translations here.
• Shamil Idiatullin’s Бывшая Ленина (Former Lenin [Street, though not only “street,” from what I gather]) is set in a provincial city with all sorts of problems and takes place, hm, last year.
• Evgeny Chizhov’s Собиратель рая (Collector of Heaven or Collecting Heaven?), which I read in part and called “good-natured” in my longlist post, is a slow, meandering novel about a woman with dementia and her son, who loves flea markets. There’s some good humor and lots of atmosphere but I found the book disappointing, perhaps in part because I loved Chizhov’s The Translation (previous post) so much. I will, however, revisit Collector.
• Alexander Ilichevsky made the list with Чертеж Ньютона (Newton’s Sketch), which apparently features three journeys and settings including Nevada, the Pamirs, and Jerusalem. The narrator mentions in the novel’s first sentence that he works with dark matter…
• Pavel Selukov’s Добыть Тарковского ([Verbing, I think perhaps Procuring or somesuch] Tarkovsky) is a collection of short stories that are apparently set in Perm in the nineties and noughties. Thank you to Bak for asking Selukov which Tarkovsky the title refers to… though Selukov deflected the question. (Now that I have the book, I know the answer but won’t spoil anything for anyone…)
• Grigori Arosev and Evgenii Kremchukov’s Деление на ноль (Division by Zero) apparently concerns a dystopia. Which feels right up my alley these days. [Guilty pleasure: I confess that I was almost pleased to see Kremchukov confess that he forgot what he wanted to say when it was his turn to speak. Zoom seems to have the exact same effect on me perhaps because I’m always watching people in their little boxes…]
• Vasily Avchenko and Alexei Korovashko’s Олег Куваев: повесть о нерегламентированном человеке (Oleg Kuvaev: Story of an Unregulated Person) is a biography of Oleg Kuvaev, who has a cult following and is best known for a book called Territory. And, evidently, a life of adventure.
• Sofia Sinitskaya will continue to haunt me with her titles! Her Сияние «Жеможаха» (The Glimmering [of the] Zhemozhakha, though I’m loving the idea of The “Zhemozhakha” Shining since the title’s other word is the same as the Russian title of a certain Stephen King book) is now on my summer book list. Sinitskaya said that word I can’t really translate (yet!) is a sort of symbol of the absurd. I’ll return to my notes and report back after revisiting her previous book involving Zhemozhakha and then reading this one where [OMG!] Zhemozhakha apparently drives a car! Maybe zhemozhakha can become a word in English.
• Dina Rubina is back with another trilogy – Наполеонов обоз (Napoleon’s Caravan/Convoy or somesuch) – that looks like another family saga. When Bak asked Rubina why the story is so long, Rubina said [long story short here] she couldn’t leave anything unsaid.
• Natalia Gromova made the list with an autobiographical novel, Насквозь (Through and Through, perhaps?).
• Mikhail Elizarov’s Земля (Earth) is the only book I’ve already read in full (previous post).
• Alexei Makushinsky’s Предместья мысли. Философическая прогулка (The Outskirts of Thought. A Philosophical Stroll, something like that, perhaps?) visits places where Nikolai Berdyaev and Jacques Maritain lived.
• I’m currently reading Ksenia Buksha’s Чуров и Чурбанов (Churov and Churbanov), which I’d already bought in bound, printed form (hurray for old-fashioned books!), chronicles the lives of two classmates. It’s very readable and a bit light, though I feel like there may be some dark turns ahead.

I’ll leave it there for now, other than to note that – as in years past – I was disappointed not to see more books written by women on the list. I was especially surprised that Olga Pogodina-Kuzmina’s Uranium didn’t make the list. But, as last year, I’ll be sure to buy Uranium and some of the other longlisters by women writers, though that list of 39 books had only eight written by women, meaning there are not many there to choose from.

Disclaimers and Disclosures: I’m on the jury of the Big Book Award and have received electronic copies of all the finalists. I’ve met some of the writers on the list and translated an excerpt of Earth.

Up Next: The long-promised potpourri. Busksha’s Churov and Churbanov.