The 2016 NOSE Award Longlist

Thank goodness for the NOSE Award longlist! I have to admit that a rainy Saturday and a windy, blustery Sunday weren’t very conducive to writing trip reports or book reports… but an award longlist (oops, almost a “lostlist”) feels like just the thing. And the NOSE Award—a program of the Prokhorov Foundation—is always a quirky matter (I still don’t quite understand the NOSE), whether we’re talking about a longlist, shortlist, or award final, and that makes NOSE all the more appealing today. Beyond that, there’s not much time to post the list: the shortlist is apparently on the express, scheduled for debate and arrival on November 2. So here’s the whole longlist, in the order presented on the Prokhorov Foundation site and with my completely inconsistent transliterations of names:

• Yuri Buida’s Цейлон (Ceylon), which has already hit other longlists and which I’ve read (previous post).
• Eugene Vodolazkin’s Авиатор (The Aviator), which is already on the Big Book shortlist and which I’m already translating and loving all over again (previous post).
• Polina Zherebtsova’s Тонкая серебристая нить (Thin Silver Thread) is a collection of stories about civilian life in Grozny during the Chechen Wars. Brief extracts from Zherebtsova’s diary (NB: this is a different book!).
• Kirill Kobrin’s Шерлок Холмс и рождение современности. Деньги, девушки, денди Викторианской Эпохи (Sherlock Holmes and the Birth of Modernity. Money, Young Women, and Dandies of the Victorian Epoch) is nonfiction that the title and this excerpt explain.
• Sergei Kuznetsov’s Калейдоскоп (excerpt) (Kaleidoscope) involves dozens of characters and their stories, set in the twentieth century; one of my Goodreads friends noted sex and vampires. This one sounded interesting from the start but for some reason hearing it described—in a positive way, mind you—as “Pynchon lite” more than once in Moscow intrigues me all the more.
• Vladimir Martynov’s Книга Перемен (The Book of Changes) is described as more of a palimpsest than a book and as a sort of hypertext for hyperreading that uses zapping and (appropriately enough, I suppose) fortune telling practices from that other The Book of Changes. I was an I Ching fan as a teenager and don’t want to sound dismissive but, hmm.
• Aleksandra Petrova’s Аппендикс (excerpt) (The Appendix, in a metaphorical sense, it seems) is a novel about Rome. (A review)
• Moshe Shanin’s Левоплоссковские. Правоплоссковские (The title refer to residents of the villages of Levoplosskaya and Pravoplosskaya) is a collection of stories written by a young writer—he was a Debut winner for short fiction in 2014—from Severodvinsk, which interests me from the start because of my many visits to Arkhangelsk.
• Vladimir Voinovich’s Малиновый пеликан (excerpt) (The Raspberry Pelican, perhaps referring to the bird’s color, based on the cover…) is more Voinovich satire with absurdity.
• Dmitrii Lipskerov’s О нем и о бабочках (expert from GQ) (Lipskerov reads from the book on YouTube) (About Him and About Butterflies/Moths/Bow Ties, I’m betting on the lepidoptera, based on a reader review and other factors…) seems to be about a man who loses, ahem, intimate anatomy. The GQ excerpt intro compares it to Gogol’s “The Nose,” one of my all-time favorites, and it’s obvious why, even just skimming the excerpt.
• Igor Sakhnovsky’s Свобода по умолчанию (Freedom by Default) is apparently a novel about love, internal freedom, and political absurdity.
• Vasilii Avchenko’s Кристалл в прозрачной оправе (Crystal in a Transparent Frame) carries the subtitle “lyrical lectures about water and stones,” and Avchenko is said to cover many aspects of life in Vladivostok, including fish(ing), as in this excerpt. Ocean lover that I am, I bought this one after it hit the 2016 NatsBest shortlist.
• Aleksei Zikmund’s Карело-финский дневник (Karelian-Finnish Diary) is a bit of a mystery…
• Oleg Zaionchkovsky’s Тимошина проза (Timosha’s Prose), which I read and don’t quite know how to describe… it’s a detached but close narrative about a young man. The novel lacks the, hmm, snap and pop (and crackle, too, I suppose) of Zaionchkovsky’s previous books.
• Boris Lego’s Сумеречные рассказы (Dusky Stories) is a collection of nineteen Russian gothic stories; a cover blurb calls it the scariest book of the year…
• Sergei Lebedev’s Люди августа (People of August, click through for synopsis and excerpt) is also on the 2016 Booker shortlist.
• Andrei Shary’s Дунай. Река империй (The Dunai. River of Empires, okay fine, The Danube…) has a lovely cover (I like old maps) and looks at history and the Danube over three millennia.
• Ivan Shipnigov’s Нефть, метель и другие веселые боги (Oil, Blizzard, and Other Cheerful Gods) is a collection of stories in which, according to the publisher, oil is the most cheerful of the Gods or gods, I’m not sure which, particularly since the publisher also compares Shipnigov’s prose to the young Pelevin’s. Here’s a sample story from the collection.

Up Next: Trip reports (Moscow and Oakland), the afore-mentioned Zaionchkovsky book and Alexander Snegirev’s patient Faith/Vera, more award news, and other Big Book finalists, though this second half of the list brings me little joy and much left unfinished…

Disclaimers and disclosures. The usual, plus translating that Vodolazkin book and the fact of support for my translation work from Prokhorov Foundation grants.

About a Boy: Zaionchkovskii’s Petrovich

Oleg Zaionchkovskii’s Петрович (Petrovich) is one of those rare contemporary novels that feels almost too close to perfect, a book—like Vadim Levental’s Masha Regina, which I swear I’ll be writing about next very soon—that, to build on how a friend described Masha Regina, reads well, reads well, reads well, feels like it might fade (i.e. get boring), then catches itself, and starts reading well again. I’m not sure why that feels so nearly perfect to me, though I suspect what I enjoy so much is the writers’ ability to convey ordinariness in a way that feels ordinary but yet somehow, magically, ends up feeling absolutely unordinary, beautiful, and (very often) heartbreaking. Both Petrovich and Masha Regina look far simpler than they are and both use stylistics and structures that fit beautifully with stories about people who come of age during the Soviet breakup: both books also focus on title characters’ lives in ways that reflect social and family difficulties rather than obsessing on the Big Picture, though both authors also present their characters as individuals emblematic of their times and contexts.

The title character in Petrovich starts out as a kindergartener—a stubborn and unhappy kindergartener—who feels, to paraphrase a bit, like a loner in a herd of cheerful idiots (“чужим в стаде этих жизнерадостных идоитов”). The day described in the first chapter-story of Petrovich is not a good one for Petrovich: he ends up having a childish accident and needing to have his mother, whom he calls by her first name, Katya, help him wash off in the Volga on his way home. Petrovich has trouble playing with others all through the book. He gets into a fight after a boys’ room conflict because another boy speaks disrespectfully about a neighbor girl Petrovich has had a crush on for years; there are more difficulties when he’s a young adult living in Moscow.

Zaionchkosvkii structures Petrovich as what I’ve come to think of as an episodic novel and he increases the length of the chapters-episodes-stories as Petrovich gets older. Time sometimes advances quickly: it seems like Petrovich takes up smoking and spitting pretty suddenly. Then again, the use of a patronymic on its own as direct address is unusual for a child, and Petrovich is known as just Petrovich. (That said, I know a baby whose family has been referring to him as Petrovich since he was in utero…) The name feels especially fitting in the book because Zaionchkovskii’s Petrovich is both a very concrete character and a very symbolic character, named for someone (his father, of course) from the generation that came before him (of course!), starting his life in the novel with a mention of the Soviet anthem playing on the built-in radio in the morning… and ending with the same anthem, albeit in a different era and with a much different sleeping arrangement. The name Petrovich also feels fitting because it’s come to feel (and here I’ll probably get myself into big trouble) like a name for a certain down-to-earth Russian everyman.

Zaionchkovsky’s Petrovich is, in many ways, a Soviet everyboy growing into a Soviet-born everyman. Despite having a family that loves him and lets him wander quite a bit, there are themes of abandonment, orphandom (through his grandfather), and of course, broken families because Petya, the source of Petrovich’s patronymic, disappears. Times change and Petrovich enters adulthood, at least physically, but the anthem remains the same and Petrovich remains a touchy guy, particularly in group situations, where he still seems to feel like that loner in a herd of cheerful idiots.

Petrovich’s happiest times seem to come in one-on-one situations: when his grandfather shows him old photos, when a friend of the family takes him on an overnight fishing trip that includes a scary storm, and when he rides around in a dump truck. Petrovich and I both particularly enjoyed the day in the dump truck. The truck driver sees Petrovich hanging around a construction site, offers him a ride, and even treats him to a cafeteria lunch of borsch, kotlety, and macaroni with sauce. Here’s a (purposely literal) translation of how Petrovich feels with a warm breeze in his hair:

Он испытывал в эти минуты необыкновенный подъем чувств, а попросту говоря, был счастлив, насколько может быть счастлив человек.

In those moments he experienced an uncommon burst of feelings and, put bluntly, was happy, as happy as a person could be.

I’m happy, too. Happy so many people recommended Zaionchkovskii to me over the years, happy I finally found Petrovich in book form in Moscow last year, and happy Zaionchkovskii assembled such a nice balance of characters and observation.

Up Next: Levental’s Masha Regina and a translator conference trip report…

Image credit: Andrew Butko, via Creative Commons, Wikipedia

2010 Russian Booker Prize Finalists

Most literature watchers are waiting for the announcement of this year’s Nobel Prize for literature but I’m happy with today’s announcement of the Russian Booker short list. The six finalists were selected from a 24-member long list; 95 books were nominated for the 2010 Booker. The winner will be announced in early December.

There are two books on the list that I’ve read, two others I’m familiar with, and two whose authors I’d never heard of before now. Here’s the short list, in (Russian) alphabetical order, by author.

• Oleg Zaionchkovskii: Счастье возможно (Happiness Is Possible) (excerpts) (previous post)
• Andrei Ivanov: Путешествие Ханумана на Лолланд (Hanuman’s Journey to Lolland) –the adventures of two illegal residents of Denmark, the Nepalese title character Hanuman (also the name of a Hindu deity) and a Russian friend. Hanuman apparently wants to go to Lolland, a Danish island. (review) (another review)
• Elena Koliadina: Цветочный крест (The Cross of Flowers, perhaps), about a 17^th-century man of the cloth, father Loggin. (the novel online: beginning middle end) (an interview with the author)
• Mariam Petrosian: Дом, в котором... (The House in Which…), which won third prize in the readers’ vote for last year’s Big Book Prize.
• German Sadulaev – Шалинский рейд (The Raid on Shali), about the Chechen War. (начало) (окончание)
• Margarita Khemlin. Клоцвог (Klotsvog) (previous post)

Happy reading!

Finding Happiness in Zaionchkovskii’s Happiness

I’m happy I didn’t know much about Oleg Zaionchkovskii’s Счастье возможно: Роман нашего времени (Happiness Is Possible: A Novel of Our Time) before I bought it. Had I known this Big Book award finalist consists of loosely linked short stories, I might have skipped it. Several of you have recommended Zaionchkovskii to me but my stubborn love of long-haul fiction means twenty-four stories in three hundred pages with largish print doesn’t sound like my kind of happiness.

Had I known more about the book and not bought it, I would have missed out on a beautifully indescribable collection of pieces about, yes, happiness. And life in general (of course), death (of course), love (of course), and living with a dog named Phil (a new twist on the happiness theme). Zaionchkovskii’s stories describe everyday occurrences in the life of a divorced Russian writer who often visits with his ex-wife and her husband. (Ouch!) We learn about voices heard through kitchen vents, a fishing trip with rain and cows, a funeral, newlywed housing, and the smell of a sewage treatment plant. Each story has its own small-scale narrative arc but the stories combine to create a meta-arc that gives the book a conclusion.

I think it’s safe to say the Novel of Our Time portion of the book’s title alludes to Mikhail Lermontov’s Герой нашего времени (Hero of Our Time) (previous post), another novel-in-short-stories. Zaionchkovskii’s book is more unified than Lermontov’s, though, employing just one first-person narrator, a writer who occasionally incorporates his fictional characters into stories about his own life.

The air of metafiction is mercifully minimalist and muted in Happiness: though it’s clear the writer in the book is writing about himself (and perhaps even incorporating aspects of his creator’s life?), the narrative voice is so unpretentiously conversational and friendly that I never felt I was being pomo-ed to a pulp. And because the book creates such a detailed portrait of the narrator using colloquial language and humblingly mundane happenings, I almost felt he truly was talking to me, not some anonymous reader, when he reached out using the second person.

Zaionchkovskii handles the temporal aspect of of Our Time nicely, too: Happiness Is Possible depicts contemporary Russian life with a blend of dark and quiet humor, wistfulness, and a combination of involvement and detachment. Plenty of details from post-Soviet Russia are here: how people go to a funeral, a pricey-sounding SUV, sleeping with the realtor, and the coincidences of Одноклассники, Classmates, a Russian site like Facebook. There are even memorable minor characters, such as an escalator lady from the Moscow Metro (ah, memories!) and a vodka-drinking cow herder, plus an appearance by the ubiquitous Christmas tree air freshener.

The fun of Happiness Is Possible wasn’t that I sometimes finished reading stories with a smile on my face – though that happened more than once – but that I read an intimate picture of a character who continually adapts, usually with success, to the conditions around him, no matter how absurd they are. And then there’s the book’s tone, which avoids cynicism but has just enough of an edge to prevent the book and the happiness it depicts from sinking into sugar or cheese. The power of the calm, cautious optimism in Zaionchkovskii’s book is that it made me happy because it is neither overbearing nor empty.

Level for non-native readers of Russian: 2.5 or 3/5. Happiness Is Possible read very easily and enjoyably for me because it’s written in fairly conversational Russian, though readers without experience living in Russia may find some of the vocabulary difficult.

Up next: Fate has been sending me lots of short(er) fiction lately… Two short novels from Vladimir Sorokin: День опричника (A Day in the Life of an Oprichnik, as FSG is evidently calling the English-language translation), which I liked a lot and won’t attempt to summarize here, and Метель (The Blizzard), which I’m just starting. I’m also enjoying Moscow Noir, an anthology of English translations of Russian stories that Akashic Books sent to me after Book Expo America (previous post).