News Notes: "Zeek" and the Russian Jewish Diaspora, the Abzats Antiawards

A couple of literary news notes for today. Serious first:

1. Languor Management reports:

Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture has devoted a special print issue to the Russian Jewish Diaspora. The Spring '08 issue presents work engaged with identity, history, language and culture, and features contributors from around the world.

Zeek’s site includes information about Russian-related events in Boston and New York.

2. I know you’ve all been waiting for results of today’s “Абзац” (“Absats”) literary antiaward ceremony, so without further delay, here is a list of the antiwinners, as reported on Lenta.ru:

-Lena Lenina took the grand prize, the “Polnyi abzats” (more on what that means in a minute…) with Sexual, или Как соблазнить любого мужчину (Sexual or How to Seduce Any Man). According to the article, Lenina’s book contains “borrowings” from the Russian translation of Leil Lowndes’s How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You.

-Worst editing job went to publisher AST for subpar work on Oksana Robski’s Casual 2. Anyone who read my earlier comments on the first Casual can probably guess that I never touched the sequel.

-Worst translation went to Iuliia Moiseenko for her poor efforts on William Gibson’s Spook Country.

Now, about the name of the antiawards, “Абзац.” In standard Russian, the word relates to writing: “indentation” or “paragraph.” But as slang, абзац – pronounced as ahbZAHTS – is often used in reaction to big problems. I worked with a guy who described hopeless or very messy situations as “полный абзац” (complete abzats). These are the very same words used to describe this contest’s biggest antihonor, and they sure sound like a euphemism.

When I looked for good ways to translate абзац for you, I found some typical slang definitions that fit nicely with what I heard so often, basically “the end of something,” something peculiar, or a sort of intensifier that expresses emotion. This pretty much sums up my coworker’s uses of the word. Russian Internet searches turned up other alleged slang uses of абзац: to denote three puffs/tokes or some sort of 220 millimeter missile.

The Russian literary journal Книжное обозрение awards the Абзац prizes, which do not appear to carry any cash award. Last year’s “Complete Abzats” antiwinner was none other than Sergei Minaev, for Духless (Soulless) and Media Sapiens. No other books were nominated, and the journal cited Minaev’s combination of pathos and low writing quality. End of posting. End of абзац.

Electricity + Anna + Minaev = Blog Entry

Happy Power Engineering Day! What better way to celebrate electricity than reading some Andrei Platonov, who once worked as an electrical engineer?

One fitting selection is Platonov’s short story “Родина электричества” (“The Motherland of Electricity”), which I recently read and enjoyed. The narrator of this quirky 1926 story walks for days to reach a town needing drought relief and help with an electrical system that’s a relic from the White Army. Platonov covers a lot in 10 pages, touching on religious, political, technological, and mythical themes.

“The Motherland of Electricity” is included in Soul, a new collection of Robert Chandler’s translations of Platonov stories published by the New York Review of Books. Soul contains an extensive introduction by John Berger.

Name Day for Annas. Sorry, Ms. Karenina, but my favorite literary Anna is Akhmatova. It’s worth listening to Akhmatova read her own poetry even if you don’t understand Russian. This online anthology includes two recordings of Akhmatova, some poems in Russian and English, biographical information, illustrations, and links. The photo of Joseph Brodsky at Akhmatova’s funeral illustrates their closeness.

Sergei Minaev in the New York Times. Today’s New York Times included a “Saturday Profile” of Sergei Minaev, author of the best-selling novel Духless (Soulless). Soulless is an unfortunate book: it might have become something quite good had Minaev and his editor been patient enough to work through another draft or two. Decadence alone does not a novel make.

The Times article quotes Vasilii Aksyonov saying that “Minaev’s hero is a superfluous man.” That’s true, but the book’s lack of structure and real characters doom it from contributing to the pantheon of superfluous men in Russian literature, antiheroes like Lermontov’s Pechorin and Goncharov’s Oblomov. Minaev’s characters are conscious that they’re a lost generation, but Soulless was probably successful primarily for its voyeuristic look into another lifestyle, like Oksana Robski’s Casual. I hesitate to say that Soulless probably won’t be translated into English: Casual already made it.