All Sorts of Shorts: Short Stories from Noir and Snegirev + Two Short Summaries

After calling the Moscow Noir short story anthology “a dark book indeed” two years ago, I think I can sum up St. Petersburg Noir, a new collection edited by Julia Goumen and Natalia Smirnova for Akashic’s noir anthology series, as “a pretty dark book.” Put another way: If Moscow is pitch black, St. Peterburg is moving toward deep dusk.

I loved the brutal, elemental scariness of the Moscow book—and recognize how very skewed my perspective is after living and working near all too many Moscow crime scenes—but wonder if the slightly lighter St. Petersburg collection, which is very decent, might find a broader readership.

Bits of St. Petersburg Noir’s stories blended together in my mind as I read, melding into a composite portrait of a city loaded with poverty, aimlessness, drugs, back streets, squalid apartments, ballet, and canals… plus murder and other violent misdeeds set amidst cultural sites and monuments. Here are a few stories that especially distinguished themselves for me:

Andrei Rubanov’s “Barely a Drop,” translated by Marian Schwartz, felt the most classically noir to me, focusing on a writer who takes the train to St. Petersburg to spy on his wife, whom he suspects of having an affair. Rubanov is an economical writer who can fit a lot into a short story.

The first story in the book, Andrei Kivinov’s “Training Day,” translated by Polly Gannon, looks at law enforcement, morgue runs, and everyday fears (e.g. elevators, one of my own Russia phobias) with an apt combination of seaminess and humor.

“The Sixth of June,” by Sergei Nosov and translated by Gannon, stars a first-person narrator who quickly introduces himself as a would-be assassin with plans to act on Pushkin’s birthday.

I thought Julia Belomlinsky’s “The Phantom of the Opera Forever,” translated by Ronald Meyer, a revenge tale, was one of the edgiest stories in the book. It begins with a small chunk of Crime and Punishment and moves on to “All our life here—it’s a fucking Dostoevsky nightmare!”

Though Pavel Krusanov’s “The Hairy Sutra,” translated by Amy Pieterse, felt silly and predictable with its museum zoologists, conflicts, and specimens, it turned out to be one of the most oddly memorable stories in the book because of its distinct setting, characters, and exhibits.

Still, the scariest and darkest story I’ve read lately is in the thick journal Новый мир: Alexander Snegirev’s “Внутренний враг” (“The Internal Enemy”). Snegirev’s story is rooted in sociopolitical and historical tension: a young man, Misha, gets a call about an inheritance and then finds out his family history isn’t quite what he thought. Snegirev plays on Misha’s idealism, identity, and dread of the KGB as he builds a creepy, phantasmagoric family drama set in a house that feels haunted. The story’s psychological suspense and intensity surprised me—and sucked me in—after some early passages that felt a bit conventional. 

Finally, two novels I don’t plan to finish but that I want to mention because they’re both finalists for the 2012 Big Book Award: The first 140 pages of Vladimir Makanin’s Две сестры и Кандинский (Two Sisters and Kandinsky) also center around societal divides and the KGB as Makanin examines the consequences of informing. Alas, the novel, which draws on Chekhovian themes and reads almost like a play, didn’t hold my interest and I stopped reading after the first act section. I also had trouble with Sergei Nosov’s Франсуаза, или Путь к леднику (Françoise Or the Way to the Glacier): eavesdropping on a guy who chats with his herniated disc just isn’t my thing. There’s more to the book than that, of course, including a Russia-India contrast, leeches, a stolen lung, and smoking cessation courses, but the whole package felt gimmicky, contrived, and surprisingly dull. Françoise was also shortlisted for the 2012 NatsBest.

Up Next: Dmitrii Lipskerov’s 40 лет Чанчжоэ (The Forty Years of Chanchzhoeh/Changzhuoe), Ergali Ger’s Koma, Andrei Rubanov’s Стыдные подвиги (Shameful Feats/Exploits… I’m still not sure…), and Marina Stepnova’s Женщины Лазаря (The Women of Lazarus/Lazarus’s Women).

Disclaimers and Disclosures: The usual. I received a review copy of St. Petersburg Noir from Akashic Books, thank you very much! I have met and chatted with Julia Goumen, one of the book’s editors, on numerous occasions. I enjoyed meeting Alexander Snegirev, whom I’d known online for a couple years, at BookExpo America in June… I promised him I’d be honest in my assessment of “The Internal Enemy.” And, of course, I was!

Image Credit: Photo of St. Petersburg from uun, via sxc.hu. 

Happy New Year! & Reading Highlights from 2010

Happy new year! С Новым годом! I hope 2011 brings you lots of fun and intriguing Russian fiction, whether you read in English or Russian. Before the year ends, I thought I’d mention some 2010 favorites and a few reading intentions – not to be mistaken for goals or resolutions – for 2011:

Most enjoyably readable long novel: Based on reviews and awards nominations, I expected to like Mikhail Gigolashvili’s Чертово колесо (The Devil’s Wheel), but I wasn’t prepared for the intensity of the book or the skill with which Gigolashvili brings dozens of characters to life while describing withdrawal from drugs and the Soviet way of life. (previous post) Bonus: Ad Marginem, which published The Devil’s Wheel, sent a link to a story by Gigolashvili as a holiday gift. (No, I haven’t read it yet…)

Favorite first-person narrative: With Клоцвог (Klotsvog), Margarita Khemlin does a wonderful job putting the reader inside the head of a character with all sorts of unpleasant life experiences. Khemlin has a tremendous ability to use simple language to create complex situations and characters. I’ve translated one of her short stories and hope to find it a good home in 2011. (previous post)

Favorite чернуха (dark/naturalistic realism): Roman Senchin’s Елтышевы (The Yeltyshevs), a horribly sad and realistic depiction of a failed family, is so beautifully and simply told that I asked about translating it... I’m working on it… (previous post)

Best nonfiction: I’m still recovering from Drawings from the Gulag, written and drawn by Danzig Baldaev. With its graphic visual and written descriptions of Gulag abuses, the book is very difficult to read but I think Baldaev’s perspective is important. Yes, I admit I only read one book of nonfiction this year but this one carries so much emotion and information that I know it would have been notable even if I’d read dozens. (previous post)

Favorite translated book: I did something unusual this year: I read a book, Moscow Noir, in Russian-English translation because I couldn’t wait for the collection of originals to appear in Russian. The translations read well, and the book was dark, dark, dark, as promised. Okay, I confess this is another category with no real competition since Drawings from the Gulag is bilingual. But the book was good, and the editors, Natalia Smirnova and Julia Goumen, did a great job compiling it. (previous post)

What might be coming in 2011: Hmm, the Sh writers seem to lead: I’ve been delaying my Shklovsky mini-marathon for far too long, and I’ve been staring at several of Mikhail Shishkin’s books for months. I also have Viacheslav Shishkov’s Угрюм-река, which I’ll call Gloom River in English, if only because it sounds like “Moon River”… Finally, I’m particularly looking forward to reading Iurii Buida after finally being able to buy one of his books, after several years of on-and-off attempts.

A big thanks to everyone for all your visits, comments, and e-mail messages in 2010! It’s been a fun year of reading, blogging, and hearing from so many of you. I look forward to more reading and book talk in 2011 -- happy new year!

Disclosures: I received Drawings from the Gulag and Moscow Noir from their publishers, Fuel and Akashic, respectively.

New year stamp image from Mariluna, via Wikipedia.

Notable New Translations: What Happened in 2010 and What's Coming in 2011

I’ve finally compiled – with lots of help from Chad Post’s databases of new translations – a list of Russian-English translations published in 2010 and scheduled for publication in 2011. As always, I wish the list were longer but I was glad to see a fair bit of variety in 2010. I’m sure I’m missing books planned for 2011, so please let me know, through a comment or e-mail note, about books to add. Like Chad, I’m focusing on new translations, not retranslations of classics.

Note: I’ve used publishers’ release dates, when possible; in their absence, I’ve used Amazon’s. Some 2011 titles seem a bit fluid right now, too.

Here you go…

The Chukchi Bible, written by Yuri Rytkheu, translated by Ilona Yazhbin, and published by Archipelago Books, will be out in February. The publisher describes it as “a collection of the myths and tales of Yuri Rytkheu’s own shaman father.” An excerpt and review are available online, on the Archipelago site.

Vladimir Sorokin is having a big year in English translation. The Ice Trilogy, translated by Jamey Gambrell and published by New York Review Books, comes out on the ides of March, as does Day of the Oprichnik, also translated by Gambrell, and published by FSG. I thought Oprichnik was interesting (previous post), but the only early review I’ve seen of the translation, from Complete Review, was middling, a B-. Orthofer’s conclusion sums up my own feelings about much of Sorokin’s writing: “Too much in the novel – from Komiaga onwards – is merely representative; too little actually conveys Sorokin’s vision with any art.” Oddly, though, Sorokin’s approach started to work for me when I read Oprichnik, and I’m even looking forward to the next Ice Trilogy book, Путь Бро, known in translation as Bro. I wonder if Sorokin’s books have a cumulative effect…

Overlook will release two Russian translations in 2011. Daniel Stein, Interpreter, by Ludmila Ulitskaya and translated by Arch Tait, comes out March 31. Daniel Stein is one of my favorite books from recent years (past post), and I’ve received quite a few messages from readers inquiring about an English version. Also from Overlook: a second book in Max Frei’s Labyrinths of Echo series, translated by Polly Gannon and Astamur Moore, on June 9, 2011; the book follows up on Frei’s The Stranger, from 2009. I read a few of the first novellas in this series and thought they were okay, albeit with some fun passages. Frei’s books sell very well in Russia but the genre isn’t my thing: I’d recommend Frei most to readers who enjoy cozy fantasy-science fiction reading with an edge. Another fantasy-science fiction book coming this year is Alexey Pehov’s Shadow Chaser, due on April 21, 2011, from Tor Books, a division of Macmillan; WorldCat lists Andrew Bromfield as translator.

Andrei Kurkov is also having a big year: Melville House will publish Kurkov’s Death and the Penguin and Penguin Lost, both translated by George Bird, in June, and Harvill Secker will release The Milkman in the Night, Amanda Love Darragh’s translation of Kurkov’s Ночной молочник, in August. Kurkov seems quite popular in Europe… but I’ve never read any of his books.

I’ll recap 2010 translations, too, since I missed a couple last year. I’ve mentioned some of these books in the past… Olga Slavnikova’s 2017, translated by Marian Schwartz and published by Overlook (previous post); Moscow Noir, a very good collection of very dark stories, translated by “various” and published by Akashic (previous post); Squaring the Circle, a collection of young Debut prizewinners’ stories, translated by “various” (including me) and published by Glas; Dmitrii Bykov’s ЖД (Living Souls), translated and shortened by Cathy Porter and published by Alma (previous post); German Sadulaev’s Я – Чеченец! (I Am a Chechen!), translated by Anna Gunin and published by Harvill Secker; and Petr Aleshkovskii’s Рыба (Fish), translated by Nina Murray and published by Russian Life (previous post).

I know little about two others: Alexey Pehov’s Крадущийся в тени (Shadow Prowler), translated by Andrew Bromfield and published by Tor, which one Amazon reviewer calls “epic fantasy adventure,” and Sherlock Holmes in Russia, with stories from P. Orlovetz and P. Nikitin, translated by Alex Auswaks and published by Robert Hale.

That’s it… Enjoy!

Up Next: A few of Fazil’ Iskander’s wonderful stories about a boy named Chik, then Belarusian writer Viktor Martinovich’s Паранойя (Paranoia), which Timothy Snyder wrote about (here) in The New York Review of Books in October 2010.

Disclaimer/Disclosure Corner: I received copies, electronic or paper, of several of the translated books listed above: Living Souls, Fish, 2017, Moscow Noir, and Squaring the Circle. I’ve discussed various aspects of publishing and translation with a number of people and publishers mentioned in this post. I’ve written a blanket disclaimer/disclosure statement that’s available here.

Instructions for Everything: Gadol’s Director. Instructions for Liberation

Alexandr Gadol’s Режиссёр: инструкция освобождения (Director. Instructions for Liberation; please note that this title and transliteration of the author’s name are on the book’s cover) turned out to be an interestingly pleasant surprise from start to finish. I was surprised when a colleague from the Institute of Translation who’d been deputized as a book courier handed the book to me in New York earlier this month and even more surprised at the novel’s unexpected layers and twists, and how they affected me. Director is about prison life but that’s only part of the story. The book is also about how the narrator, who’s identified only by the nickname “Director” (though he has no films, shows, or plays to his name, only the real-life scenarios he cooks up...), attempts to stay out of prison; getting knifed can be a temporary help. It’s about metaphysical things, too. This is a book where an English-language translation of the Bible is smoked. In prison. In any case, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised at how much I enjoyed Director: Gadol won third place for the book in the 2016 Russian Prize competition.

There are so many angles I could take on Director—this may be one of my biggest surprises since I don’t often seem to end up enjoying books that feel so open to varying interpretations—that I think I’ll first pick up on a small point raised by critic Aleksandr Chantsev here, on Rara Avis, and move on from there. The title of Chantsev’s review, “Антропология тюрьмы, свободы и страны” (“The Anthropology of Prison, Freedom, and a Country”) sums up a lot about the book: I’m not sure which social science I’d choose to describe Director but anthropology is as good as any, with psychology and sociology viable candidates, too. My favorite motif in the book is film noir, which pops up fairly frequently and contributes to the anthropological portrait. Gadol is even quoted on the back of the book saying that when he was in prison he imagined himself as a film hero, something that made his life a little easier and kept him from losing his mind. Beyond that, Gadol, who has also worked as a director for Kiev TV stations, notes that he particularly enjoys American noir from the 1940s and 1950s. Director includes references to Crime and Punishment, which feels pretty noirish in its own early way and there are trips to a bar called Capone, which hosts a “Chicago in the Thirties” gangster party. Just for fun, I’ll add that there’s a mention of Dawn of the Dead, too.

Director’s prison scenes are interesting—looking at phenomena like pecking orders and how people can be good as individuals but jerks when together are only a couple of the social sciency aspects that attract—but my favorite layer of the book is Director’s time spent outside, when he’s waiting to learn his fate. After visiting a scammy and seemingly very young psychoanalyst (!) on a hill (the novel takes place in a city on seven hills, which could be Moscow, though I think it’s Kiev, and not just because Gadol is from Ukraine and Chantsev guesses Kiev, too… this just doesn’t feel like a Moscow book to me…), Director decides he wants to be a scammy psychoanalyst, too, so he rents himself an office, buys himself a diploma, and procures himself a gun, a Colt 45 like Dirty Harry’s. Of course.

There’s an absurd and noirish feel to all that that goes nicely with a passage I marked later on, where light comes through venetian blinds, creating lines on characters’ faces: Gadol even writes that this is like a shot from a noir film. (Personal experience strengthened this for me, too: I remembered analyzing light on criminals’ faces in Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing during film class…) A bit later, at the Capone with the scammy and seemingly young psychoanalyst and some of his buddies, Director describes the sounds, smells, and people as being cinematic: things remind of black-and-white film noir and a conversation about the search for truth ensues, along with mentions of Casablanca, Citizen Kane, and The Godfather theme song, too.

With its brief chapters, jumping timelines, and multiple storylines, Director is the sort of book that’s particularly ripe for varying interpretations. I noted lots of existential moments (“a mini existential crisis” among them) but my dominant prism for reading became truth-and-noir, with that preference for non-prison scenes, though the prison scenes often echoed the outside and addressed the nature of truth. There seem to be gurus on hills everywhere in Director—there’s a fair bit of religion involved, not just the afore-mentioned Bible but also Buddhism—though not all are genuine (or are they?) and there’s hardly anyone in the novel who uses a name that’s printed on, say, a government-issued form of identification. (And what’s in a name, anyway?) There’s also talk of being behind bars that are formed by everyday things, like letters and words on the pages of books or stars in the sky. Meaning that prison is everywhere you turn. A cover blurb from Alexander Snegirev praises Gadol’s concentrated prose, which he says is almost poetry, and I have to agree. Gadol’s language, which often includes prison/criminal slang and sometimes involves long lists, creates situations and imagery that simultaneously feel abstract and vividly concrete. Reading the book was a sensory experience: climbing those hills nearly made me sweat, there was lots of second-hand smoke to inhale, and watching people who’re watching people on public transportation (in a scene that felt almost like flash fiction) made me feel like a voyeur, too.

A story almost long enough to consider a novella follows Director in the volume and “Живучий гад” (hmm, I’ll go literal and call it “A Tenacious Snake”…), which is very linear—this time I felt almost like I was watching a train wreck, right up close—is far easier to describe than Director. The story tells of Sasha, who begins a life of dubious entrepreneurship at the age of twelve by buying fishing lures and reselling them at a premium after gluing “foreign letters” on the packages. Sasha becomes the first black marketeer in his school, eventually moving on to (spoiler alert!) running a videosalon (these sites for makeshift, unauthorized movie showings were a real phenomenon), comfy pay toilets, synthesizing LSD, and, eventually (but of course!), a run for politics. The story made me laugh, too: Sasha’s lessons in life from American movies like Good Fellas and Used Cars (which, imagine that, is apparently helpful for teaching a kid how to buy a used car) are sometimes hilarious, though the anthropology of (sometimes petty) criminal behavior struck me most. “A Tenacious Snake” feels like a diabolical appendix to Director, what with its myriad mentions of movies plus lots of false and farcical identities—Sasha even enlists an adult to act as the nonexistent Georgian head of the videosalon—that make the combination of the story and the novel feel like a small volume of case studies of what goes wrong or (perhaps more accurately) what goes false in ways that make children want to become criminals. Unlike one of the characters in Director, I don’t think the theme music from The Godfather is to blame.

Disclaimers: I received a copy of Director from Русская премия (Russian Prize), thank you very, very much! I’ve long felt remiss in not following the Russian Prize—and, really, literature written in Russian by writers living outside Russia—more closely so am especially grateful for a reminder of the importance of the award and the authors it recognizes. There will be more to come! I also want to add that Director is from publisher Eksmo’s .RU imprint, which focuses on contemporary Russian-language books by authors living outside Russia.

Up Next: Award news: Big Book finalists, National Bestseller winner, and Yasnaya Polyana Award longlist. Then more books…

Lots of News from Book Expo America

I’m still getting caught up on my sleep after three days in New York for Book Expo America and the Book Blogger Convention. Fortunately, this is a good kind of tired, from long talks with people who care about books, including Russian fiction. As a matter of full disclosure, I should note that I spoke with many publishers about two things: their upcoming titles (more on that at the end) and their potential interest in my translation projects.

The Biggest News. I enjoyed my visits to the first-ever Books from Russia booth, organized by the Russian Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications together with Academia Rossica. Russian books will receive lots of attention over the next two years: Russia will be the market focus at the London Book Fair in 2011 and then at BEA in 2012. I think I need to build a bigger travel budget!

Also of interest: Academia Rossica publishes a journal, Rossica, which calls itself an “international review of Russian culture.” Issue 18 includes translated excerpts of fiction by writers such as Oleg Zaionchkovsky (whom I’m still enjoying), Aleksei Ivanov, Dina Rubina, and Aleksandr Ilichevsky. Issue 19 has extracts of novels by Dmitry Bykov, Vladimir Makanin, and Mikhail Shishkin. There’s much more in each journal; tables of contents are here. (AR gave me copies of both journals plus Dmitry Bykov’s book Был ли Горький? (I’ll call it Did Gorky Exist?).)

Other translation news, listed in alphabetical order by publisher, includes:

Moscow Noir, from Akashic Books, will be available in wide release this summer. Most of Akashic’s Noir series books contain commissioned stories, so there is currently no Russian version of the collection.

This isn’t news but it makes me happy: Dalkey Archive Press loves Viktor Shklovsky, and their list contains seven Shklovsky titles. They gave me a copy of Energy of Delusion: A Book on Plot, translated by Shushan Avagyan; Dalkey’s list also includes Зоо, или Письма не о любви (Zoo, or Letters Not about Love), translated by Richard Sheldon… I’m feeling an even stronger urge to finally read it. Dalkey’s Russian list is online here.

Thanks to Beatrice.com writer Ron Hogan for mentioning that Knopf will release Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s translation of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago (previous post) in fall 2010.

New York Review Books has a Vasily Grossman book, The Road, on its calendar for fall 2010. This eclectic compilation includes stories, letters, and “The Hell of Treblinka.” Translators are Robert Chandler, Olga Mukovnikova, and Elizabeth Chandler.

Translator Andrew Bromfield told me he’s been translating the last of Vladimir Voinovich’s Chonkin books for Northwestern University Press; the book will be released in 2011. Andrew’s translation of Andrei Rubanov’s Сажайте, и вырастет (Do Time, Get Time), a National Bestseller finalist, is listed on Amazon as available in the US from Old Street Publishing… starting tomorrow.

The Overlook Press, which recently published Marian Schwartz’s translation of Olga Slavnikova’s 2017 (previous post), will release a translation of Liudmila Ulitskaya’s Даниэль Штайн, переводчик (Daniel Stein, Translator) (previous post) during winter 2010-2011. Overlook was also excited about the U.S. edition of Sam Garrett’s English translation of Dutch author Frank Westerman’s book Ingenieurs van de ziel (Engineers of the Soul), which focuses on Soviet-era writers and ideology. (A fresh review.) A reminder: Ardis Publishing now resides at Overlook, too, where translated titles include some favorites, from Sologub’s Petty Demon (previous post) to Vladimir Makanin’s Escape Hatch and The Long Road (previous post).

Technically speaking, Android Karenina, a joint effort from Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters, isn’t a translated book but it’s perfect for my rather mashed up state of mind. Quirk Books certainly chose the right novel for a steampunk mashup. (BTW, steampunk is a Russian word, too: стимпанк.) AK has already generated some attention: Russian TV came to BEA to visit Quirk.

Related Non-Translations. At 560 pages, Ian Frazier’s Travels in Siberia, from FSG, sure must expand on Frazier’s New Yorker pieces about a Russian road trip; it comes out in October. Adrienne Sharp’s The True Memoirs of Little K, a historical novel based on fact, narrated by a former ballerina and lover of the czar, is scheduled for November. Harper Collins also has a ballet-related historical novel coming out this fall (September): Daphne Kalotay’s Russian Winter.

I’ll be happy for comments about errors, omissions, or ideas… there was so much going on that it was impossible to see everyone I wanted to see.

And Another Blog on the Way. Now that I’m working more on literary translation, I’m feeling an urge to read more fiction in English: I know I’m missing out on lots of good books, writers, connections, and, yes, vocabulary. Starting a new blog seems like the best (or only?) way to keep discipline so I gathered a nice stack of books at BEA to get myself going. The pile is heavy on translations and books from small publishing houses but there’s lots of variety.

My Russian reading and blogging habits won’t change much but I’ll make a quick mention of the new blog here when it goes live in June. One sure change: I’ll link from blog to blog when I find common themes and techniques in books. After all, it was Mikhail Elizarov’s Мультики (‘Toons) that convinced me I needed to (re)broaden my reading after I recognized shadows of A Clockwork Orange in ‘Toons…

Sniffing Out Post-Soviet Detective Novels with Inspector NOSE

I’ve been having such terrible hay fever problems this spring that it seemed especially fitting to find news late last week about a special NOSE Award competition from the Prokhorov Foundation: Inspector NOSE. Inspector NOSE aims to inventory and assess Russian-language detective novels written since 1991, looking at how authors use the genre within and outside its usual norms, and examining the detectives themselves, with an eye on whether they can stand alongside classics like Holmes, Maigret, Brown, or Marple.

The Inspector NOSE longlist contains 32 books, of which I’ve read a grand total of four, though those four certainly attest to variety in NOSE’s list: Leonid Yuzefovich’s Казароза (Kazaroza) (previous post), Boris Akunin’s Азазель (The Winter Queen), Margarita Khemlin’s Дознаватель (The Investigator) (previous post), and Polina Dashkova’s Легкие шаги безумия (Madness Treads Lightly). Of those four, the only book that’s been translated into English is the Akunin: Andrew Bromfield has, in fact, translated a whole slew of books from Akunin’s series featuring Erast Fandorin. I think Akunin’s first nine books starring Fandorin are particularly fun. Though it’s not on this list, I want to mention that Marian Schwartz translated Yuzefovich’s Костюм Арлекина (Harlequin’s Costume) (previous post), the first of a historical detective novel trilogy featuring Ivan Dmitrievich Putilin, a character based on an actual Saint Petersburg police inspector. I enjoyed the first two books in the Putilin trilogy though felt even more affinity for Kazaroza because Yuzefovich brings elements including Civil War, Esperanto, and Lermontov.

But I do digress: the Inspector NOSE long list includes 28 other books, many by writers I’ve never heard of, though I’ve read books, albeit not the books on the NOSE list, by two others: Sergei Kuznetsov was listed for Шкурка бабочки (Butterfly Skin) and Alexandra Marinina, a blockbuster name in the Russian detective genre, is on the list for Стечение обстоятельств (Confluence of Circumstances), which, according to Wikipedia, was translated into English and published in Soviet & Post-Soviet Review, vol. 29, 2002. I’ve read short stories in the Moscow Noir (previous post) and Petersburg Noir (previous post) anthologies by several other writers on the list: Anton Chizh, listed for Божественный яд (Divine Poison/Venom); Andrei Kivinov, listed for Кошмар на улице стачек (Nightmare on Strike Street), and Master Chen, listed for Любимая мартышка дома Тан (Pet Monkey of the House of Tang). Master Chen’s book is one-third of a trilogy that includes Любимый ястреб дома Аббаса, available from Russian Life as The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas, translated by Liv Bliss.

Beyond that there are a few other familiar names, some more familiar than others: Lev Gurskii and his Перемена мест (maybe Changed Places?); Arsen Revazov with Одиночество -12 (Solitude 12), which I have but have not read; Alexander Bushkov, a huge bestseller, for Танец Бешеной (Mad/Crazy Woman’s Dance); and Sergei Kostin, author of the espionage thriller Пако Аррайя. В Париж на выходные (Paris Weekend, translated by Todd Bludeau). The rest of the books on the longlist are, as they say, terra incognita for me. Meaning I haven’t a clue. As a reader who enjoys the detective genre in lots of different forms, I’m looking forward to reading more about the debate, shortlist, and winner on June 3… and maybe even watching the proceedings over the Internet.

Disclaimers: The usual. I’m very happy to be working on two translations funded by Transcript program grants from the Prokhorov Foundation and am look forward to visiting the Prokhorov booth during BookExpo America this week.

Up Next: I’m hoping that my head will be together enough one of these days to finish my post about Yuri Mamleyev’s The Sublimes, though sometimes I think this dazed and altered state induced by pollen and Allegra might be the best way to write about such a crazy book! There will also be award news galore: NatsBest, the Big Book shortlist (very soon!), Read Russia Award, and Inspector NOSE results. Not to mention a BookExpo America trip report. And other books...

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).

Big Book’s Long 2010 Short List &tc.

2010 Big Book Finalists. The Big Book award people issued their short-but-long list of 14 finalists today. The jury has plenty of time to read: the winners won’t be named until November.

The finalists are:

• Andrei Baldin – Московские праздные дни (Idle Moscow Days)
• Pavel Basinskii – ЛЕВ ТОЛСТОЙ: бегство из рая (LEV TOLSTOY: Escape From Heaven/Paradise)
• Evgenii Vodolazkin – Соловьёв и Ларионов (Solov’ev i Larionov) (description with brief excerpt)
• Mikhail Gigolashvili – Чертово колесо (The Devil’s Wheel) (5 глав из романа)
• Boris Evseev – Евстигней (Evstigney). This one is evidently a historical novel about Evstigney Fomin (excerpt)
• Oleg Zaionchkovskii – Счастье возможно: Роман нашего времени (Happiness Is Possible: A Novel of Our Time) (excerpts)
• Aleksandr Ilichevskii – Перс (The Persian) (excerpt)
• Evgenii Kliuev – Андерманир штук (Something Else for You – (?) I found a translation of the Russian title phrase in this article by Catriona Kelly)
• Pavel Krusanov – Мёртвый язык (A/The Dead Language)
• Oleg Pavlov – Асистолия (Asystole [Flatline]) (начало) (окончание)
• Viktor Pelevin – t
• German Sadulaev – Шалинский рейд (The Raid on Shali) (начало) (окончание)
• Roman Senchin – Елтышевы (The Yeltyshevs) (начало) (окончание) (previous post – Disclosure: this is the book I liked so much that I contributed to a proposal for an English translation.)
• Asar Eppel’ – Латунная луна (The Brass(y?) Moon) (title story)

I have Zaionchkovskii’s book on my shelf and am looking forward to reading it soon – somehow, it looks very inviting. Several of these books appear to have been published only in journal form thus far. Speaking of “thick” journals, which are the first to publish so much of Russia’s best literary fiction, I was excited to see several shelves of journals at the Seattle Public Library when I visited last weekend.

Edit: The Комсомольская правда Web site has brief summaries of each writer’s bio plus full texts of each book online. You can get started here.

A New Blog. And a bit of news from Washington State: Jamie Olson, who translates Russian poetry into English and teaches in the English Department at Saint Martin’s University, started a blog about Russian poetry, The Flaxen Wave.

Book Expo America. After missing out on the London Book Fair I decided to go to Book Expo America next week. My agenda will include learning more about Akashic’s short story collection Moscow Noir, due out this summer, and getting a progress report from Overlook on the English translation of Liudmila Ulitskaya’s Daniel Stein, Translator (previous post).

Coming Up. I’m a little behind in writing about books I’ve read… I’ll be posting soon about Mikhail Bulgakov’s Театральный роман (known in English as Black Snow: A Theatrical Novel and A Dead Man’s Memoir: A Theatrical Novel) plus Boris Akunin’s Весь мир театр (All the World’s a Theater/Stage). I didn’t love either one, but I finished them, unlike Vladimir Makanin’s Иsпуг (Fear or Fright).

Two Sorokins: An Oprichnik’s Day and a Bad Trip

There’s nothing like a double dose of Vladimir Sorokin – two short novels like, say, День опричника (evidently to be translated by FSG as A Day in the Life of an Oprichnik) and Метель (The Blizzard) – to shake up a head that already feels scrambled by summer weather changes. The two books have some commonalities – both are novellas that combine Russia’s past and future, and both feature episodes with hallucinogens that affect language – but they left me with very different impressions…

Oprichnik is a first-person narrative told by an oprichnik named Komiaga. (Aside: though I initially thought the name was derived from a word like communal, I learned from The Blizzard that it is a hollowed-out log used as a feeding trough or a boat.) Though Oprichnik is set in the near future – cars have some advanced features – the return of the oprichnina, religious codes, and certain turns of phrase, draw on the past. I particularly liked one of the wardrobe touches: the oprichniki wear bell earrings that lack clappers, known in Russian as языки, a word more often used to mean “tongues” and “languages.”

Komiaga describes his day, from a morning dream interrupted by his cell phone (it has a creepy ring tone) to a late-night bedtime when he remembers the white horse in his morning dream. He thanks God that oprichniks keep Russia going. Komiaga takes part in all sorts of activities that I won’t describe in detail, lest I reveal too much of the story. Among them: a violent morning assignment, goldfish-related hallucinations (a nice use of a Russian folk tale theme), cocaine, travel around Russia, and a late-night banquet.

What’s most frightening is that Sorokin makes Komiaga, a top-level, hardcore oprichnik, such an engaging storyteller. He often seems almost normal, providing routine details about his day and his era: menus, Chinese influences, and traffic patterns. He also describes shows on opposition radio stations. Sorokin works in names that resemble those of contemporary figures, though he leaves Derrida intact: I particularly liked the idea of a book called Где обедал Деррида? (Where Did Derrida Eat Lunch?).

Sorokin crammed a lot into a small book without making it feel crowded, and I think he achieved a good balance of everydayness, humor, and, yes, political terror. That, I think, is the scariest of combinations: I came away feeling complicit for having enjoyed my time listening to Komiaga as he sped through Moscow and flew around Russia.

The pace slows in The Blizzard – there’s snow, snow, snow – and I thought the main characters were far less memorable. The Blizzard is a road story chronicling the travels of a doctor, Platon Ilich Garin, and a driver, nicknamed Perkhusha, who agrees to transport Garin during a blizzard. Platon Ilich needs to treat people suffering from an epidemic of a zombifying Bolivian disease known as чернуха.

I’ve used the word чернуха here before: it’s rooted in черный, black, and describes naturalistic books and movies that readers find particularly depressing. Is Sorokin trying to say that people suffer from this stuff, that it’s an epidemic that turns us into zombies? I don’t know, but he certainly draws on the Russian canon, from Pushkin’s Belkin Tales (previous post), where one story is even called “The Blizzard,” to Tolstoy and Chekhov. I had a strange Gogoly “whither Russia” feel as I read, too. With characters of all sizes, there’s also a Gulliver’s Travels feel to the endeavor; one scene, according to Russian critic Viktor Toporov, contains a direct borrowing. Lev Danilkin, though, sees Sorokin’s many-sized figures as references to folklore and the “little man” in Russian literature.

Maybe I’m fixated on the wrong thing, but hallucinogenic pyramids felt especially important, as if they were references to a strange literary (or meteorological?) LSD that creates Sorokin’s twists on literature, reality, and time. And of course the good doctor and his driver were on a pretty bad trip. (Yes, that is a term in Russian.) Unfortunately, despite lots of intriguing elements – the primeval past and throwback future, all that snow, literary references, and an extended play on the phrase “50 horse power” – The Blizzard never fully engaged me.

I don’t think I did The Blizzard any favors by reading it directly after Oprichnik, which had such a quick pace that I found it difficult to slow down for the snowy travel in The Blizzard. Reading order aside, I still think Oprichnik is more my kind of book, whether or not it’s read as political tea leaves. Sorokin himself says he doesn’t mind if people read Oprichnik as political satire; he sees it (Russian interview here) as futurology.

That’s perfectly apt, but I also agree with Toporov’s assertion (which I paraphrase from his review) that Sorokin’s focus with both books is less on ideas than on language and style. That, I think is the root of why I enjoyed Oprichnik more. In Komiaga, Sorokin creates a bad guy storyteller who uses and ends up embodying mixed-up words, styles, and histories. By contrast, the third-person narrator of The Blizzard left me wanting to shrug and say “whatever”: it feels more like a contemporary writer playing with tropes from the classics.

[Edit: So I don't forget: An interesting piece about The Blizzard from OpenSpace.ru that mentions Bulgakov...]

Reading level for nonnative readers of Russian: I thought Oprichnik was fairly difficult, 4/5. The Blizzard was easier, 2/5 or 3/5.

Up next: Moscow Noir, an anthology of very dark stories, then a historical detective novel by Leonid Yuzefovich.

Photo from pukeycow via sxc.hu.

Two Teas: Dmitry Danilov’s “Black and Green”

I’m glad Zakhar Prilepin’s list of favorite books and stories from the noughties reminded me that I had Dmitry Danilov’s “Чёрный и зелёный” (“Black and Green”) on my e-reader—Danilov’s novella about the wanderings of a tea salesman was fun to read, a lovely example of form and content intertwined. I enjoyed Danilov’s Horizontal Position very much, too (previous post), but “Black and Green” somehow felt even better, more homey… I’d like to think it’s all the tea, though I suspect I just feel even more at home now in Danilov’s world, finding humor and humanness in a place that initially felt bland and sketched but now feels full and almost cozy in its spareness.

Danilov tells “Black and Green” in a first-person voice that resembles the narrative voice of Horizontal Position: the anonymous storyteller of “Black and Green” uses clipped, stripped language, too, offering minute detail about what he sees in his travels and work but saying little about his background or the family he needs to feed. Though the bulk of “Black and Green” describes tea-selling trips to places outside Moscow, Danilov begins his story by describing a dull night job in an office, then an attempt to sell books and postcards to bookstores. It’s futile in the summer. Come back later. Okay.

It’s difficult to convey the strange pleasure of reading “Black and Green.” In terms of detail, the descriptions of tea and towns are wonderful, particularly if you are a tea drinker and/or have been to Russia, but I think this bit, about the narrator’s tea trips with a car owner, Sasha, gets at the essence of what I love so much about how Danilov writes:

Стали ездить с Сашей. Это, конечно, гораздо удобнее и приятнее, чем на электричках, да и вдвоем лучше, хотя последнее и не факт, потому что когда едешь куда-нибудь далеко один, не болтаешь, и больше шансов впасть в полумедитативное остолбенение и заметить вещи, которые в нормальном состоянии заметить трудно.

I began riding with Sasha. Of course this was much nicer and more convenient than taking electrichkas, and, sure, it’s better to work together, though the latter is not a hard-set rule because when you go somewhere far away by yourself, you don’t chat, so there are more chances to fall into a semimeditative stupor and notice things that are difficult to notice in a normal condition.

Kazansky Station, Moscow, with elektrichka trains.
Photo: Dmitry Danilov

In a later section titled “Rage Against the Machine,” the narrator describes his own experiences driving, concluding that driving wears on the nerves, which is hardly interesting or poetic, qualities he implies he found on public transportation. That follows up nicely on the appealing “semimeditative stupor” in the passage above: Danilov’s use of repetition, short sentences, and seemingly irrelevant details all fit beautifully with the paradoxical daze that envelopes his narrators and acts on the reader. He piles on seemingly dull information but stops short of overload, creating unexpectedly nuanced pictures of situations and atmospheres. And what the narrator of “Black and Green” doesn’t say—about his wife, his clients, his aspirations—is at least as important as what he does say, pushing the reader’s imagination to feel the significance of the gaps.

“Black and Green” includes everything from advice on brewing green tea—Maybe I’d like the stuff if I made it properly?— to quietly humorous summaries of towns. The brief entry for the town of Chekhov, for example, ends with this: “Чехов – не очень хороший город. Чехов – очень хороший писатель.” (“Chekhov is not a very good city. Chekhov is a very good writer.”) The novella also includes a passage about a funeral for a friend who committed suicide. Danilov captures drabness before the funeral:

“Серый день и серый дым из огромной серой трубы. Перовская улица, недра неприятного района Перово. Серые пятиэтажные здания и грязно-белые девятиэтажные здания.”   

“Gray day and gray smoke from a huge gray smokestack. Perovskaya Street, the heart of the unpleasant Perovo area. Gray five-storey buildings and dirty-white nine-storey buildings.”

One of Danilov’s best writerly gifts is that he stops when he’s written enough… just as his narrator in “Black and Green” knows when it’s time to leave the tea trade for an office job, before he tires of tea and no longer enjoys his clockwise sweeps through the Moscow region, loaded down with packages of tea.

A Few Notes:

• “Black and Green” mentions the Tunguska Event so, as promised, I’ve initiated a Tunguska Event tag…
• “Black and Green” was shortlisted for the Andrei Bely award in 2010, along with Horizontal Position.
• Литературная газета recently published an interview with Danilov; it’s here.

Level for Non-Native Readers of Russian: 2/5, not especially difficult language; novella length. An especially good choice for readers who’ve visited Russia.

Disclaimers: The usual. I met Dmitrii Danilov at BookExpo America.

Up Next: Dmitrii Lipskerov’s 40 лет Чанчжоэ (The Forty Years of Chanchzhoeh), an odd piece of work about a town invaded by hens. And short stories galore, including St. Petersburg Noir. Then even more stories: Andrei Rubanov’s Стыдные подвиги (Shameful Feats/Exploits… I’m still not sure…), a collection of short stories that I’ve been reading at the beach.