With
BookExpo
America—which has a big, huge Russia focus this year—coming up in about four
weeks, I’m focusing my reading on BEA writers for the next month or so. Today’s
post, about Andrey Rubanov’s
Жизнь удалась (
All That Glitters), is the first of a series
of pieces about books by writers who will be at BEA.
A brief point of information before I get to Rubanov: The Russian
global market forum at BEA is just one part of a bigger program, Read Russia 2012, which includes a slew of events in New York open to
the public, an expo of books and art for children, and a documentary on contemporary
Russian writers. As I’ve mentioned before, I am (disclosure!, disclosure!) very
happily working away on projects for Read Russia and will be at BEA, which I
love every year… meaning I am beyond excited for this year’s fair. An
intensifier for all that excitement: an anthology of Russian stories will
include two of my translations, plus some of my favorite writers, including
Margarita Khemlin and Vladimir Makanin, will be coming to New York for BEA.
So! On to
Mr. Rubanov’s
book, known as
All That Glitters on his
agent’s Web site. What I
found most interesting about Rubanov’s novel—which covers the disappearance and
subsequent finding of a Moscow wine salesman named Matvei Matveevich Matveev—is
Rubanov’s mixture of two genres: social novel and detective novel. Matveev disappears
after saying goodbye to his loyal wife, Marina, at the beginning of the book,
and Rubanov interweaves numerous characters’ timelines, establishing MMM’s
rise from aimless youth to a member of the upper-middle class who falls very
ill after visiting two men who promise to forgive his rather substantial debt.
Rubanov also offers histories of the men MMM goes to see:
a retired hockey player who goes on to head up an NGO for retired athletes and
his evil sidekick, a prickly former doctor known as Kaktus. He works in
a police detective, too, a hardboiled lone wolf, Svinets, (“lead,” as in Pb), whom
Marina hires to find MMM. This is a lot of main characters, but I thought
Rubanov managed them and his supporting characters efficiently, showing, for example,
how MMM and Kaktus crossed paths in high school—old jealousies run horribly deep
here—and revealing back stories in a way that combines suspense with (almost)
plodding detail.
I thought Rubanov did even better on the social side, describing
the Moscow nineties with mentions of the
MMM pyramid
scheme, which interplays well with Matveev’s name, crooked nonprofit
organizations, and the idea that qualities like decisiveness and
stick-to-itiveness were more important in that era than education. He also
notes the
October
Events of 1993; Matveev keeps a distance, as he did in 1991.
Another most interesting thing about All That Glitters is its kitsch element, something I noticed even
before I read that Rubanov himself called the book “чистый кич” (“pure kitsch”). I think it was
MMM’s focus on a happy orange sky, a motif in the book that sounds suspiciously
like the bright future of socialist realism, that tipped me off early in the
book. Plus characters using the title words, which, in dialogue, might sound
more like “life is good” or “the good life.” Then there’s the removal of the
pads on one character’s fingers (this has some icky consequences), the
hardboiled cop’s tractor-driving brother outside Moscow, and all those searches
for empty lives with lucre that (as we know) can’t buy happiness. Of course the novel
wouldn’t have been complete without a stripper. Or Svinets having to watch the
same TV channel as the neighbors, who live beyond a thin wall, so he can feel
like he has his own space.
The final most interesting thing about All That Glitters is that it works fairly well as a slow-burn thriller
with lively language and a strong social element that generates sadness, humor,
and irony. Despite being a little overloaded with information and back story in
many spots, with Rubanov’s take on Moscow in the nineties and the choice of hockey (which I love) instead of, say, soccer or basketball, All That Glitters managed
to keep me well-entertained even when my head was cloudy from a cold.
Level for non-native readers
of Russian: 2.5-3.0/5.0. Not especially difficult, though there is some
slang. I loved seeing the word мебеля
in print!
Disclosures: I am
working on projects for Read Russia. And I look forward to seeing Julia Goumen,
of Goumen&Smirnova Literary Agency, at BEA next month. I also hope to hear
Andrey Rubanov speak. He is, by the way, a great admirer of Varlam Shalamov.
Up Next: Andrei
Astvatsaturov’s Люди в голом (People in the Nude). Then other BEA
writers: Sergei Shargunov and Yuz Aleshkovsky.