Yuz AleshkovskyBesprekingen

Two filthy and fairly funny novellas from samizdat specialist and exponent of skaz and mat Yuz Aleshkovsky. Neither of these are as well-realised as his novel Kangaroo, but they are still pretty sharp. Nikolai Nikolaevich is the tale of a pickpocket/jailbird who is recruited as a sperm donor for a project to seed Soviet life in the Andromeda galaxy. Nikolai's voice is about 33% expletives and gulag slang which is only partially translatable. But a hell of a lot happens; there's even a rather touching love story amidst the masturbatory mayhem. Camouflage is told by the alcoholic Fedka Milashkin who's convinced that the squalor and desperation of everyday life in his generic Soviet city is all just "camouflage" to prevent American spy satellites from picking up on the military-industrial marvels taking place under the surface. This one features a brutal twist on Lysistrata and some punchy Politburo parody. It's kind of tiring to read, and loses a lot in translation despite Duffield White's best efforts, but the introduction and notes make up for that.

A reflection of the mind of a writer in the closed Soviet system. Not a propaganda piece by a repressive government but the apathy of the people caught in the system that they are too tired to fight.

Written in a wayward, oral style, the official term is Skaz --which to an American reader, which is what it might be if Holden Caufield was sent to the gulag and upon his release finds himself less concerned with the crummy than with the shitty lies at the core of the Soviet Experiment.

A career criminal/confidence man is hauled in by the KGB dragnet just after the end of the Great Patriotic War (WW II) charged with the rape and murder of a kangaroo sometime between 1789 and 1905. The satire escalated as the criminal receives shock treatment where upon his reality begins to fissure. He’s sent to the camps where his delirium finds him in detente with Hitler and Churchill before suddenly becoming aware that Stalin’s right foot is espousing counter revolutionary slogans. The criminal—upon escaping that contradiction— finds himself involved in a film production of his exploits, does this situation explain his previous experiences? Periodically point of view appears to surface, coming up for air before an ribald episode combusts in a shower of literary bewilderment. Kangaroo is a denouncement in the greasepaint of self criticism.

“Let’s begin at the beginning, Kolya, though I really have no idea whether this ridiculous story can have a beginning or an end at all . . .
That year—1949—I was the unhappiest man on earth. Maybe in the whole star system. Of course I was the only one who knew this, but then personal unhappiness isn’t like being world famous—you don’t need the recognition of all mankind for it.”

And so begins a novel written by another Russian author I’d never read until now. Absolutely hooked from the get-go. I wasn’t prepared for the rampant absurdity, its Skaz literary style, its pervasive language—especially the whole “fucking the kangaroo” thing. Most probably since I bought the book used years ago and don’t typically bother with the descriptions on dust jackets until I’m done reading. Whatever my expectations may have been, I can’t help but expect some brilliant lunacy from a Russian work published in the Eighties. Not very deep into this quirky work I found myself laughing out loud—and realized only then that I’d been smiling the whole time.

“Just before Kidalla came back, I spotted it—guess what, old buddy?—I spotted ‘Case of the vicious rape and murder of an aged kangaroo in the Moscow Zoo on a night between July 14, 1789, and January 9, 1905.’ I guess that dumb computer was probably mixing up the French Revolution with collective-farm workadays, my fingerprints, Bloody Sunday, Australian reactionaries, and the dangerous creation of the State of Israel. Anyway, it had printed out the very case I’d waited all those years for, hustling and screwing around. I start reading.”

This is far more recent than most Russian literature I've had the pleasure of reading, yet equal in quality. All in all, absolutely hilarious. I do believe it would need to be read more than once for every layer of satire to be fully grasped and taken in.

This is written in the style of Skaz, which is a Russian term for a "particularly oral form of narrative" I learned this from Wikipedia, which is always right of course (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skaz) and I couldn't help thinking: "Wow. Skaz is way cooler than Ska."

Anyhow, this is quite a satire and has an element of absolute absurdity to it but at the same time, because Aleshokovsky uses the names of actual political leaders, one does question how much of the text is based on reality with veiled metaphors (some more veiled than others). Aleshkovsky could have taken this the way of Kafka's The Trial but he is way more playful and creative than that, even though sometimes it's more difficult for the reader to actually follow what is happening in the text. One gets the sense that it's difficult for the protagonist to figure out what is happening in his real life anyhow and in that way, it has tinges of experimental fiction.

Basically, the jist is this-the main character (written in first person as if telling a friend Kolya over a series of drinks what his experiences were throughout the novel) is not such a bad guy but he does owe the cops a favor. It just so happens that there is a computer that generates random crime possibilities and, when forced to pick between the mundane and the common crimes and the most bizarre crime imaginable, he of course picks the crime in which the perpetrator rapes and murders a kangaroo at the zoo.

What follows is experiments on him in terms of the human psyche and film as the best device for propaganda. The police officer Kadilla goes through all manners of experiments to try to convince him he's a kangaroo, has truly committed this crime, and even is soaring through space. He even has to deal with his own turned clothes turning on him. Our protagonist also seems to have issues with time and his own sense of personal history as he remembers and even seems to experience all these interactions he had or witnessed with Hitler and Stalin during the second world war. Stalin's foot turning on him is particularly amusing. And of course, what would a prison camp assignment for killing rats in the dark be without discovering that dormant third eye in the back of one's head.

This is the kind of book you'll want to read again after you study Soviet history and read 100 more novels written by famous Russians.

Some memorable quotes:

pg. 3 "That year-1949-I was the unhappiest man on earth. Maybe in the whole solar system. Of course I was the only one who knew this, but then personal unhappiness isn't like being world famous-you don't need the recognition of all mankind for it."

pg. 26-27 "...and I guess we're not meant to untangle the skein of world history. We didn't pull it off the knees of that old granny, Life, and tangle it up. It was some little kitten. So let the kitten untangle it..."

pg. 97 "I guess men always envy anyone any kind of eternal existence, even an agonizing one."

pg 122-123 "I'm a weird strange kind of guy. I'm beginning to understand a whole lot about what's happened in my life, Kolya. But what I don't get is this deep, warm, quiet laugh at what you'd think would be the worst moments of your life. What does it mean? My soul's alive and well, undamaged by the devil's worst weapon, despair? It's alive and chortling over the forces of evil's frantic activity, safe, knowing it's invulnerable? Is that it or not?

pg. 143 "I told him if you subtract the enthusiasm of the twenties from the enthusiasm of the thirties, all that's left is ten years for counterrevolutionary agitation and propaganda."

pg. 150 "We got this epilepsy epidermic from Dostoevsky. I can't think why Belinsky and I didn't liquidate him them. None of this would have happened." (From the character Chernyshevsky who in real life died waaaaay before the second world war.)

pg. 159 "But what's a pretty girl with no money to do about stockings? Or shoes? She ages five years the first time they're reheeled and twenty the second. It's just no fun to walk around anymore. Don't even mention stocking runs. Those runs make a woman's heart bleed like real wounds in men's hearts."

pg. 169 "So I don't offend anyone, I'd like to be a farmer in the Antarctic, where they still don't have political parties."

pg. 173 "I tell you, Kolya, you should never turn anything. I certainly don't want to get to the Last Judgement to find me and Karpo Marx accused of trying to change the world. No thanks! The world doesn't forgive men who try to turn it inside out."

pg. 184 "I sing my favorite little ditty

The streetcar floats through the sea,
The phonographs sound sad,
Inside his little railroad car,
The tsar resigned. Too bad."

pg. 224 "In a word, pain strips a lot of superfluous stuff from a man."

pg. 237 "...believe me, Kolya-I can see you believe me by your sad eyes-you couldn't tell the two kinds of pain apart. Human suffering is no better by a single tear or scream or faint than a butterfly's or a cow's or an eagle's or a rat's. That's the only thing I'm sure of."

pg. 264 "Kids these days. There's no souls inside 'em, only tapeworms"

pg. 265 "Jesus, I get so pissed at all the people who can't believe in a higher reality, who deny or tragic, joyful existence, even if they're basically decent types."

Review at http://www.centerforbookculture.org/dalkey/backlist/aleshkovsky.html

"a savage, cleansing satire in which Yuz Aleshkovsky confronts the hypocrisy, the cruelty, and the tragic failure of the Soviet regime"