Alta Ifland's Blog: Notes on Books - Posts Tagged "science-fiction"
2017 by Olga Slavnikova
2017 by Olga Slavnikova
Translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz
Overlook Press, 2010
2017 was published in 2010 by Overlook Press, one of the contemporary American presses dedicated to publishing quality literary fiction, and particularly fiction in translation. This novel, which was awarded the Russian Booker Prize a few years ago, has gone virtually unnoticed in this country. This overlook—no pun intended—is hard to explain, especially since the translation was done by an accomplished translator, Marian Schwartz. True, the editorial job leaves to be desired, but considering that the author has a tendency toward complicated sentences with many subordinates, and a very complex vocabulary (let’s mention only the vocabulary having to do with rock hounding), the English version is impressive. Some people may not like the author’s exaggerated penchant for comparisons and metaphors, and I myself think that in places the novel is “overwritten,” but there are also numerous instances in which one is simply carried away by its beauty.
One of the ways one can tell a great work of art from merely a good work is the perfect coherence between “form” and “content.” In such cases, the style’s beauty isn’t simply a beautiful envelope for a more or less interesting “story:” the style is a continuation and a representation of the content itself. 2017 is a perfect example of this: the novel, focused on gem hunters and precious stones, seems to radiate a transparent beauty one usually associates with the mineral world (transparency is, by the way, one of its major themes).
For the readers who get impatient with descriptions—even very beautiful ones—the first…hmm…hundred pages might be too slow. But then, the pace changes, and contemporary Russia with its multicolored universe of nouveaux riches, crooks, poor babushkas, politicians that seem a cross between a cheap crook and Dr. Evil, vulgar divas, sophisticated divas with the charisma of a TV star and the intuition of a prophet, becomes the background of a quest whose hero somehow manages to keep a certain purity in spite of all the odds. The hero is coveted by two women, who, apparently, couldn’t be more different: Tanya (whose real name he doesn’t even know, and with whom he has an unusual love affair) and Tamara (his former wife, gorgeous, still in love with him, and immensely rich).
But the true character is here 21st century Russia, a country in which, like everywhere else in a world dominated by new technologies, there are two parallel worlds: the one of the virtual, or, in Baudrillard’s terminology, of the copy—a world in which people play roles, and the costumes they wear dictate what they feel and do; and the one of the authentic—a world made of poor people, who can’t play any other role save for what they are and have always been. In 2017, a hundred years after the Russian revolution, these worlds clash, and a new revolution begins. A fascinating novel.
Translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz
Overlook Press, 2010
2017 was published in 2010 by Overlook Press, one of the contemporary American presses dedicated to publishing quality literary fiction, and particularly fiction in translation. This novel, which was awarded the Russian Booker Prize a few years ago, has gone virtually unnoticed in this country. This overlook—no pun intended—is hard to explain, especially since the translation was done by an accomplished translator, Marian Schwartz. True, the editorial job leaves to be desired, but considering that the author has a tendency toward complicated sentences with many subordinates, and a very complex vocabulary (let’s mention only the vocabulary having to do with rock hounding), the English version is impressive. Some people may not like the author’s exaggerated penchant for comparisons and metaphors, and I myself think that in places the novel is “overwritten,” but there are also numerous instances in which one is simply carried away by its beauty.
One of the ways one can tell a great work of art from merely a good work is the perfect coherence between “form” and “content.” In such cases, the style’s beauty isn’t simply a beautiful envelope for a more or less interesting “story:” the style is a continuation and a representation of the content itself. 2017 is a perfect example of this: the novel, focused on gem hunters and precious stones, seems to radiate a transparent beauty one usually associates with the mineral world (transparency is, by the way, one of its major themes).
For the readers who get impatient with descriptions—even very beautiful ones—the first…hmm…hundred pages might be too slow. But then, the pace changes, and contemporary Russia with its multicolored universe of nouveaux riches, crooks, poor babushkas, politicians that seem a cross between a cheap crook and Dr. Evil, vulgar divas, sophisticated divas with the charisma of a TV star and the intuition of a prophet, becomes the background of a quest whose hero somehow manages to keep a certain purity in spite of all the odds. The hero is coveted by two women, who, apparently, couldn’t be more different: Tanya (whose real name he doesn’t even know, and with whom he has an unusual love affair) and Tamara (his former wife, gorgeous, still in love with him, and immensely rich).
But the true character is here 21st century Russia, a country in which, like everywhere else in a world dominated by new technologies, there are two parallel worlds: the one of the virtual, or, in Baudrillard’s terminology, of the copy—a world in which people play roles, and the costumes they wear dictate what they feel and do; and the one of the authentic—a world made of poor people, who can’t play any other role save for what they are and have always been. In 2017, a hundred years after the Russian revolution, these worlds clash, and a new revolution begins. A fascinating novel.
Zero and Other Fictions by Huang Fan (Trans. from Chinese by John Balcom. Columbia UP, 2011)
Huang Fan is a Taiwanese author who is worth reading, but who had the misfortune of having been translated too late. Zero is a dystopian novella written in the speculative tradition and originally published in 1981. To predict a world in which the upper classes live in a sterile environment in which they often interact only through computer screens, books have been digitized and print no longer exists, and the planet is a global village led by an international elite with a dubious past, would be impressive in 1981—but not in 2012.
The book has other short stories, some with political references (“Lai Suo”) and others told with dry humor within a sophisticated, metafictional frame (“How to Measure the Width of a Ditch”). For all these reasons, this should be a captivating book, and yet, it’s not. As often with Chinese literature, it is hard to know whether the problem is the translation, the original, or both. The reader can tell that the writer is intelligent and (sort of) witty, but the humor is sometimes flat. And the stories are uneven, oscillating between the (desire for the) sublime and the ridiculous.
The book has other short stories, some with political references (“Lai Suo”) and others told with dry humor within a sophisticated, metafictional frame (“How to Measure the Width of a Ditch”). For all these reasons, this should be a captivating book, and yet, it’s not. As often with Chinese literature, it is hard to know whether the problem is the translation, the original, or both. The reader can tell that the writer is intelligent and (sort of) witty, but the humor is sometimes flat. And the stories are uneven, oscillating between the (desire for the) sublime and the ridiculous.
Notes on Books
Book reviews and occasional notes and thoughts on world literature and writers by an American writer of Eastern European origin.
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