Absurdistan

ABSURDISTAN (Gary Shteyngart) - Four Stars

Absurdistan is funny and sad in equal amounts for exactly the same reason.

The story is fantasy, so utterly preposterous it could never happen, and yet it remains so grounded in reality and garnished with such witty observations about international politics that it can be accepted as wholly credible. Misha Vainberg doesn't exist, the country of Absurdsvanï (Absurdistan) doesn't exist, and Vainberg's Keystone Kops adventures with American defense contractors and international politics never happened. That makes the story funny. However, people exactly like Misha Vainberg do exist, countries exactly like Absurdsvanï do exist, and (having first-hand experience with the first and reasonable knowledge of the second) I can assure you that American defense contracting and international politics operate pretty much exactly as they are portrayed in the novel. That is what makes the story sad.

Shteyngart's writing style is bold and brash; his pen equally humorous and caustic. He writes with biting sarcasm, grim observational skill and a rude crassness that will make even the most jaded and worldly reader chuckle at his graphic narration. He's at his best when lampooning/satirizing the very very serious: he makes the wry obersvation that the "American Express" logo is widely more respected and feared than the U.N. logo (and see also the quote from the novel that I've included at the end of this entry detailing an idea for one wing of a Holocaust museum). There were several spots in the novel that reminded me of Vonnegut, both for their razor-sharp observations of the world at large and their despairing attitude towards the future of humanity. Shteyngart also weaves into the novel interesting threads dealing with father-son relationships, religious/cultural adaptation and rationalization, and (in true Vonnegut fashion) even writes a parody of himself into the novel.

The protagonist, the morbidly obese, pityingly naïve and fairly wealthy Misha Vainberg (son of the 1,238th-richest man in all of Russia!), seems equal parts Winston Smith and Don Quixote: he's desperate to "do something important" with both his life and his money and yet is also a powerless pawn swept up in the cultural and international events that surround him. He falls in love too easily (both with women and with ideas) and cares too much when no one around him cares at all. Far from being an uplifting, "Schindler's List" sort of story, Absurdistan shows just how powerless the invidual is (even a wealthy individual) when powerful companies and powerful countries hatch hare-brained schemes in the utterly absurd arena of international politics.

Holocaust for Kidz
Studies have shown that it's never too early to frighten a child with images of skeletal remains and naked women being chased by dogs across the Polish snow. Holocaust for Kidz will deliver a carefully tailored miasma of fear, rage, impotence, and guilt in children as young as ten. Through the magic of Animatronics, Claymation, and Jurassic technology, the inane ramblings of underqualified American Hebrew day school teachers on the subject of the Holocaust will be condensed into a concise forty-minute bloodbath. Young participants will leave feeling alienated and profoundly depressed, feelings that will be partly redeemed and partly thwarted by the ice-cream truck awaiting them at the end of the exhibit.

Never Let Me Go

NEVER LET ME GO (Kazuo Ishiguro) - Four Stars

What a clever little story.

From very early in the novel the reader gets the impression that something's just not quite right about the students of Hailsham. Ishiguro writes with a narrative voice that assumes the reader already knows all about Hailsham, and the result is a mini-mystery that he makes no effort to conceal but reveals itself slowly and piece by piece.

You can't pigeonhole Never Let Me Go into any one genre, I think. It flirts with aspects of science fiction, mystery, romance, and dystopian society novels, but none of those aspects are ever really the main focus. They're colorful bangles the story wears with an innocent lack of self-consciousness. The novel is so matter-of-fact about what's going on that is lacks the fantastical and awe-struck tones of most science fiction novels. The two "mysteries" that the reader anticipates will be built up throughout the novel are instead revealed casually, almost second-hand, in the course of narration in Part I (that the "students" of Hailsham are actually being raised solely for the purpose of harvesting their organs) and Part II (that the "students" of Hailsham are actually human clones, created for the sole purpose of manufacturing human organs). In some ways, the novel is even a moral debate, questioning what type of society it takes to create and sustain injustice, whether overt or obfuscated.

If anything, I suppose, Never Let Me Go would qualify as something of an existentialist novel. It's an engrossing story, tinged with grey drops of melancholy, about the existence (and/or effect) of free will. The students of Hailsham appear to have been raised without any notion of the concept, and they accept their destinies with the lucid calmness of people who can't comprehend a better fate for themselves as a legitimate possibility.

Lolita

LOLITA (Vladimir Nabokov) - One Star

My perception of a "Lolita" is of a sexually precocious and savvy young teen girl, one who is jaded (perhaps) beyond her years and is already well-versed at using her feminine wiles to seduce helpless (hopeless) older men. I think of "Iris" from "Taxi Driver," perhaps, or one of the young neighborhood hoochies-in-training I see walking to school each morning on my way to work. I do not think of Dolores Haze from Lolita.

Let's be frank: Nabokov's Lolita is not a story about a devious young girl seducing an infatuated older man. The story is of an infatuated older man who kidnaps a young girl on the brink of pubescense and drives across the country, raping her repeatedly and plying her with gifts in change for sexual favors. I assure you that any of the harsh things I say in this review are not due to any sense of offended morals or outrage. If Nabokov wants to write a story about a mentally ill pervert ruining the life of a young girl, that's fine with me as a literary topic (everything is fair game as a literary topic, in my book: taboo only applies to certain aspects of reality, not literary fantasy).

My problem with Lolita is that it's boring.

I mean boring, boring, boring, BORING, BORING!

It is possibly the dullest, most repetitious, uninteresting story I've ever trudged through.

A huge problem with the story is that I never became sympathetic towards either of the main characters. Humbert, despite his educated loquaciousness, is a loathsome individual; I feel no pity for his mental anguish in light of the harm he causes the people around him. Dolores Haze, the young Lolita, you never really get to know: the story is told from Humbert's point of view, so every image of Lolita is filtered through his warped obsession. You glean enough to realize that she is (mostly) miserably unhappy with Humbert but trying to make the best of it. She is clever, and partially aware of her burgeoning sexuality; which she uses half-heartedly in various clumsy attempts, much like any other young teen who is just discovering the powers of beauty and seduction. In the early stages of the novel, she has a pre-teen crush on the handsome Humbert and does submit willingly. (I don't think it's fair to say she "seduces" him; how do you seduce someone who's already lusting after you like wildfire?) She is not a twelve-year-old nymphet, she is just an ordinary girl. But other than some fairly basic adolescent interests and mood swings, you never really get into her mind.

Nabokov's play with the English language is entertaining enough to carry the novel through Part I and into Part II (his skill with English is especailly astonishing when you read his lament in the afterword that his "secondhand" English is vastly inferior to his skill with his native Russian tongue). Eventually, however, it just seems like Nabokov is playing a game called "never use the same adjective twice," and the long-windedness and inability to make even the smallest points in short order get increasingly frustrating to the reader.

Here's a prime example: on page 264 there's the last half of a paragraph. I've cut out all the extraneous descriptions to give you the point of the paragraph, which is as follows:

I used to be misled by a window [where I] would make out a half-naked nymphet combing her hair. [Then] the image would move, and there would be nothing in the window but a man reading the paper.

Not very eloquent, admitted, but that's the base point of the thought.

See now, how burdened down it is with description, as a simple 40-word thought is bloated by Nabokov into several hundred words:

I used to recollect, with anguished amusement, the times in my trustful, pre-dolorian past when I would be misled by a jewel-bright window opposite wherein my lurking eye, the ever alert periscope of my shameful vice, would make out from afar a half-naked nymphet stilled in the act of combing her Alice-in-Wonderland hair. There was in the fiery phantasm a perfection which made my wild delight also perfect, just because the vision was out of reach, with no possibility of attainment to spoil it by the awareness of an appended taboo; indeed, it may well be that the very attraction immaturity has for me lies not so much in the limpidity of pure young forbidden fairy child beauty as in the security of a situation where infinite perfections fill the gap between the little given and the grat promised—the great rosegray never-to-be-had. Mes fenêtres! Hanging above blotched sunset and welling night, grinding my teeth, I would crowd all the demons of my desire against the railing of a throbbing balcony: it would be ready to take off in the apricot and black humid evening; did take off—whereupon the lighted image would move and Eve would revert to a rib, and there would be nothing in the window but an obese partly clad man reading the paper.

Beautifully written, yes, but get to the fuckin' point already!! Every paragraph, for 300+ pages, is written like this. And yes, even gorgeous prose like this gets old when there's only a threadbare story supporting it.

It's worth noting that in the afterword Nabokov relates that the "first" version of Lolita was a thirty page short story written circa 1940 in Paris (and discarded), but that the full novel version wasn't started until some ten years later. Indeed, Lolita feels like a thirty page short story that has put on every coat in the closet until it looks like a three hundred page novel, and a tedious one at that.