LIFE OF A BISHOP'S ASSISTANT

Name: LIFE OF A BISHOP'S ASSISTANT
Author: Viktor Shklovsky
ISBN: 978-1-62897-174-3

by Viktor Shklovsky ; translated by Valeriya Yermishova ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 21, 2017

Readers with a background in formalism and its successors will find this of interest, though Bulgakov, Sholokhov, and...

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Slender, allusive novel of clerical foibles by Russian/Soviet novelist Shklovsky (1893-1984).

Gavriil Dobrynin is born into the Orthodox Church—literally, his father a priest, both grandfathers priests. Social mobility being what it was in the age of Catherine the Great, Gavriil might have done worse, though the churchly world he falls into is full of politics and intrigue; his introduction is a coup against an archimandrite who “was an enemy of God and should be squealed on under the first and second articles,” as one of his denouncers, an altar boy, has it. The first article, explains Shklovsky (The Hamburg Score, 2017, etc.), concerns slanders against God, the second slanders against the state; either one brings pain on the heads of those found guilty of violations. In this sort-of biography, novelized with invented dialogue and episodes, Gavriil falls under the tutelage of a bishop named “Kirill Florinsky, or Fliorinsky, as he whimsically called himself,” who’s a little more frivolous than his office might tolerate—though he’s no weakling and not afraid to throw a punch. As the story progresses, the master outfoxes the student, and then the student the master; fortunes wax and wane, though Gavriil soon learns that ambitions go far when matched with wine and fireworks. There’s some enjoyable cat and mouse here, but in the end the story is a touch arid, written as if to conform either to the censor or the requirements of the reigning literary theory. At its best, though, Shklovsky’s short novel serves up some subtly funny, suggestively subversive resonances that might remind the reader of his contemporary Mikhail Bulgakov. Had the edition included good notes and an introduction, these resonances and how the book fits into Shklovsky’s broad-ranging body of work might have been made more comprehensible to readers new to the writer or, for that matter, to literature of the Soviet era.

Readers with a background in formalism and its successors will find this of interest, though Bulgakov, Sholokhov, and Pasternak remain the cornerstone writers of the era for nonspecialist readers.

Pub Date: July 21, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-62897-174-3

Page Count: 140

Publisher: Dalkey Archive

Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THIRD FACTORY
by Viktor Shklovsky & translated by Richard Sheldon

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IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

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A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.

The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

Pub Date: March 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.