Andreï Makine’s The
Life of an Unknown Man, which I read in Geoffrey Strachan’s translation
of the original French La vie d’un homme
inconnu, is the kind of book that makes me grumpy. The novel details—and I
do mean “details”—the emotional and geographical wanderings of a little-known Russian
émigré writer living in France who decides to visit the motherland after his
much-younger girlfriend dumps him. Shutov, the writer, is a sentimental guy and
he wants to visit an old flame.
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| Peterhof/Petrodvorets at Saint Petersburg's 300th Anniversary |
Shutov’s surname may be rooted in “shut” (sounds like
“shoot”), the Russian word for a clown, fool, or jester, but he doesn’t fit in
with St. Petersburg’s carnivalesque atmosphere at the city’s anniversary
celebration. He says, “Nothing has changed in thirty years. And everything has
changed.” Right. A paragraph later, when Shutov tells himself, “I was wrong to
come…,” I wrote “Yes, you were!” in the margin. Reason A: As we all know, you
can’t step in the same river twice. Reason B: The trip is a colossally awkward
plot device designed to give Shutov a chance to observe changes and fail to
have a soulful reunion with Yana, the old flame, who is now a busy businesswoman…
but miraculously redeem the journey by meeting Volsky, an old man who inhabits a
room in a former communal apartment Yana now owns.
It’s Volsky’s last night in his room before moving to a
nursing home, and Shutov watches over him, listening to his life story, which
includes the blockade of Leningrad, reaching Berlin for the Soviet Army during
World War 2, Stalin-era imprisonment, and a love story involving numerous coincidences.
Volsky’s life hits on numerous elements of the mythos of Soviet Russia and Leningrad,
combining the miracle of survival and the ability to find a certain happiness amidst
chaos, arrests, and death. The problem here isn’t the material, which is
important, it’s Makine’s treatment, which makes Volsky feel like a clichéd composite
of the Soviet period right down to a tear-jerking final trip to an old site
before he moves to the nursing home.
Even worse, Volsky is a tool to inspire Shutov to find perspective
on his own dull life. If, that is, the reader can believe this self-centered
guy is ready for perspective. This element of the novel felt especially literarily
cheap and obvious because Makine summarizes the novel’s action and message at
the end, lest the reader missed something. An example: “The violent feeling
suddenly overcomes Shutov that he will never be a part of the Russian world
that is now being reborn within his native land.” But we knew that many pages ago.
The Life of an Unknown
Man reminds me of a Soviet-era package tour to Russia: a schedule stuffed
with group meals in hotel dining rooms and ideological excursions, but no
contact with Russians other than tour guides and food service personnel. Sure,
you see the important sites and many of them are lovely. But you feel
manipulated, told what to think. There are lots of Russian novels available in
translation that address World War 2 in the Soviet Union and/or the Stalinist
repression that I’d recommend over Makine’s The
Life, everything from I(rina) Grekova’s Ship of Widows to Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
Two other Soviet-era books that have become classics: Anatolii Rybakov’s Children of the Arbat and Vasilii
Grossman’s Life and Fate.
To be fair, I should note that lots of readers enjoyed The Life of an
Unknown Man far more than I. Among them: Kirkus,
which starred it; Amy
Henry on The Black Sheep Dances; Mary
Whipple on Seeing the World Through Books; Viv
Groskop in The Observer, and M.A.
Orthofer on The Complete Review, who links to numerous other reviews.
Notes on two other
books: I had so much difficulty with G. Willow Wilson’s Alif the Unseen, a clunky and contrived attempt
to mix a Persian Gulf cyberthriller with djinns and The Thousand and One Nights that I stopped reading half-way
through. Grumpy again! I also read the first hundred or so pages of WiesławMyśliwski’s Stone Upon Stone, in Bill
Johnston’s translation. Stone Upon Stone is
very good, vignettes of rural Polish life that come close to qualifying as
stream-of-consciousness, but it’s the kind of book I’m best reading over time,
in chunks, so I don’t lose the nuance. I read wonderful passages about
farming, the significance of a new road, and melees at dances. It’s easy to see
why Bill Johnston won the Best Translated Book Award for Stone Upon Stone: he creates a memorable English-language voice for
Myśliwski’s first-person narrator. It’s a book I’ll study and analyze, too, because its
narrative voice feels like a Polish cousin to some of the Russian-language
stories I’ve worked on.
Disclaimers: Thanks
to Amy Henry who sent me a copy of The
Life of an Unknown Man that she received from Graywolf Press, whom I also
thank. Amy also facilitated my copy of Stone
Upon Stone from Archipelago Books—thanks to both of them! Finally, I picked
up a copy of Alif the Unseen from
Grove/Atlantic’s booth at BookExpo America; I’ve always enjoyed speaking with Grove/Atlantic about literature in translation.
Up next: Anita
Konkka’s A Fool’s Paradise. Then Hanna
Pylväinen’s We Sinners. I think it’s
my summer for Finnish-related books… I may have to read Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book next.
Image credit: Saint
Petersburg’s 300th Anniversary, from www.Kremlin.ru
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