Yevgeny Nonik, 1970-2007

20 08 2010

[Yevgeny Nonik died in 2007: this was my response...]

If Yevgeny Nonik ever owned any clogs – and as far as I know he didn’t – recent events may have led them to emit a profound sound. A sound that some of us, fed like farm animals on variously inventive forms of rice and corn, will associate with a common inhabitant of the breakfast bowl. A sound that others – if not the same people – may associate with an English rhyme concerning the relatively obscure adventures of a stoat-like mammal. I refer, of course, to the sound of popping.

What I want to say is this – and please excuse me if my grief confounds my meaning – Yevgeny Nonik is no longer with us. No, let me put it another way. He is dead. For was he ever really with us? Not whilst I have known him. For the past six years, Nonik has been obliged to make his home in a mental asylum. I have seen him once only, a few weeks ago in fact, and can say with confidence that I have had more intelligible conversations with pieces of furniture. Nonetheless, this tragic meeting did not require me to rethink his ‘novels’ – in which there are definite signs of intelligence, despite the somewhat haphazard structure. Yes, indeed, that which Nonik has left is undoubtedly more than the ramblings of a madman. And if it isn’t, or wasn’t – could anyone honestly say that the novel was ever anything other than the outpourings of the insane mind? As Leo Barnard once said: ‘No one in their right mind writes’. Unfortunately, Nonik no longer has any mind, ‘right’ or otherwise. Indeed no. It pains me to say it, but Nonik has made an early departure from this sad and chaotic world, dying with the quiet decorum of a true madman. Read the rest of this entry »


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Subtle Carnivores (Excerpt)

20 08 2010

[Yevgeny Nonik’s first novel - ‘molasses pry with wantonness’ - was published in 2003. Nonik had written the book as part of his therapy at a psychiatric award, but the chief nurse was so impressed by the literary merit of the project that she smuggled it out and had it published. Nonik continued to be treated for his chronic fear of full-stops (linked to various childhood traumas) and along the way assembled enough material for a second book: ‘subtle carnivores’. This passage was translated by Rudolph Winckler]

‘defilement procedure relating to the massive challenge represented by subtle carnivores, their teeth like icicles in the darkest cavern, the darkest night illuminated by a curiously happy moon, betrayed once again by the tepid tribes, thrown into the sky like an uncomfortable pinecone, landing on the ground and bouncing, here, there, here and back again, the full-back struggling to deal with the rugby ball, the clouds gathering like pensioners at the post office, the brightly coloured blow up ball he bought for his baby daughter and the large round paddling pool where the sore feet of the underclass are bathed whilst they wait for a flask of warm runny honey, all of this seen, basically, undisputedly, arguably, I’ll-knock-your-damn-head-off-if-you-don’t believe-me-now, please, I entreat you, come on, yes, after all, like I said, before, again and once more, I thank you, after all that we said, after all that we did together, standing on the edge of the earth, the ocean liner twinkling in the distance, smoking like a large white marshmallow, drifting like an inflatable polar bear, standing there in the almost-dark, my heart beating like an egg-whisk, my toes as cold as a five-star freezer, my ears as hot as a furnace, funny how that happened, the temperature rising and falling, like watching the high-jump at the world championship athletics, another athlete runs and jumps and falls and waits and runs and jumps and bounces maybe, bounces on the bright blue mat, a bouncy castle for the true professionals, no messing around, you can keep your shoes on here, but keep no scissors in your pockets please, the competition warrants a surfeit of waiting around, time in which you might cut and paste a little, no scissors please, Read the rest of this entry »


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Yevgeny Nonik’s Balm for Insanity: An Appraisal

18 08 2010

[The first of several articles on Yevgeny Nonik; this was written in anticipation of the publication of ‘subtle carnivores’, his second 'novel'. Nonik died in 2007].

One night in 1974, I drank too much white rum and fell asleep listening to Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. As the foreboding strains of the opening movement lay their leaden musical fingers on all thirteen stone of my slumbering body, I sank into the dark waters of a suitable dream. I was on my knees in the heart of a dense forest; the sky faint beyond the trees and the floor thick with thick-leaved shrubs through which I slowly pushed my way, unable to pull myself to my feet. I was looking for my contact lenses – an odd notion, as I have near perfect eyesight, and have never required exterior visual assistance. Yet in this dream I have no doubt that these were my contact lenses – why else would I be so desperate to find them? I must have searched miles of that forest floor for those lenses, slipping my youthful hands beneath the damp leaves of a thousand tropical plants, pushing my fingernails through a million acres of moist mud: all to no avail. Despite my great – and most sincere – attempt, find them I did not. Read the rest of this entry »


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The Pathenikolides Affair, Part Three

17 08 2010

[First published April 28th 2006]

I always said that the roof was going to fall through this case, but god knows I wasn’t expecting this. It makes one wonder about the origin of these figures of speech. Who was the first sick parrot? Who first led who up the garden path? Which fervent feline was first killed by curiosity? The origin of species is one thing: the origin of figures of speech another. Language evolves according to a funny sort of logic. Sense is unsteady: I know what you mean, but I don’t know what you mean. Before I had fully mastered the English language I remember meeting a man who told me he was ‘trying to turn over a new leaf’. It still amuses me to think of the fellow now, sitting cross-legged on some English lawn, struggling to rotate the fresh foliage. On another occasion my vegetarian instincts got the better of my linguistic aptitude; having heard a young woman smugly pronounce that she had ‘killed two birds with one stone’ I set about trying (literally, not metaphorically) to kill this one bird with two stones. Needless to say, this social slip-up resulted in my being ‘sent to Coventry’ (not literally. I have in fact never been to Coventry – though I would undoubtedly have chosen this option at the time in exchange for what amounted to several years of emotionally crippling estrangement from the immediate community). Read the rest of this entry »


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The Pathenikolides Affair, Part Two (Determining the Intelligence of the Author )

17 08 2010

[First published March 26th 2006]

The court on the outskirts of Athens where the novelist Alexis Pathenikolides is being tried for plagiarism does not have a history of sensational trials. According to the judge, this particular case is the most dramatic since the great barn burning trial of ’92, or the ox heist of ’73. This may partially explain why it is that the two lawyers involved constantly remind one of two toddlers drooling over a lollipop. On the other hand, you may be excused for thinking that they have got things a little out of proportion. For a start, Pathenikolides himself is not a famous man. He is far too talented a writer to have earned popularity. The intelligentsia may know of him – for his contribution to erotic literature if nothing else – but he is otherwise a minor figure in the literary scene. And whilst the two men suing him are better known, they are hardly celebrities. Even the charge itself lacks interest. Indeed, after five days I can safely say that I suspect there to be as many twists in this case as there were in the pitta bread through which I munched for lunch this very afternoon. Read the rest of this entry »


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The Pathenikolides Affair, Part One

16 08 2010

[First published: March 20th 2006]

Sebastian Cheraz’s review of Alexis Pathenikolides 2001 novel The Twisted Olive Tree appeared at the online home of Underneath the Bunker barely a week ago. In the seven or so days since, the book has become embroiled at the centre of what can only be called a controversy (or possibly a hullabaloo, depending on your mood). There we all were nodding our noble heads to Cheraz’s statement that the book is ‘a great work of fiction’, when out of the habitual woodwork popped not just one but two woodworms, armed (if a worm can be armed) with briefcases full of legal papers, preparing themselves to sue the aforementioned Pathenikolides out of a steady income. According to them, the middle-aged Greek novelist’s first work is not ‘fiction’ at all, merely a pastiche of passages that first appeared in books that they themselves had written, one of which was non-fiction. The charge, therefore, is one of plagiarism – a grave arraignment that society tends to rank but a step or two behind patricide and sexually assaulting a grapefruit. Read the rest of this entry »


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Alexis Pathenikolides – The Twisted Olive Tree

15 08 2010

Every literary journal receives its fair share of vitriolic post, and Underneath the Bunker is no exception. Three weeks ago, our notionally esteemed editor passed onto me a message from one Robert Synder, a statistician from Southampton who reads contemporary European literature in his spare time. Synder, unfortunately, is one of the regrettable species of human unable to separate their work from their pleasure, the result of which is that his correspondence is littered with statistics. More alarmingly, he actually believes in the validity of these statistics: he even dares to think that they might prove something. God bless us all.

So what do they prove? Well – in Synder’s words – they ‘undermine the redundancy of the greatest novels list, by revealing conscious ignorance of around ninety two percent of the field. My statistics prove that sixty-four percent of European novels are about war, twenty-eight percent are about sex and the remaining eight percent are about any other subject. As your list appears to consist merely of novels that fall in this final eight percent, I can only conclude that it is a bucket of bullock’s mullock’. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Greatest European Novels

Tosca Calbirro – Under An Unquiet Sun

11 08 2010

[New readers demand new forms - and if the Italian writer Tosca Calbirro has anything to offer, one can at least expect attention to form. In his hands the book is a dated medium. The future of the printed word lies elsewhere, as Jinpes Terenk reveals...]

As has been recently revealed by a diarrhoeic spew of critical studies, the utilization of lavatorial substance and imagery in modern culture has a rich, if not pungent, history. Marcel Duchamp is the figure that rises, like the abominable turd, to the surface of most people’s minds, but there are others, sadly flushed from our memories. One of these is Curzio Calbirro, an Italian immigrant painter who lived in Paris at the same time as Duchamp and who quaintly readdressed the gap left by the French prankster’s 1917 artwork Fountain. As Duchamp brought the toilet into the gallery, so Calbirro brought the gallery into the toilet – his parent’s downstairs toilet, to be precise, where (in conjunction with the ‘Petit Garcons Chambre pour l’art’), he held frequent, albeit small exhibitions. Visitors to these exhibitions were invited – expected even – to use the toilet as they viewed the paintings in the room. According to Calbirro this was ‘the only real way to view art’. Many people agreed with him, finding the experience extremely rewarding, whilst others were less impressed Read the rest of this entry »


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Great Writers, Silly Obsessions – by Michael Rosinith

11 08 2010

I have met many a noble and sensible person in my time, but rarely have I come across someone who doesn’t harbour, somewhere, a silly obsession or two.

Therapy – and writing is as good a form of therapy as I know – can go some way to ironing out life’s major creases. I’ve known people who have had serious problems; who have unpacked and explored these problems at a healthy and steady pace, laying bare the details in a manner which goes beyond the mere sensational, undergoing the necessary transformation from personal crises to what we may call Art. Many of these same people have, however, continued to bother themselves – or be bothered – by much smaller problems. These they have failed to deal with in the same reasonable way. A gripe doesn’t demand our attention in the same way as a crisis: that comes as no surprise. Maybe this is why some people find it harder to deal, in the long run, with a gripe than with a crisis. Read the rest of this entry »


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Pyetr Turgidovsky – The Lunatic

10 08 2010

[For reasons unknown, I have wasted more words on a particular Russian writer than on any other living word-monger. That Russian writer is Pyetr Turgidovsky. Here Heidi Kohlenberg gets to grips with the man himself - and with his most famous novel, 'The Lunatic'.  Further reading follows...]

Last night I attended the launch of yet another literary magazine. The vol-au-vents were high-class: the enterprise will collapse within the year. In the end, it’s just an excuse for a good party; a rare opportunity for those who spend the majority of their time drinking in the latest offering from Kirios Quebec to drink in the latest offering from France’s finest vineyards, and to share the latest news from the literary world. Who is Hoçe stalking now? Has anyone actually finished reading Gdansk Haunting? What the hell is Donna Devoni wearing? And, of course, this year’s enduring conversation creator: What do you make of Georgy Riecke’s List of Great European novels? Read the rest of this entry »


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