UNDERNEATH THE BUNKER

Far be it from me to imitate those scoundrels who take unnatural pleasure in biting off the hand that feeds them, but I must say a word or two against the latest publication by Upside-Down-Then-Backwards, the associated press of this otherwise exemplary journal. It’s not that I actively dislike Jean-Pierre Sertin’s p.52 (there’s humour enough in his introduction to suggest that his experimentation isn’t deadly earnest) but I must have my reservations. Knowingness isn’t always a saving grace, after all. Nor can we be expected to treat every little puzzling postmodern text with a pinch of salt. There’s no harm in a writer having a little fun every now and again, but there comes a time when one has to step up to the plate and deliver something, well, something more substantial.

It has been remarked, I can’t help noticing, that Sertin’s project has provided the author with the opportunity to get rid of all those sentences that didn’t belong anywhere else. In short, p.52 is a scrap heap, a collection of false starts and loose ends. Sertin gives himself the chance to play with styles and ideas, without ever needing to get stuck into them. The excuse? He’s being experimental. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. I won’t go so far as saying that p.52 is purposeless. I shall never read the fifty-second page of a novel in the same way again, I’m sure of it. But I am unsure as to how to deal with Monsieur Sertin. In the end, what is he good for? A lovely line, a funny idea or two: a writer of cheery confidence, with a tendency towards self-indulgence. An adjective too far, perchance? Indisputably, irrefutably, incontrovertibly, incontestably. p.52 is a depositary of spare words: too much cream on the cake, my dear sir: too much seasoning in the sausages, too much gravy on the pie, too much sugar in the tea.

Or have I been reading too much Jarni Kolovsky? It’s hard to say. I dare say Sertin is more in touch than I am with the current trends of literature. Though his work sometimes seem designed to try the patience of any reader, his self-conscious assimilation of modern media (popular music, the internet, television) suggests that he may be courting fashion on the quiet. ‘Intercutting’ is a little crazy, sure, but not crazy enough not to catch on. It’s what we call premeditated madness – and it’s a good way to gain what we call ‘middle-term’ fans. (As for that last sentence, it is what we call a statement that doth sweep mightily, but not without grace). Still, instead of replicating our ceaseless-channel-flicking, crap-webpage-surfing twenty-first century culture, should not the role of the novelist be to present a thoughtful panacea?

Or have I been reading too much Jarni Kolovsky? The return of this question is not accidental. This article is, after all, about Jarni Kolovsky. Who, you say? Maybe we’ll come back to that in a minute. In any case, it’s not unfair to say that Kolovsky isn’t very well known these days. Not that he ever was – at least, not outside Belarus.

For those of you who didn’t keep a close eye on the Belarusian literary scene in the early 90s, here’s a run down of the most important developments. Between the turn of the decade and 1993, Belarusian literature was said by many to be ‘on the up’. The reason was that a bunch of youngsters had amassed, in no time at all, a remarkably attractive body of work. There was Stephan Zynska’s stylish trilogy The Reservoir of Doubt, Anna Krosnik’s super-poetic Pallid Autumnal Aubades, Sasha Radashenko’s dazzling debut I Don’t Like People Who Don’t Like People Who Don’t Like Me and, last but not least, Jarni Kolovsky’s exceedingly lyrical Monkey Merely See. Each of these novels oozed with potential: it seeped from their spines and suffused each page with its bittersweet scent. Ah yes: potential. Precious, precious potential. Not that the books weren’t good in their own right. They were. But something about them – or was it something about their authors? – led critics to rate promise over present achievement.

Anyone acquainted with Belarusian critics will know in which direction this discussion is turning. Yes, indeed. Ricard E C Spleød. The only famous literary critic in the country; proud owner of the largest ears in Belarus and of the sharpest pen as well. Famed across Europe for his tweed suits and habit of turning up to conferences in cherry pink slippers. Yes, it is well known that the reputation of any Belarusian writer rests on his reception by Spleød. So – what did he think of Zynska, Kolovsky et al? The truth is that he liked them at first, but was in time convinced that their books represented a triumph of substance over style. Encouraged by their commercial success, he took the opportunity of organising their critical failure. Radashenko bore the weight of his attack; once described as ‘supremely talented’ he was now derided as ‘sickeningly self-indulgent’ and (ironically) ‘lost in lust with his own prose’. The root of the problem lay, according to Spleød, in the endless and aimless descriptive passages, and in the needlessly obscure metaphors and similes. As the man himself put it:

‘What is going on with our young writers? They have so little to say, that when they do say something they are obliged to dress it up in a hundred suffocating layers of soporific imagery. To read their work is not to plunge into a sea of thought, but to drown in an ocean of ridiculous and drawn-out metaphors!’

Again, Radashenko was his primary target. Here was a writer so desperate to impress his readers with stylish observations that he saw fit in one passage to describe whisky as ‘the urine of the deities’. This clearly rankled the pink-slippered critic. ‘What in the heaven’s name comes next?’ he asked: “Should beer be re-classified as the ‘sweet sweat of Athena?’ Is wine ‘silent Saturn’s snot’?” It was a point well made: there was always the sense that these writers were hiding their struggle to overcome their lack of big ideas by sprinkling big words over small concepts. Radashenko particularly – but Kolovsky was no less guilty of this charge. Monkey Merely See is a wonderful book in many ways, but you can’t deny the flimsiness of its plot (nor does Kolovsky for that matter – the absence of ‘doing’ in the novel’s title says as much). On his day, Kolovsky could out-metaphor anyone. Spleød realised this. He also realised that at the heart of this whole matter lay a simple truth: these writers had style, but they had not experience.

An ancient gripe, as old as time itself. But as bees still buzz, this one still bugs us. As it is, I’m not about to enter into the dusty debating chamber. At least, not directly. Instead, I remind you of Stephan Zynska’s reaction to Spleød well-worn accusation. Experience, ha! (said he, with mighty dread) – I’ll give you experience! And so the young novelist set about the task of ‘getting experience’. He lived life ‘to the full’: fast cars, fast women, bright blue cocktails, journeys through rainforests, through war zones, through coral reefs, through box factories. If there was ever anything to be done, Zynska did it. And then he wrote about, at length. At long length. And… well, what can I say? Have you ever read Spirit and the Sage? No? Well, count yourself as among the blessed. But that’s not the worst of it. Quite simply, Zynska took ‘experience’ too far. He experienced too much of it. When Spleød called for it, I doubt he was expecting this reaction. He might at least have suggested that an artist should have limits. Or should he? In any case, finding the world unused to the ‘experience’ he was looking to get, Zynska found himself in deeper and deeper water. And at last the piranhas came. And I don’t mean metaphorical ones. Zynska had indeed gone one experience too far; under the bridge and, well, into a watery grave.

A cautionary tale, perhaps. And one cannot help wondering how aware Jarni Kolovsky was of his contemporary’s imprudent rejoinder to Spleød’s common comments. For his response was markedly different: both in his choice of lifestyle and of the novel (…And I Lost) which followed on from it.

Most importantly, Kolovsky did not chase experience. He did not chase it because he knew that it was something you couldn’t chase. Experience wasn’t something you found, but something that came to you. And as it happened, the experience of being told he had no experience was, to Kolovsky’s mind, experience enough. Spleød wanted Kolovsky to work on a stronger subject – and so Kolovsky took Spleød himself as his subject. That is to say that all the professional jealousy and meanness that he had encountered after the publication of his first book was channelled into the second.

When I say ‘channelled’ I do not mean that the content was simply transferred from reality to fiction. There is always a certain amount of tinkering – self-conscious or otherwise – that goes on in-between, and in this case there was a lot. …And I Lost is not another tiresome novel about a novelist struggling to write a novel. It does, however, follow the efforts of a creative-minded individual. This individual is Yuri, a talented scientist involved in the race to build the first time-machine. Undoubted though his genius is, Yuri fails to get government funding to build his machine; corruption playing into the hands of his rival, the snake-like Viktor. He makes the machine anyway, hoping to settle the score by travelling back in time and changing the course of history. Single-handedly he hopes to quell the invasion of the Mongols, of the Germans and, most significantly, to overturn the shock defeat of the Belarusian chess supremo Stanislav Minska against the Polish champion, Tomasz Speebel in 1986.

He fails. That is to say, he manages to go back in time, but does not manage to change it. He is, fundamentally, a loser, every one of his stories ending with the obligatory three words: ‘….and I lost’. Is this the character with which Kolovsky associates himself? Someone who is always losing? Is this the fate he imagines for himself: talent and significant success tempered by over-ambitiousness and the failure of the outside world to recognise his true potential? Quite possibly it is. Though a significant step in a worthy direction, this novel did propel its author into the wilderness of obscurity. This is, by the way, why you won’t have heard of Jarni Kolovsky. Meanwhile this is why you should…

Forget the story for the moment. Not that it’s forgettable – it isn’t – but, well, just bear with me for a minute. For the really interesting thing about …And I Lost is not its story, but its style. Where are all the metaphors? Where are the extraneous sentences; the meandering digressions and decadent descriptions? Why does Kolovsky allow a female character to get through an entire novel without devoting even a paragraph to the peculiar beauty of her wrists? Even Radashenko, whose response to Spleød’s criticism was not dissimilar, was still up for the odd moment of self-indulgence. But Kolovsky was made of sterner stuff. All that mattered to him now were the bones of the narrative. He wasn’t going to dress his naked prose in flesh, let alone in flouncy clothes. Indeed, he went so far the other way that …And I Lost is almost self-indulgently dry. There is a sense of Kolovsky enjoying the fact that he is missing out on so many opportunities to cut loose and show off. And, paradoxically, this gives the novel an unexpected richness. As a black and white photograph sometimes seems to capture a moment better than a colour one, so Kolovsky’s new style – or anti-style – allows its readers to fill in the gaps for themselves (or not to fill in the gaps, as the case may be). And if this appears to contradict the role of the writer, so be it. Suffice it to say that only a loser wouldn’t find something to be loved in …And I Lost. Fans of Monkey Merely See may be disappointed, yet the final experience is not one to be underestimated. The lack of fireworks in Kolovsky’s prose can be exhilarating. The way he dispenses with adjectives and leaves the nouns there on their own – oh those pleasantly naked nouns! You wonder why we ever clothed them in adjectives in the first place. The world of naked nouns is so much more mysterious, so much more inviting. It’s an experience, I’m telling you.

But what did Spleød think? This was exactly what he’d asked for, wasn’t it? All those naked nouns… But was he pleased? Unlikely. This novel was ‘so far below him’ that he did not even bother to review it. The spareness of the sentences scared him – and a lot of other people besides. …And I Lost promptly sank, without a showy whimper. And yet I have never seen a better example of a writer responding to an accusation of a lack of experience than this. This work answered Spleød in such a way as to render the critic speechless. He could not reply, because he was not capable of replying. And sadly, though he was the true loser, Kolovsky was the actual one. This is unfortunate. Perhaps this novel doesn’t solve the ‘experience’ problem, nevertheless it does manage, at the very least, to explore it. And like I said, this is an experience worth having. Just so long as you aren’t expecting to chase your experience, but to let it come to you, not in quick-fire super-puzzling Sertin-style, but slowly and certainly, carefully and quietly, ever so surely…(oh, and without all those adjectives)
Review by Sebastian Cheraz

Further Reading:

The Kolovsky Correspondence