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Old 08-09-2009, 03:43 PM   #1
PhotoSHOPadob

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Oct 2005
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Default Tatyana Tolstaya: The Slynx
Benedikt coughed politely to interrupt.
“My life is spiritual”
“In what sense”
“I don’t eat mice”
Having worshipped at the alter of some classic black-humor-slash-absurdist fiction back in the day, I was grinning like I was getting away with something most of time reading Tatyana Tolstaya’s first novel, The Slynx. Little did I suspect when I first dipped into this contemporary Russian writer’s book that at times it would shake out fond memories of Vonnegut, Robbins, and Harris. Though associating their wordplay, sheer inventiveness and bludgeoning irony, these guys played in a much shallower end of the pool than Leo Tolstoy’s great grand niece….
This novel was an on again, off again 14 year project, started when she lived in the USA and taught at Princeton during the glasnost and perestroika years, and finished in 2000. Though I openly admit to being unread in utopian/dystopian fiction (not even 1984 oh snap), it seems as a given that books belonging to that genre are approached as line item allegories (This_______stands for That________) .. After finishing the last page of The Slynx, I searched for and read three online book reviews for the novel (something I normally don’t do) and found substantially three different interpretations of what the various “this =” in the book….my grin broadened further.
Mouse Meat.
The narrative is all Free Indirect (basically 1st person point of view that is made to sound like third person) from the protagonist, Benedict. Our 30something hero is a delightfully engaging pragmatic simpleton. In the two centuries after “The Blast” the inhabitant’s staple and currency is mice, which are eaten, made apparel and candles out of, and strings of them are the coin of the realm. Benedikt is a scribe, a copier of decrees ostensibly penned by the Ruler, Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe. Similar to Clockwork Orange there is a bastardized vocabulary that the Golubchik’s (comrades) use to describe everyday items The full review on Traces

Tolstaya will end up on my short list of '09 reading discoveries...


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Old 08-09-2009, 04:02 PM   #2
grinaJanoDant

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Default
Benedikt coughed politely to interrupt.
“My life is spiritual”
“In what sense”
“I don’t eat mice” This is such a strange and abstruse little quote. I wonder why I find this so intriguing and funny?
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