The Slynx

The Slynx is a dystopian satire from post-Soviet Russia, crackling with astute insight and agile inventiveness. Tolstaya tells the story of Benedikt (a common Golubchik employed as a scribe in the Work Izba, until he accidentally marries up the social ladder) with the same fatalism and black humor that her characters deploy as a day-to-day survival strategy. Hilarity is but a stutter-step away from gloom. Like the best fiction, The Slynx contains multitudes: it is about literature and language, the uses of history, village politics as a reflection of the human condition, and our willing but often half-hearted devotion to habitual delusions. Tolstaya suspects with some of us that not everything is as it seems, and she stokes the show more existential dread by making us wonder what living is a euphemism for. Maybe we're all Russians now. show less

The beast in the woods is enough to reassure the Golubchiks that they are lucky to enjoy civilization—even the diminished post-apocalyptic kind—but Oldenbooks stashed away in buckets and barns and beneath floorboards seem to suggest a vague alternative to the propaganda of everyday life. A satirical allegory set in future Russia, The Slynx is complex fun, hopeful and hilarious and glum in all the right real places. Brilliant, really.

It couldn’t have been clearer, but he hadn’t understood. And he hadn’t understood Illness, goodness knows what he thought. But Illness is in people’s heads, Illness is human ignorance, stupidity, Freethinking, dimwittedness, it’s when they think “Oh, well, who cares, it doesn’t matter, mice show more and books can live in the same izba.” Jeez! A book in the same izba as a mouse! Horrible even to think about it.

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Oh how I wish I knew Pushkin before reading this! No doubt there are many rich references, but I got enough to know this is an excellent work. Even putting aside the commentary on Russia's history and intellectual peculiarities, this book has solid character development, a well-drawn setting, and an intriguing plot. Anyone who loves "books about books" will find a lot to love, I think.

Yes, the story. It is hundreds of years after the Blast in what was once known as Russia. Civilization has gone extremely retrograde. Those who lived during the Blast, known as the Oldeners, were perhaps the most doomed, because while they did not grow old and die, they had to live with the memories of what was no more. The population born after the Blast show more lives with mutations, called Consequences, but the principle character of our story does not seem to have one. No, Benedikt is well-formed, and he has a good job as a scribe, copying the books of wisdom authored by Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe, who gives the people all their literary and technology inventions, declares holidays, and decides other important matters. This book is a story of Benedikt's coming of age (although at 30), the dangers of Freethinking and feelosiphy and the Oldenprint books which carry the Illness, and always watching behind you, the Slynx! Benedikt is clever; he knows how to plan and catch lots of mice, but his cleverness and his good looks get him into trouble.

The dialog and setting are charming, and the psychology is well-done. Unlike so many books trying to make a point, this one succeeds at telling a good story in the process. I highly recommend it. show less

Do you like zany, hallucinatory prose? I don't, I'm a big partisan of Realism, Magical or straight up, but I read this novel anyway. Set hundreds of years after a nuclear holocaust in a village in a spot that used to be Moscow, people have built a social order based on mice and tyranny. Oldeners have survived the blast, which rendered them immune from natural death, but they do nothing useful, just wait around for society to evolve and engage in old arguments. People born since have a variety of radiation- related Consequences, and never understand what the Oldeners are talking about. Cultural memory has suffered a complete break.

Benedikt, our hero, is a simple Golubchik who has a fortuitous marriage into a powerful family and through show more this means comes into contact with books from the pre-nuclear blast. He falls head over heels for them and reads through the whole library of thousands of surviving volumes.

But lest you think all this reading elevates or improves Benedikt... no. Lacking all the cultural memory needed to place these works in context, they are just collections of words. There is no difference between a Brothers Karamazov and an issue of a knitting journal.

So it is clear then that books, ripped clear away from their cultural context, no longer function for the cause they originally sprung out of. Here I feel for Benedikt, as I think I as an American reader of Tolstaya's novel share a degree of trouble with him. The novel, in the midst of its inventive flights of prose, frequently references Russian poetry and touchstones I don't know, and the whole thing can be seen as a satire of Russian society from feudal through Soviet times, of which I only have the average piddling understanding of a member of the educated American masses. I no doubt missed a lot that an educated Russian wouldn't. show less

Tatyana Tolstaya's The Slynx is a jewel among the list of classics published by New York Review Books, a post-apocalyptic satire taking place two hundred years after “the Blast” in what was the city of Moscow. Human society has reverted to a state more primitive than a village in the darkest age of medieval, dark-age Europe. And that’s understatement - mice provide the main diet and are used for barter and trade; fire is a source of magic forcing people to rely on “stokers” to keep their stoves going; strong taboos and prohibitions surround writing and books.

Life from end to end is filthy and brutish – even some of the population serve as beasts of burden while others born following the Blast have all sorts of bodily show more deformations: gills, one eye, cockscombs, nostrils growing out of their knees, webs between fingers, long tails, claws instead of feet. Not exactly the stuff of Madison Avenue.

The novel’s main character is Benedikt, a young man who is, as the saying goes, not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Among those Benedikt deals with are some Olderners, that is, people who survived the Blast and miraculously continue living for hundreds of years. I suppose one can infer such longevity is the result of direct exposure to the aftereffects of the Blast.

Benedickt’s mother was one such Olderner, a woman who would still be alive if she hasn’t been poisoned by a nebulous something or other, perhaps a critter, known as a fireling. Poor mum, she pined over the loss of those pre-Blast days where she could visit deportment stores and booticks - and, yes, such bending of language runs through the entire novel. Jamey Gambrell deserves special praise for her English translation from the Russian in what must have been one of her most challenging projects.

All in all, a peculiar, highly original work of fiction having more than a little in common with Russian absurdist author Daniil Kharms. For those unfamiliar with Kharms, he wrote a story where a man not only loses his handkerchief, hat, jacket and boots but also loses himself. One of his plays features Pushkin and Gogol who do nothing but repeatedly trip and fall over each other and another play with several characters running out on stage one at a time only to vomit followed by a young girl telling the audience they might as well go home since all the actors are sick.

So, we may ask, why did Tatyana Tolstaya, granddaughter of Aleksei Tolstoy and grandniece of Leo Tolstoy, author of two previous collections of lyrical, poetic short stories, spend four years (1996-2000) devoting herself to writing a three hundred page wacky dystopian novel?

One reasonable answer is such a tale gave Ms. Tolstaya a broad literary canvas to make sharp, penetrating observations on the nature of language, art and literature, particularly in the context of her own country’s history. Additionally, a reader can sense elements of Russian folktales popping up now and again. But, let me underscore, on the level of sheer storytelling The Slynx is highly entertaining, a lively humdinger featuring all flavors of screwy high jinx. To take one small example, someone's chickens go mad, start to talk like people and lay big, creepy-looking eggs.

The many references to literature and the arts are among the most fascinating parts of the novel. Here are a few of my favorites:

There’s Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe, a puffed up leader who feeds the population heaps of lies and other assorted crap. Among the long list, he claims to be the author of all sorts of poetry and prose, the work of Pushkin in particular, and even decides to write a shoppinghower and calls it The World as Will and Idea. He goes on to say art for art sake is no good since art should be connected to life. Oh, my, with this statement, we hear echoes of Leo Tolstoy’s famous What is Art?. A number of characters attempt to address questions revolving around the purpose and nature of writing and the arts.

One of the Oldeners, Nikita Ivanich, the Head Stoker, makes his presence felt throughout the tale. Old Nikita (I couldn’t help but think of Khrushchev) says he wants to keep memory alive and hopes for a spiritual runnysauce (his word for renaissance). Old Nikita’s notions of art are linked with improving morals. Yet again another dimension explored within The Slynx.

Meanwhile Benedikt’s marriage gives him access to his father-in-law’s library where he can immerse himself in books. At one point he observes: “You read, move your lips, figure out the words, and it’s like you’re in two places at the same time: you’re sitting or lying with your legs curled up, your hands groping in the bowl, but you can see different worlds, far-off worlds that maybe never existed but still seem real. You run or sail or race in a sleigh – you’re running away from someone, or you yourself have decided to attack – your heart thumps, life flies by, and it’s wondrous: you can live as many different lives as there are books to read.”

Fantastic! Even someone like Benedikt who isn’t exactly scholar material (he thinks The Gingerbread Man is a scary story since the fox eats the Gingerbread Man in the end) can enlarge their imagination and multiply mental vistas. It might be claimed Benedict uses literature primarily as an escape rather than other, more profound reasons to engage with books and ideas, but who knows where even Benedikt’s escapism might lead since tapping the imagination can open up so many worlds.

Imagination brings us to the Slynx. Beware! Old people say, “The Slynx sits on dark branches and howls a wild, sad howl - eeeeennxx, eeeeennxx, eenx-a-leeeeeeennxx! - but no one ever sees it.” The Slynx will bite you, take away your reason and make you go crazy and then you’ll just die.

What can the Slynx represent? Is it the destructive animal side of the novel’s men and women with their tails and claws? Or, is the Slynx the power of imagination and mythmaking that grabs us so we can undergo the needed death and transformation that will empower us become more complete selves? As Charles Bukowski said, “You have to die a few times before you can really live.”

The Slynx as the creature that sets our imagination on fire, in this case the very novel we are reading. Personally, above all others, I favor this interpretation - The Slynx is the Slynx.

Special thanks to my Goodreads friends Jeffrey Keeten and MJ Nicholls for their glowing reviews that prompted me to give The Slynx a whirl.



“You, Book! You are the only one who won't deceive, won't attack, won't insult, won't abandon! You're quiet - but you laugh, shout, and sing: you're obedient - but you amaze, tease, and entice; you're small, but you contain countless peoples. Nothing but a handful of letters, that's all, but if you feel like it, you can turn heads, confuse, spin, cloud, make tears spring to the eyes, take away the breath, the entire soul will stir in the wind like a canvas, will rise in waves and flap its wings!”
― Tatyana Tolstaya, The Slynx show less

Let him stand there strong and safe, his legs in chains, head in the clouds, his face to the south, to the endless steppe, to the far-off dark blue seas.

I am absolutely convinced that everyone must read this book. Unfortunately, unlike that other book I said the same of, [book:Les Misérables|24280], I have no great moral undertakings or social justice to spur readers forward with. No musical either. Not even a movie. Instead, I have an old review, a few big name references, and ah yes. Logos. Lots of that, as per usual.

By the way, the ‘old’ review is a little more than two years in longevity, and is the type of construct that doesn’t astound me, per se, as much as give me the feeling of, huh. Younger self wasn’t as nearly as show more lost or confused or failing in general as I thought. Good job, younger self. I can still feel you in there, somewhere, much as Benedikt near the end of the book still has the essence of Benedikt at the beginning of the book. I do hope my evolving into my current self wasn’t nearly as, well, how did you put it, younger self.

...the progression the main character goes from man to monster. 1984 has nothing on how easily he slips into the mindset of what he fears above all else…the transition beautiful in its slick descent…

Let me reiterate: good job, younger self.

The mention of 1984 reminds me that there is a book here waiting patiently to slynx its way into future brains and diabolical temperaments of the literature kind, so let’s get some of the standard dry stuff out of the way, shall we, in the form of stating that this is a Russian dystopic novel. I’m going to let that simmer while I expound on what that actually means for us, the readers, during our journey through said novel, a novel so subsumed in the mind of the character, the character so melded with their world, the world so saturated in that feeling of, yes, this is life after the destruction when the wisps of culture flurrying down are starting to collide with the aborted imaginative risings of the populace, that you have to wonder where Tatyana Tolstaya got that time machine, and more importantly, how the hell she made her way back in both time and prose.

Although the truth of the matter is, you take one look at said Benedikt character, the star of this post-apocalyptic tragi-comedy as only the Russians can write them, and you know it’s all the author. As put by younger self:

It is much more concerned with the mentality of the populace, the complete ignorance and great practicality the denizens of this fallout zone are capable of.

Too true. And this practicality does not include putting the mind down with pen with any measure of accuracy or skill. However, I wish to add that Benedikt is a special type, prone in his words to being ‘newrottick’ and an especial victim of ‘feelosophy’, where all the raucously hilarious ignorance and practicality cannot save him when his mind, ever grasping onto reality with conjectures and explanations and densely woven meanderings of thought, begins to shiver in the dark under an eye unseen. Fear is the price of imagination, and Benedikt has been cursed to wander a realm where esoteric political discussions trickle down through the mouths of radiation-stricken immortals, culture has schizophrenicked into scraps and bits of precious knowledge that where not lost are laughably, horribly misunderstood, and the only solution to the excess of imagination is a book.

This book. This book describes the addiction to literature I have in excruciating detail. It makes me appreciate the wealth of knowledge I have in comparison to the main character, for what is reading if you don't understand it?

Indeed, younger self. Indeed. For Benedikt is not only driven by the tentacles of his neurons towards an item that his civilization has the most complex relations with of any object (someone along the line read 1984 and began to fear Freethinking and all its delicious growths, also known as the Illness, more deadly than radioactivity and guaranteed to get you ‘treatment’), there’s a good chance he has photographic memory. For him, a book is as good as a shot of the purest cocaine, as easily reused once the silt has slipped the vein and bounded amongst the blood, and far, far less easy to replenish. When he has it, he has all the abject lack of caring of the mentality most indebted to Brave New World, and reality fades to a speck in the corner of that lack. When he doesn’t, oh. As said previously, 1984 cannot even begin to compare.

And in the words of Benedikt, mor-allity? He knows the Law of Everyone’s a Thief, he knows the Comedic Game of Broken Limbs and Injuries Stopping Short at Death, he knows the Governmental Approach to Dirty, Grimy Golbuchiks with books, precious books hidden away in their dank and filthy izbas, sitting, molding, rotting, handled by ignorance and by fear. He functions along emotions that barely register in his mind and thought patterns that strain at genius with the tools of a haphazard enlightenment that has only a decrepit world and blind society to work with.

But mor-allity? Can you eat it without dying? Drink it? Use it to catch mice aka staplehood of stable exchange of goods? Well then, what use is it?

Golbuchiks? Golbuchiks are ashes, entrails, dung, stove smoke, clay, and they’ll all return to clay. They’re full of dirt, candle oil, droppings, dust.
You, O Book, my pure, shining precious, my golden singing promise, my dream, a distant call—
O tender specter, happy chance,
Again I heed the ancient lore,
Again with beauty rare in stance,
You beckon from the distant shore!

Benedikt will discover just what use it is. And you, reader who has ridden along in his mind and, as a lover of books, can empathize with the slow change and maybe perhaps further along the increasingly gory path than you wished, can follow. You’ll laugh at the antics, to be sure. But there’s so much more to the tragi-comedy for a lover of literature for one such as yourself, if you can bear to look.

---

Younger self's review:

(7/5/11)

This book. This book describes the addiction to literature I have in excruciating detail. It makes me appreciate the wealth of knowledge I have in comparison to the main character, for what is reading if you don't understand it?
Also, post apocalyptic at its best. No drowning in scientific garble describing the desiccated toxic surroundings. It is much more concerned with the mentality of the populace, the complete ignorance and great practicality the denizens of this fallout zone are capable of. You never find out much of what exactly happened, but frankly, that's not what counts here.
What counts is the progression the main character goes from man to monster. 1984 has nothing on how easily he slips into the mindset of what he fears above all else, all for the sake of the written word. God forbid books be as scarce and prized as they are in this world; one could hope they were valued in the real world as much as they are in this novel, but it's frightening to consider the consequences.
In addition to the transition beautiful in its slick descent are the emotional overtones, the hilarious vulgarity juxtaposed with the overwhelming depression that surfaces every so often. It is loss conveyed at its best, despair over having lost a world of light and having to grind out an existence among the remains; worst of all being able to feel the emotion but not be able to comprehend the reason behind it.
A very good read. Will definitely get you thinking, if nothing else. show less

Well, there's nothing more dystopian than a Russian dystopia, I guess. If there's a grimmer and more gruesome future world in fiction, I haven't found it yet. Yet the story's told in a jokey and boisterous style, full of exclamation points and metaphorical elbow-nudges. This must have been a tough book to translate, and much of the satire is simply irreproducible. But the Russian love of poetry shines through, haunting this bleak tale, even as the cited poems themselves are only pale versions of their originals. I couldn't love it the way a Russian could, probably, but I did my best.