The Slynx

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

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

Part Dead Souls, part A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Slynx is a work that should be more widely known and acclaimed. The setting is memorable, from the rampant mutations and the bureaucracy that survived the apocalypse to the way people make a living in the blighted world. The characters are likewise great, from the main character who people take for intelligent when he is actually a fool, to the tiny ruler of this wasteland, to the chief fire keeper who holds dreams of reviving civilization. The book later delves into the power of fiction, and how the urge to protect what you care about can warp your actions to evil ends. The message that eventually takes shape is surprisingly poignant, and the use of Russian literature snippets show more throughout is also an intriguing feature. Overall I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in works of science fiction that don't follow the usual formula, and to people who want to experience a dystopian world where humor has managed to survive. show less

This book was terribly strange, hilarious, depressing, baffling, haunting; and rather masterfully done, that even the dullest and poorest of golubchiks could so apprehend; and an excellent way to round out our 2025 series of Russian literature.

I've been procrastinating for days trying to sort my thoughts out about this post-apocalyptic novel which I found brilliant and disturbing, but didn't really like. It called to mind both Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker and Gogol's Dead Souls -- in ways that I can't explicitly express since it's been years since I read either.

I was drawn in by the beginning of the book which had a folk-tale-feel to it, and I rather sympathized with the protagonist, Benedikt, a transcriber of old books in the feudalistic society that has emerged 200 years after "the Blast." In many ways the feudalism mirrors that of both czarist and communist Russia although the class divisions are a bit more grotesque. The Golubchiks, commoners and peasants, work at jobs show more assigned to them; most exhibit Consequences -- physical mutations caused by radioactivity from the Blast. Their currency and the mainstay of their diet are mice. Oldeners are survivors of the Blast, who though not immortal, never grow old beyond the age they were at the time of the Blast; Murzas are the feudal lords who never walk anywhere, but drive around in sleighs pulled by Degenerators, humans who travel on all four limbs. Then there are the dreaded Sanitaurions whose vision can pierce the darkness and who seek and round up those who suffer from Illness.

The first half of the book is taken up with Benedikt's hard-scrabble existence, his friendships, and his work at which he is delighted by many of the stories and poems which he is transcribing. The illustrator of the workshop, Olenka, the pampered daughter of a Sanitaurion who is brought to work in a sleigh, is the subject of Benedikt's romantic dreams. Fortuitously, or so it seems, she is attracted to Benedikt and they are married.

Benedikt's Father-in-Law introduces him to the arcane thought of the government and to his extensive library of oldener books -- and degeneration ensues.

While I found the book humorous, literate and exuberant, The Slynx is finally deeply pessimistic and misanthropic. show less

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

Around the same time that I was reading Murakami's nonfiction work, Underground, I also felt I could tackle a post-apocalyptic Russian novel. (I mean, what are summers for if not for some light reading, right?)

So, I have read a novella and short story collection by Tatyana Tolstaya called Sleepwalker in a Fog that I still need to get around to reviewing and I saw this novel used at Myopic Books in Chicago and picked it up. Contrary to what one might think, though, it's really not as bleak as it could be. The novel itself recalls a few fables and a more fable like writing style at some points and I really loved how the protagonist was driven mad with his incessant need to just devour books when at one point he is absolutely consumed with show more literature.

The whole premise of the book is that there was a blast and the survivors or "oldeners" live for hundreds of years and those born after are born with mutations or "consequences." There's a daily life of grunt work for many who live terrified of running into The Slynx and becoming ill from old books that may still contain radiation and trying to catch mice for eating and trading as well. There are ideas of both poetry and revolution and some unconventional humor as well. There were definitely passages that didn't strike me as funny while I read them but much more amusing in retrospect. It could be that Tolstaya planned for this to be taken as much more bleak than I actually took it but compared to other novels with similar topics, I found it to be much more whimsical overall than I had prepared myself for.

Memorable quotes:

pg. 7 "They said that in the south there's an azure sea, and in that sea there's an island, and on that island there's a tower, and in that tower there's a golden stove bed. On that bed there's a girl with long hair-one hair is gold, the next is silver, one is gold, and the next is silver. She lies there braiding her tresses, just braiding her long tresses, and as soon as she finishes the world will come to an end."

...

"There's a great river, three years' walk from here. In that river there's a fish-Blue Fin. It talks with a human voice, cries and laughs, and swims back and forth across that river. When it swims to one side and laughs, the dawn starts playing, the sun rises up in the sky, and the day comes. When it goes back, it cries, drags the darkness with it, and hauls the moon by its tail. All the stars in the sky are Blue Fin's scales."

pg. 13 "Two hundred and thirty-three years Mother lived on this earth. And she didn't grow old. They laid her in the grave just as black-haired and pink-cheeked as ever. That's the way it is: Whoever didn't croak when the Blast happened doesn't grow old after that. That's the Consequence they have. Like something in them got stuck."

pg. 77 "It's dark in winter-like someone poked your eyes out."

pg. 85 "But sometimes you don't feel like getting mad. It's like there's a sadness inside. Like you feel sorry for someone. Must be feelosophy."

pg, 89 "Something sour rose in his chest and he felt weak. IT was already dark. The middle of the day and it was evening; that's winter for you. The pale sunsetting sky, tree branches etched against it like you drew them with coals. The nests looked like tangles of hair. A rabbit flitted by. Below, the sad blue of the snow ridges, hillocks, drifts. The dilapidated black pickets of the fence sticking up like an old comb. It was still visible, but whent he sunset went out you wouldn't be able to see anything at all in the pitch dark. The stars would come out, their milky, feeble light would pour across the vault of the sky as though someone were mocking him, or didn't care, or these heavenly lights weren't meant for us...

"Benedikt signed deeply. He even heard his own sigh. There it goes again. A kind of spitting in the head again. Everything was fine: simple, clear, happy, he was full of all kinds of nice dreams, and then suddenly it was like someone came up behind him and scooped all the happiness out of his head...Like they plucked it out with a claw."

pg. 146 "And the moon in its insanity
Is reflected in your eyes, I see."

pg. 148 "You smoke, sigh, gaze off into the distance, and your head is empty. But once again visions fill it."

...

"...up above the sky shone even and yellow, smoldering its last; every now and then a swipe of pink would tint the yellow, or a gray cloud would stretch like a spindle, hang there a bit until its top would stain raspberry, flare, and be gone. Like someone was rubbing the sunset, smearing it with his fingers."

...

"Her eyes took up half her face, from under the eyebrows to the temples on the sides, dark eyes, but they sparkled like water in a barrel at midnight. And she looks straight through you with those eyes, looks like she wants to say something but never will, not for anything. She never takes her eyes off you. seems like she's going to laugh, or is waiting for a question, or like she'll start singing with her mouth closed."

pg. 171 "Why are our eyes on our forehead and not on our rear ends, right? Nature is giving us directions."

pg. 204 "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! Sometimes a kind of wordless feeling tosses and turns in the chest, pounds its fists on the door, the walls: I'm suffocating! Let me out! How can you let that feeling out, all fuzzy and naked? What words can you dress it in? We don't have any words, we don't know! Just like wild animals, or a blindlie bird, or a mermaid-no words, just a bellowing. But you open a book and there they are, fabulous flying words..."

pg. 211 "...why is it that everything keeps mutating, everything ? people, well, all right, but the language, concepts, meaning! Huh? Russia! Everything gets twisted up in knots."

pg. 238 "He grew heavier. Not even so much from food as from heavy thoughts."

pg. 249 "It's hard to stay mad when you're singing: if you open your mouth the wrong way, you'll ruin the song."

pg. 264 "From the tower you could see far away. Far away...There wasn't even a word in the language to say how far you could see from the tower! And if there was a word like that, you'd be scared to say it out loud. Oooooh, so far away! To the farthest of far, the edge to the edge, to the limit of limits, all the way to death! The round pancake of the earth, the whole heavenly vault, the entire cold December, the whole city with all its settlements, with its dark , lopsided izbas-empty and wide open, gone over with the fine-tooth comb of the Saniturions' hooks and still inhabited, still swarming with scared, senseless, stubborn life!"

pg. 273 "No more tyranny allowed! It was getting too darn fashionable!" show less