Hi everyone, apologies for the sudden radio silence of the last few weeks. I’m preparing for an exam and cloud characteristics are taking all of my computing power, as well as all of my available time 😉 This situation should be remedied in the next couple of weeks, when I hopefully sit and pass the exam. But till then, I’ll be scarce in the blogosphere, not posting much or visiting much. I’m alive, though, and kicking – just in a different direction ;).
Now, then, onto today’s real topic – Kawabata’s intriguing mix of fact and fiction, a reportage turned into a meditation on cultural change turned into a dirge for the past. I’ll be usin my GR review as the foundation, and I’ll be adding a thought here and there, to explain my admittedly short and slightly whimsical initial impression.
Seven Surrenders is the second installment in Ada Palmer’s acclaimed Terra Ignota series, following immediately after the events depicted in Too Like the Lightning. Spanning only a couple of days, it’s packed with pivotal events, heightened emotions, and operatic drama. As its predecessor, it tries to say something meaningful about utilitarianism and religion, about gender and sex and war, maybe about determinism and free will as well. It saddens me to report that this time around, however, it failed on all fronts – at least for me.
I’ll be frank, and succinct. I did not enjoy reading this novel. I still can’t believe it was only 365 pages – it sure felt much, much longer. The reading was a chore, and at least twice, after some particularly melodramatic reveals, I was ready to DNF it. I didn’t, and I’m glad I persevered, because I feel Palmer’s ambition deserves to be read and talked about. But the sheer amount of improbability, both psychological and physical, the overabundance of coincidences and twists of fate, didn’t feel like proving the existence of Providence – only like lazy writing. I guess Palmer’s 18th century hangup, while arguably charming, has some very serious drawbacks – the main being that philosophy, and social sciences, not to mention science, have developed significantly since that time, and no amount of secret brainwashing sects ruling the world can change that. It’s not a criticism aimed solely at Palmer – much of our modern SF literature seems to be more obsessed with the past than with what will come next, populating humanity’s future with artefacts from humanity’s history.
What review would be better to start the month of March with than a review of March’s End? Polansky’s new book offers his trademark blend of gritty realism and fantastic flights of fancy. It’s casually cruel, in love with the melody of its own language, melancholy and tender at times, but mostly, and always – beautifully, clinically detached.
Polansky is sharp. All sharp edges, short witty remarks, quick, astute observations. I do wonder if he fences; those books of his that I have read certainly remind me of fencing – finding the opponent’s weak spot and lunging, without hesitation or remorse. There is certain urgency in his writing, a particular blend of ruthlessness and vulnerability that demands to be read. I enjoy it; it is rather unique in our times of effusive wordy diarrhoea, of sickly sweetness and hand-holding, back-patting cosiness and hidden feelings of authorial superiority. Yup, Polanski is none of those things, thank goodness. His unique second-person-perspective narrative in The Seventh Perfectionmade that book one of my favourites of 2020, but March’s End is closer in theme and mood to the novella The Builders.
Whew, what a month! I finished two lengthy manga series this February – Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist spanning 27 volumes and Kishimoto’s 72 volume-long Naruto. A month of goodbyes! It’s a bittersweet experience, to close the cover on the characters whose adventures I’ve been following for almost two years. As I did with my reviews for Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and, to a lesser extent, Yotsuba&!, I will start with a quick general summary of my reading experience and then dive into short snappy reviews of each volume written right after I had read it – in other words, I will lift my reviews from GR ;).
Last year I decided not to read Russian authors. I had good reasons, and not just anti-Russian ones, the biggest was to concentrate on Ukrainian perspective, not only on the present conflict, but on history and culture as well. It went beyond that. I also read up on Ukrainian perspective on Polish history, although admittedly I was moving in that direction for years. I’m just not a Polish nationalist I was in my early teens. Then I deepened my perspective in another direction as well, and thanks to Twitter! Mixed within discussions there, discussions on Russian colonialism and Russian attempts to subjugate Ukraine not only on political level, but to negate the existence of Ukrainians as a nation with distinct culture, are voices of other victims or Russian imperialism. The ones that caught my attention the most are from Caucasus, and increasingly from Central Asia, from all the “-stans” I’m ashamed to admit I know very little about. Big slaughters of indigenous peoples that somehow are rarely mentioned by vocal anti-imperialists around the world, cultural genocides, brutal policy of destroying all things local and enforcing those coming from the Moscovite centre. There was a genocide of Qazaqs that killed even bigger part of that nation that Holodomor killed of Ukrainians, and it happened a few years earlier. And many genocides before, in Tsarist times. The current war gives strength to many people all around to remember that, and to move away from russkiy mir. One of the great symbols might be Yurts of Invincibility funded by Qazaqs in Ukraine, and the fact that Qazaqstan moves away from the Cyrillic alphabet and is going to start to use the Latin one. It took decades after the fall of the Soviet Empire, and favourable geopolitical situation, to move beyond simply drawing the borders, now the post-Soviet world wants to de-russify. That’s hugely important and must be supported.
Not an easy thing to do when most of the Western people that know anything about these parts of the world learn about them through Russian perspective. Russian books, visits to Moscow and Saint-Petersburg… and even if they see the brutality and injustice, they are often unable to see that it’s not something internal to an essentially Russian world (with some regional differences), but a colonial, imperial endeavour of the biggest old-style empire left. One great, self-aware text about that from an American specializing in Russian lit I found recently in The New Yorker, by Elif Batuman.
In short, if you’re capable of understanding that Ireland, and even Scotland – aren’t England, please understand that Russia is not as big as its borders might suggest, and definitely have no justification for further expansion.
But that’s too long and I haven’t even started my introduction to the book of the day. I give you:
Author: Vasily Grossman Title: Life and Fate Pages: 912
Re-enchantment Of The World 