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Experiences, collected stories by Marina Vishneventskaya
Rights sold: Germany – DTV (anthology rights), France – ACTES SUD, FAYARD (anthology rights), Italy – DI RENZO, AVAGLIANO (anthology rights), Hungary – GABO (anthology rights), USA – COLORADO (anthology rights)
The problematics of female introspection reaches in Vishnevetskaya’s Experiences its climactic concentration. These unhappy allegorical stories, told in the first person, depict subsidiary and “background” characters, marginal individuals belonging to various social and age groups. The title of each novella in the book corresponds to the initials of the “narrator,” which usually remain undeciphered, and a hinting phrase about a unique experience, which she or he will be sharing with the reader. Structurally, each piece is reminiscent of a confessional monologue about a certain traumatic or healing encounter, which through the process of revelation — or overcoming of the self — construes the female identity in its completeness. Almost all of Vishnevetskaya’s descriptions of mundane experiences —grievance, hope, attraction, parting, monotony, etc. — can be summarized under one encompassing experience of “discovering the self.”
The most intense piece in this text, The Experience of Love, was lauded by critics and received prestigious awards in 2003. A paralyzed woman, dying from cancer and placed in a sanatorium by her relatives, is taping the story of her meager and ordinary biography.
The association between the masculine gaze and the feminine image, which has been the basis of various literary schemes and feminist theories, is treated in a curious way in The Experience of Not Partaking. In an ironic, detached voice the narrator describes his interaction with women as Japanese minimalism —he neither touches nor speaks to them — just exchanges glances. By casting a meticulously terrorizing gaze that forces a woman to freeze in either awe or inexplicable horror, he pulls her into an unfair game, one that she has already lost.
In Vishnevetskaya’s prose the sensitive and ineluctable experiences of separation and breakups appear as fundamental elements in constructing the female subjectivity. In The Experience of Other and The Experience of Disappearing, two completely dissimilar heroines — an old village woman, whose husband was killed years ago and who finds out that her sister’s children were conceived from him, and a young city girl who must reject her lover and whose mother’s clinical schizophrenia is a biological threat to her offspring—are going through an identical experience: the discovery of a certain void (or, psychoanalytically speaking, a trauma), which occurs at the moment of either affected or self-inflicted loss of a loved one. Moreover, the days and years that accumulate from this moment don’t ease the unwanted traumatic effects, but carve the very essence of the woman’s character. Such irreducible themes give Vishnevetskaya’s prose an edge and contemporaneity.
The black humor of The Experience of Demonstrating Grievance definitely stands out from the uniformly lyric tone of the book, enriching its stylistic qualities. The grotesqueness of the story is rendered through the ridiculously difficult process of choosing a proper dress that will emphasize the heroine’s femininity and attractiveness.
Vishnevetskaya’s Experiences — based on readership success and awards — is one of the most persuasive and compelling instances in the arena of contemporary Russian women’s prose. - Context Literary Magazine
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Sandro of Chegem, collected novellas by Fazil Iskander (1973, 1977)
Published by: Bosnia - Buybook (2007), Bulgaria - Народна култура (1967), Czech Republic - Vysehrad (1986), Estonia - Eesti raamat (1976), Loomingu (1987), France - Ledrappier (1987), Germany - Volk und Welt (1983), S. Fischer (1978, 1987, 1988, 1989), Italy - Einaudi (1998), Japan - KOKUSHO (1985, 2002), The Netherlands - deGeus (2000), Poland - Czytelnik (1976), Spain - AUTOMATICA, Sweden - AWE/Gebers (1983), Turkey - Milliyet Yayinlari (1997), UK - Cape (1983), USA - ARDIS (1981), Vintage Books (1983, 1984), NLS (1983, Braille edition), Penguin Books (1985)
This book had something of a chequered history. It is basically a collection of stories about the title character. It was first published in Novy Mir magazine in 1973. Other stories were published separately. Then it was published in book form (but with a large amount cut) in the Soviet Union in 1977. Ardis, the US publishers, published a fuller version in 1979. It was translated into English in 1983. The complete version was finally published in Russia in 1989.
The book tells a series of stories - not in chronological order - about Sandro of Chegem. It is narrated by someone who refers to him as Uncle Sandro, though not necessarily a nephew or niece. Sandro is now eighty years old and has therefore lived through both Czarist and Soviet systems. He has been a good Bolshevik, as we will see, but, like many of his fellow Abkhazians, he remains fiercely independent and Iskander/Sandro is not averse to criticising the Soviet system where he finds it wanting. More importantly for us readers, he is a lovable rogue, larger than life, always ready to stand up for himself and for his fellow Abkhazians, fiercely loyal but also always on the lookout for the main chance. The stories that Iskander tells about Sandro are generally very funny and mock his fellow men, the high and mighty and the authorities, whether Czarist or Soviet, and show the inevitable superiority of the Abkhaz people and their way of life.
Sandro has, of course, had numerous adventures and we follow many of these. Indeed, the book opens by telling us that many people have tried to kill him, all, obviously, unsuccessfully. The stories we are initially told about his brushes with death concern his love life. However, we soon see that he has had brushes with death fighting the Mensheviks for the Bolsheviks. He is not afraid of the Mensheviks nor, indeed, of anyone, and is happy to stand up to them and anyone else opposed to him. We see this even in the pre-Soviet period when the local prince has him hauled in for beating up a security guard who had the temerity to blow a raspberry (or, perhaps, fart) at him. Sandro's clever way with words and trickery not only gets him off the charge but he even manages to get himself a pair of very fine binoculars as a reward, which he will use to spy on the Mensheviks in a later story.
Sandro is often in trouble and, on one occasion, he gets off when he is sent to join a dance troupe, as he is a fine dancer. He does so well in the troupe that they entertain Stalin himself. We get to meet Stalin and Beria and, course, Sandro tries a risky dance manoeuvre which he has practised on his own but never before his fellow dancers, which very nearly gets him into trouble but, once again, his charm gets him out of trouble. This sense of invention and imagination helps his gambling friend, who is losing all his money to a rich merchant. Sandro decides to frighten the merchant by riding his horse around the room where the two are gambling and even jumps his horse over the table. The merchant is so put out that he starts to lose and his friend, an Armenian tobacco dealer, wins. It does not help as the Mensheviks will drive him out. Iskander has apparently said that he does not like Latin American magic realism but he is not averse to using a touch of it in this book. He resorts frequently to Abkhazian lore and legend and this naturally includes an element of magic. We see this in a story about a prayer tree, which seems to tell Sandro's father to join the local collective, which he does. When the tree is partially burned (at the orders of the local Soviet authorities) some human bones and a kettle mysteriously appear and disappear. We eventually get a prosaic explanation for these events.
Iskander clearly has a great gift for story telling as he keeps us amused and entertained throughout these stories. Sandro is such a wilful but lovable character that we cannot help but sympathise with all his travails and share in his triumphs. He is also a survivor, still unafraid at the age of eighty of those more powerful than him and still respected and feared by all and sundry. Iskander wrote most of his stories in Russian, so they are all readily accessible and, fortunately, quite a few are available in English and well worth reading.
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