Subject
Manuel Prieto's BUTTERFLIES OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE
From
Date
Body
EDITOR's NOTE. Readers of THE GIFT will recall the source of Prieto's
title.
Clarence Brown is a cartoonist, writer, and professor
emeritus of comparative literature at Princeton University.
E-mail: doctorsoup1@juno.com .
Ink Soup
02/25/01
By CLARENCE BROWN
Ink Soup
If ever there was a writer destined by his strange life and
high talent to write fiction of unclassifiable oddity, it is
Jose
Manuel Prieto. He was born in Havana in 1962 and spent
12 years of his life in the moribund Soviet Union, where he
acquired what must be near-native proficiency in Russian.
He has translated into Spanish works by Joseph Brodsky
and Anna Akhmatova -- sufficient evidence of his taste and
discernment.
His second novel, "Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian
Empire" (Grove Press, $24) came out in December. So far
as I can tell, it has gone almost unnoticed. There was one
review in the New York Times, but I have seen no other.
It is not in my view a wholly successful novel, but no
serious work of fiction with high literary ambitions should
be simply passed over in silence.
The title in Spanish was "Livadia," which is the name of a
small town on the coast of the Black Sea where much of
the action takes place. The publisher, bent on promoting it
as "combining the intellectual sophistication and luminous
prose of Nabokov with the world-view of a scion of Castro's
Cuba," probably hoped that the reference to lepidoptera in
the new name would enhance the Nabokovian aura.
Prieto himself, I should add, does what he can to summon
up remembrance of the author of "Lolita" and "Pale Fire."
Little hints that would be picked up only by adepts of the
Russian master litter his pages.
But all this turns out to have been a bad idea. Whatever
Prieto's prose is like in Spanish, the English of this
pedestrian, vulgar and clumsy translation would never
remind anyone of Nabokov's elegance and wit. (Example:
"The water came right up to it, like in a house on stilts.")
The oxymoron of the title -- butterflies are doggedly
diurnal
-- is justified by the story but is still slightly
off-putting to
those whose study of Nabokov has obliged them to be
minimally familiar with these insects.
In form the book is an epistolary novel, but in form only,
for
the "letters" never seem to be from or to anyone in
particular. Prieto demonstrates his erudition (a la Nabokov)
by copious allusions to the European epistolary tradition
from classical times to the present.
The picture of Soviet people, customs, and institutions is
dead accurate, and sadly hilarious, and provides a
plausible realistic background for a foreground story of
miasmic vagueness and weirdness. The first-person
narrator, J, is in love with a young Russian woman, V, who
works as a "nocturnal butterfly" (prostitute) in the USSR
and adjacent realms. He wants to smuggle her (sans
passport) back into her own country.
His day job is in fact smuggling and fencing the non-human
detritus, especially the military equipment, of a superpower
that has gone belly-up and is hemorrhaging war materiel.
His chief customer is a sinister Swede named Stockis,
who is mad about all the martial trinkets and surplus battle
gear (night-vision goggles, e.g.) that are to be had for a
song.
Part of Prieto's bad luck is that reality overtook him
before
his novel came out: Much of the smuggling intrigue is
blunted by the fact that there are now actual catalogs
(about which I wrote in this space on Sept. 9) from which
anyone can order this junk, including the entire uniform of
a
Soviet admiral for $995.
I won't give away more of the plot, and I hope that my sour
remarks here will not prevent your giving this ambitious
novel the chance that it has been largely and unjustly
denied in the reviewing media.
title.
Clarence Brown is a cartoonist, writer, and professor
emeritus of comparative literature at Princeton University.
E-mail: doctorsoup1@juno.com .
Ink Soup
02/25/01
By CLARENCE BROWN
Ink Soup
If ever there was a writer destined by his strange life and
high talent to write fiction of unclassifiable oddity, it is
Jose
Manuel Prieto. He was born in Havana in 1962 and spent
12 years of his life in the moribund Soviet Union, where he
acquired what must be near-native proficiency in Russian.
He has translated into Spanish works by Joseph Brodsky
and Anna Akhmatova -- sufficient evidence of his taste and
discernment.
His second novel, "Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian
Empire" (Grove Press, $24) came out in December. So far
as I can tell, it has gone almost unnoticed. There was one
review in the New York Times, but I have seen no other.
It is not in my view a wholly successful novel, but no
serious work of fiction with high literary ambitions should
be simply passed over in silence.
The title in Spanish was "Livadia," which is the name of a
small town on the coast of the Black Sea where much of
the action takes place. The publisher, bent on promoting it
as "combining the intellectual sophistication and luminous
prose of Nabokov with the world-view of a scion of Castro's
Cuba," probably hoped that the reference to lepidoptera in
the new name would enhance the Nabokovian aura.
Prieto himself, I should add, does what he can to summon
up remembrance of the author of "Lolita" and "Pale Fire."
Little hints that would be picked up only by adepts of the
Russian master litter his pages.
But all this turns out to have been a bad idea. Whatever
Prieto's prose is like in Spanish, the English of this
pedestrian, vulgar and clumsy translation would never
remind anyone of Nabokov's elegance and wit. (Example:
"The water came right up to it, like in a house on stilts.")
The oxymoron of the title -- butterflies are doggedly
diurnal
-- is justified by the story but is still slightly
off-putting to
those whose study of Nabokov has obliged them to be
minimally familiar with these insects.
In form the book is an epistolary novel, but in form only,
for
the "letters" never seem to be from or to anyone in
particular. Prieto demonstrates his erudition (a la Nabokov)
by copious allusions to the European epistolary tradition
from classical times to the present.
The picture of Soviet people, customs, and institutions is
dead accurate, and sadly hilarious, and provides a
plausible realistic background for a foreground story of
miasmic vagueness and weirdness. The first-person
narrator, J, is in love with a young Russian woman, V, who
works as a "nocturnal butterfly" (prostitute) in the USSR
and adjacent realms. He wants to smuggle her (sans
passport) back into her own country.
His day job is in fact smuggling and fencing the non-human
detritus, especially the military equipment, of a superpower
that has gone belly-up and is hemorrhaging war materiel.
His chief customer is a sinister Swede named Stockis,
who is mad about all the martial trinkets and surplus battle
gear (night-vision goggles, e.g.) that are to be had for a
song.
Part of Prieto's bad luck is that reality overtook him
before
his novel came out: Much of the smuggling intrigue is
blunted by the fact that there are now actual catalogs
(about which I wrote in this space on Sept. 9) from which
anyone can order this junk, including the entire uniform of
a
Soviet admiral for $995.
I won't give away more of the plot, and I hope that my sour
remarks here will not prevent your giving this ambitious
novel the chance that it has been largely and unjustly
denied in the reviewing media.