Krzhizhanovsky

Aside from having the name that is the hardest to remember, type, and pronounce, the 20th-century Ukrainian writer sigismund krzhizhanovsky (which I will henceforth and forever abbreviate as SK) has a sad life story- a writer completely suppressed by Stalin and the soviet state who had I think zero publications in his lifetime but who kept at it w almpst no hope of publication - and now has been published in English over the past few years by the intrepid New York review boos, so who wouldn't want to give this guy a chance? In part we read him to try to get an understanding of what kinds of works the Soviets suppressed, and a read through from his volume w the great title autobiography of a corpse gives a hint they weren't after him because of anything overtly political, radical, or revolutionary in his stories but to fear that he would open a new channel for soviet letters. The writers' union at that time gave stamp of approval to only those works that celebrated the life of the proletariat and the workers, so called social realism, and sk's work is the opposite - completely unreal, fantastic, and unconcerned w any life outside of that of the mind and the imagination. He's definitely in the school of Borges and Calvino- and I wish I could say he's as good as they were, a true discovery - but he's not. Once you get beyond the concept that drives his stories - a new tenant discovers in his digs a memorandum from a previous tenant, a suicide (an echo of Dostoyevsky 's notes from the underground) that gets lost in its convolutions or a man sees an image of himself in the pupils of a wo,an w whom he's having an affair and then enters her pupil and encounters her previous lovers, each given a # but that ultimately gets mired in some dated sexist trivialities. I keep trying to give so chance but keep setting his stories down disappointed and frustrated,mthoughi might try one more night of reading.



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