We - Yevgeny Zamyatin

   1921; 252 (includes a 20-page Introduction).  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Dystopian Fiction; Russian Lit; Banned Books.  Laurels : Prometheus Award, “Hall of Fame” category (1994).  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    It took them a millennium, along with a 200-year war that wiped out most of humanity, but civilization finally achieved the perfect society.

    There is the great Green Wall to keep the local citizens from being corrupted by nature.  Vices such as cigarettes, booze, flirting, and impersonal (and unauthorized) sex are all taboo and those caught engaging in such habits face severe punishment.  One can have multiple lovers (because, after all, everyone is equal to everyone else), but you have to register your desired partners with the authorities, and the state assigns you the nights and hours to come together.

     All citizens are required to be happy and productive, and this is primarily a fusing of perfect harmony and absolute conformity.  There is no place in society for anyone with imagination.  Every citizen has a uniform to wear, and all are assigned identifying numbers, not names.  Marching in step with other happy citizens as often as possible is strongly encouraged.

    Everyone lives in glass houses or apartments, so The Benefactor and his “Guardians” can closely monitor all the aspects of one’s daily life.  The only exception is the one hour for authorized love-making, when one is allowed to close the curtains for the specified time and not a minute longer.

    We are all so lucky to live in paradise!  And now we’re about to launch a spaceship, so that we can bring such exquisite happiness to other worlds in the universe.

What’s To Like...

    Written in 1921, We is one of the founding dystopian novels, although it is by no means the first.  Wikipedia gives that honor to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, published in 1726, and which I never regarded as dystopian.  I may have to reread that one.  Wikipedia lists another 10 or so dystopian novels that preceded We, the most famous of which is H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, published in 1895.

    Our main protagonist is D-503, who is also the chief engineer for the rocket ship project.  The reader meets less than 10 other characters, the most notable of which are O-90 (D-503’s lover), I-330, the woman who causes him to stray from his path of happiness, and of course, The Benefactor.  O-90 is a sweet and loving character, but is forbidden to bear children because she is isn't tall enough.  Genetic optimizing, and all that.

     The book is structured as a journal that D-503 keeps.  He promises to record all of his thoughts and feelings as he prepares to embark upon the great spaceflight, not realizing that his words will betray him once he starts to deviate from the collective thinking.   It is therefore told entirely from a first-person POV.  D-503 records 40 entries in all, so these “chapters” average out to be about 5 or 6 pages in length.

    I was pleasantly surprised by how powerful the writing was, particularly since the book’s original language was Russian, and something is always lost in translation.  Hats off to the translator, Mirra Ginsberg; this could not have been an easy task.  D-503 is convinced that every human situation can be examined, explained, and solved by applying mathematics to it (he’s quite enamored by the square root of minus one), and I’m sure this was a challenge to render into English.

    I was impressed by how closely a novel that was written in 1921 visualizes how a space flight will be carried out.  I also liked the brief nod to synesthesia on page 220 (“Laughter can be of different colors”), and the operation that can rid you of imagination.  The public execution carried out on pages 40-49 chilled me to the bone.  The “Hymn of the One State” reminded me of both the mandatory reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance when I was in grade school, and the Walmart company song that its employees used to have to sing at the start of each day back in the 1980’s.

    The ending is goosebumpily satisfying, although I would also add that it is the plot resolution utilized by a majority of the dystopian novels I’ve read.  This is a standalone novel, although a number of questions remain about “what happens next” at the book’s end.  I don’t believe a sequel was ever penned, either by Yevgeny Zamyatin or anyone else.

Kewlest New Word ...

Infusoria (n., plural) : minute aquatic, single-celled organisms.

Others : Plashed (v.); Antipodally (adv.).

Excerpts...

    The scissor-lips gleamed, smiled.

    “You’re in a bad way!  Apparently, you have developed a soul.”

    A soul?  That strange, ancient, long-forgotten word.  We sometimes use the words “soul-stirring”, “soulless”, but “soul”…?

    “Is it … very dangerous?” I muttered.

    “Incurable,” the scissors snapped.  (pg. 89)

    “My dear – you are a mathematician.  More – you are a philosopher, a mathematical philosopher.  Well then: name me the final number.”

    “What do you mean?  I … I don’t understand: what final number?”

    “Well, the final, the ultimate, the largest.”

    “But that’s preposterous!  If the number of numbers is infinite, how can there be a final number?”

    “Then how can there be a final revolution?  There is no final one: revolutions are infinite.  The final one is for children: children are frightened by infinity, and it’s important that children sleep peacefully at night.”  (pg. 174)

Humility is a virtue, and pride is a vice; “We” is from God, and “I” from the devil.  (pg. 128 )

     The book opens with a 20-page introduction, which gives both a short biography of Yevgeny Zamyatin (yay!) and a couple of spoilers (boo!).  I recommend taking the time to read this section, but if that’s not your reading style, then the Wikipedia bio of the author is very similar in content.

    Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884-1937) was a true revolutionary idealist, protesting and running afoul of first the Czarist regime, then the Bolshevik bigwigs when that revolution failed to live up to its promises.

    We was banned by the Communists almost as soon as it came out, and Zamyatin was essentially living under a death sentence in 1931 when somehow Stalin was persuaded to let him go into exile instead of executing him or deporting him to Siberia.

    Zamyatin relocated in France, where loneliness and privation eventually led to his death from a heart attack in 1937.  Only a handful of friends showed up for his funeral.  Perhaps Stalin “won” after all, since it is better to turn dissidents into nobodies than into martyrs.

    8½ Stars.  We was a short-but-daunting read for me, which is exactly what I was expecting.  I don’t think I can count it as a “highbrow” novel, but the fact that I read a book banned by the Soviet authorities for many years somehow makes me feel quite proud.

The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky

1869; 578 pages.  Genre : Russian Lit.; Classic Lit.  New Author? : Yes.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

    After 4 years of being treated for epilepsy in Switzerland, Prince Myshkin returns home to Mother Russia.  He has almost no money, knows no one, and has no idea how he's going to survive.  But it doesn't bother him; he will trust in the goodness of others and endure.   Whatever happens, will happen.

    What will he think of his countrymen?  And what will they think of him?

What's To Like...
    The crux of The Idiot is this : if you took a person who embodies all the Christian ideals, and plopped him down in mid-19th century Russia, what would happen?  Dostoevsky's opinion is that they would like him initially, and even confide in him because of his simplicity and lack of guile.  But ultimately they would scorn him as an idiot, and this is the author's scathing indictment of his fellow Russians.

    But Dostoevsky presents his characters so well, and makes their scorn seem so reasonable; that you can't help but see things their way as well.  And the Prince's goodness does have a small-but-positive effect on those around him.  Alas, the reverse is true as well.  The Myshkin at the end of the book has acquired a bit of a "taint", which the Myshkin at the beginning of the story didn't possess.   He is now wiser to the ways of the world, but it came at a cost.

    Dostoevsky also uses The Idiot as a vehicle to present his views on a whole slew of topics.  Here's some that I noted : Capital Punishment, Love, Gossip, Turning the other cheek, Forgiveness, Honor, Atheism, Slander, Fraud, Politics, Gun Control, Death, Charity, Suicide, Catholicism, and Jealousy.

     He creates a fascinating "anti-Myshkin" in Parfyon Ragozin, and it is enlightening to watch their interaction.  And ultimately, like a great Shakespearean play, we come to realize that a tragic ending is inevitable.

Kewlest New Word...
Charivari : A noisy mock serenade typically performed by a group of people in derision of an unpopular person or in celebration of a wedding.

Excerpts...  (and there were lots to choose from)
    "There's not one person here who is worth such words," Aglaia burst out.  "There's no one here, no one, who is worth your little finger, nor your mind, nor your heart!  You are more honourable than any of them, nobler, better, kinder, cleverer than any of them!  Some of them are not worthy to stoop to pick up the handkerchief you have just dropped... Why do you humble yourself and put yourself below them?  Why do you distort everything in yourself?  Why have you no pride?"  (pg. 319)

    There is, indeed, nothing more annoying than to be, for instance, wealthy, of good family, nice-looking, fairly intelligent, and even good-natured, and yet to have no talents, no special faculty, no peculiarity even, not one idea of one's own, to be precisely 'like other people'.  To have a fortune, but not the wealth of a Rothschild; to be of an honourably family, but one which has never distinguished itself in any way; to have a pleasing appearance expressive of nothing in particular; to have a decent education, but to have no idea what use to make of it; to have intelligence, but no ideas of one's own; to have a good heart, but without any greatness of soul; and so on and so on.  There is an extraordinary multitude of such people in the world, far more than appears.  (pg. 431)

"Better be unhappy and know the truth, than be happy and live like a fool."  (pg. 487)
    This is Russian Lit - it's long; every character has two names; it's a difficult read; and there's a lot of drama and not much action.  You have to accept those things going is, and read it a bit at a time.  For me, 15-30 pages per sitting seemed right; and it took me a month to get through The Idiot.  But I found it to be a masterpiece.

    Dostoevsky's question - would a righteous person survive in a decadent society - can be applied to modern-day America as well.  One wonders if the USA today is like 1869 Russia - a half-century away from a thoroughly corrupt 1% being forcibly overthrown by a 99% that's poor and getting poorer, and without any hope for improvement of their lot.  9 Stars.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

1962 (Russian); 1963 (English).  139 pages.  Genre : Russian Lit.  New Author? : Yes.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

    The title says it all - the story is simply a single day in the life of a Russian prisoner serving a 10-year sentence at a Stalinist gulag in Siberia.  His crime?  Escaping from the Germans as a POW during World War 2.  The Russians suspect he is a spy for the Nazis.

What's To Like...
     The day is an ordinary one. There is no daring escape or dramatic confrontation.  The greatest excitement consists of smuggling a stub of a hacksaw blade into the campground.  Yet this is a powerful story (and probably more so in its original Russian) that will open your eyes to man's inhumanity to man.

  You will spend about 18 hours total with Ivan Denisovich Shukhov.  You will feel his hunger and his exhaustion.  You will rejoice over a pittance of food; you will freeze to the bone in the Siberian winter; you will ache from back-breaking labor.  But you will survive.  Because if you can survive one day, you can survive 3,650 days (his 10-year sentence).  Plus three more days for leap years.

    Not every prisoner makes it.  You must learn when to grovel, who to kiss up to, how to fool the guards, how to get extra food, when to share, and when to hoard.  Most of all, you must learn how to psychologically deal with your fate.  These lessons must be re-learned every day.

Excerpts...
    Work was like a stick.  It had two ends.  When you worked for the knowing you gave them quality; when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eyewash.
    Otherwise, everybody would have croaked long ago.  They all knew that.  (pg. 12)

    They sat in the cold mess hall, most of them eating with their hats on, eating slowly, picking out putrid little fish from under the leaves of boiled black cabbage and spitting the bones out on the table.  When the bones formed a heap and it was the turn of another squad, someone would sweep them off and they'd be trodden into a mush on the floor.  But it was considered bad manners to spit the fishbones straight out on the floor.  (pg. 13)

    Who is the zek's main enemy?  Another zek.  If only they weren't at odds with one another - ah, what a difference that'd make!  (pg. 101.  "Zek" is an abbreviation of Russian for prisoner.)

Scrape through today somehow and hope for tomorrow.  (pg. 69)
   One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a riveting story, made all the more believable because it is such an ordinary day.  But its importance extends beyond the literary world - its publication was a milestone in Soviet history as well.  Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a gulag survivor, and this book was the first one dealing with the gulags that the Soviet government (specifically Nikita Khrushchev) allowed to be printed in the USSR.

    Overnight, it changed the psyche of the Russian people.  Stalinist repression was dealt a mortal blow.  To quote Khrushchev :
    "It is our duty to gain a thorough  and comprehensive understanding of the nature of the matters related to the abuse of power.  Time will pass and we shall die, we are all mortal, but so long as we work we can and must clear up many points and tell the truth to the Party and to the people. ...  This we must do so that such things never happen again."

    ODITLOID is a short, powerful, sometimes painful piece of Russian literature that just might touch your very soul.  At 139 pages, what have you got to lose?  9½ Stars.