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the complete review - fiction

Perverzion

by
Yuri Andrukhovych

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B+ : fairly clever mixed and wild ride

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "If occasionally so many bold leaps, sly winks, and outrageous plays on words threaten to go over the top, Andrukhovych’s relentlessly in-your-face style keeps one alert throughout his fast-paced mystery-manqué." - Michael Pinker, Review of Contemporary Fiction
  
  
• "A brilliant postmodernist tour-de-force, the novel offers a poignant exploration of the place of the contemporary Ukrainian intellectual in the global cultural order through an encounter with the Western Other. (...) Translating a complex text like this is a great challenge, and I am afraid that the book under review falls seriously short of this task. About a third of the text is comprised by fragments published earlier in literary journals and presented at public readings; these sections are well polished and are a delight to read. Sadly, the remaining two-thirds read as a rough draft that received little, if any, attention from the editorial staff" - Vitaly Chernetsky, World Literature Today

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Perverzion is ostensibly a documentary of the last days of Ukrainian poet Stanislav 'Stakh' Perfetsky in March 1993, when he was an apparent suicide in Venice. He travelled there to participate in an international seminar on: "The Post-Carnival Absurdity of the World: What is on the Horizon ?" and the bulk of the book chronicles his stay there, as well as the goings-on at the seminar.
       A Foreword and an Afterword by the 'publisher' (the guise Andrukhovych assumes in this work) frames the text, providing some perspective. The Foreword introduces the central character, the pivotal event of 11 March, and offers some explanation of the material assembled here to document what (might have) happened. The Afterword is less summing up (admitting; "considerably more of the unexplained and unclear remains than one would expect") than conclusion -- a specific conclusion suggesting that, in fact, there was no suicide.
       Much of the book does feel more like an episode in a life, rather than it's summation; the alternative ending -- that Stakh walked away -- an appropriate mysterious-dramatic exit (as opposed to the overly melodramatic finale of actual suicide).
       Perfetsky, the "Ukrainian poet and culturologist", is at the centre of the book, the material, presented in thirty-one chapters, largely focussed on him -- but there are a variety of approaches and perspectives. Perfetsky's own accounts make up a significant part of the narrative, but there are also other accounts: reports to a 'Monsignore' by those who keep an eye on Perfetsky, letters, interviews, lectures, a summary of an opera buffa, a retelling of a video-recording, a will, and the transcript of a tape recording (without the expected tell-tale splash at the end).
       Perfetsky comes from -- where else ? -- Chortopil (literally: 'Devilopolis' or 'Demonopolis', Naydan suggests in his notes), Andrukhovych's favoured Ukrainian town. The book is set in 1993, the collapse of communism still relatively new, the exchange between East and West still undergoing transformations. Perfetsky is invited to the Venetian seminar (as a representative of the C.I.S.) by the foundation La morte di Venezia, and his trip there is one into a new world (which he doesn't exactly ease into -- despite (or because of) indulging in, among other things, considerable alcoholic excess). His handlers are the young Ada Zitrone and her husband, Dr. Riesenbock, whereby Ada in particular gets very close to him -- while also reporting on him, as in some Cold War spy movie. (It should come as no surprise that Ada, too, can trace her roots back to Chortopil .....)
       The seminar makes an enjoyable backdrop, the post-carnival absurdity of the world very much on display here. (Among the most amusing bits in the novel is the schedule that Perfetsky and the other participants are sent, describing what they can expect.) Andrukhovych indulges in a great deal of playfulness, having as much fun in devising narrative strategies and approaches to presenting the story (dividing the narrative into two columns on the page, to describe one event from two perspectives ! have Ada go through Perfetsky's belongings and describe these various odds and ends ! etc., etc.) as in allowing a story to unfold. But he doesn't really mean it to unfold: it's meant to tie itself up in knots as much as it is to reveal itself. Much of this is good fun, and much is very clever, but it's a specific kind of literary pleasure that probably won't appeal to all. Still, especially in how he mixes it all up, shifting tone and approach from chapter to chapter (while also allowing certain approaches -- Perfetsky's own account, the reports to the Monsignore -- to crop up regularly) he manages to sustain the reader's interest (though occasionally almost only to see: what can he pull of next ?).
       Perfetsky has his own ambitions and agenda

     Thus will I indulge in this city. I will try to experience the hottest, the sharpest in it. I will find the most mysterious spot in it where they can't reach me. Not the carabinieri, not the police, not the devil himself.

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Links:

• Northwestern University Press publicity page
• Suhrkamp publicity page

• ForeWord (scroll down for review)
• OF Blog of the Fallen

• Yuri Andrukhovych at the Encyclopedia of Ukraine

• Дванадцять обручів
• The Moscoviad
• Recreations
• Таємниця

• See Index of Eastern European literature
• Other books from Northwestern University Press - Writings from an Unbound Europe under review

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About the Author:

       Ukrainian author Yuri Andrukhovych (Juri Andruchowytsch, Юрій Андрухович) was born in 1960.

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© 2006-2019 the complete review

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