A Romance with Cocaine

A Romance with Cocaine

By M. Ageyev 

Translated by Hugh Aplin

Hesperus Press, 2009

ISBN: 9781843914327 

A good novel should open up at least one wound in memory.

This enigmatic effort, first fully published in Paris in 1936, does the job perfectly.

It is enigmatic in several respects.  For one thing, the identity of the author – it had long been known that M. Ageyev was a pseudonym – was only established in 1997.  Mark Levi (1898-1973) wrote it and, his evident accomplishments as a writer notwithstanding, he apparently wrote little else.  Then again, cocaine makes its entrance only two thirds of the way in; it is a prominent aspect of the novel, but by no means central to it.

 A Romance with Cocaine is a novel that’s all about the pitiful life of a certain Vadim Maslennikov, sixteen years old when we meet him, perhaps a decade older when we take our leave.  He is ashamed of his mother and will go out of his way to disown her.  When hooked on cocaine, he’ll steal from her to feed his habit.

What is remarkable about the novel overall is Vadim’s honesty with regard to his unpleasant, vacuous character and behaviour.  His self-awareness and analysis of his weaknesses is evident.  But he is unable to make that change.  Somehow he’s willing to just limp along, playing the poor relation to his richer, more powerful ex-school friends.

As a portrait of adolescence there’s a grit of authenticity such as you find also in The Devil in the Flesh and The Bold Saboteurs.  Here’s one nugget I like, which I’d adjudge worthy of Radiguet:

That morning I involuntarily and for the first time came up against that amazing and invincible certainty that I could not possibly be liked by, or attractive to the person that I loved the way that I actually am.  (75)

Man, Vadim makes some wrong choices here, neglecting what’s most important.  We’ve all done that, mind: those wounds in memory start to open up again…

The publisher’s description of the book can be read here.

The Tales of Belkin by Alexander Pushkin

The Tales of Belkin
By Alexander Pushkin
Translated by Hugh Aplin
Foreword by Adam Thirlwell
Hesperus Press, September 2009
ISBN-13: 978-1843911852

For this volume, Pushkin invented an author (a certain Ivan Petrovich Belkin) who has apparently written the five stories herein.

It is not the case that Belkin is an alter ego or heteronym of Pushkin, as say a reader or student of Fernando Pessoa would understand the matter.  At least, that is not my take on it.

Belkin is simply a persona that allows Pushkin to parody and wryly explore the conventions of storytelling.  He is playing something of the same game that Italo Calvino played in If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, and there is also a kinship to Daniil Kharms’ absurdist prose works.

Originally published in 1831, these ludic (yet insidiously compelling) yarns touch on honour, vengeance, love, duels, elopement; and in one story myriad macabre happenings that turn out in the end to be a dream…  Fairy-tale tropes are in evidence and so too is the storyteller’s familiar, Coincidence.

Another of Belkin’s efforts, a history of a village, is included along with the stories.  In this important work, the great writer as well gives an account of his literary development from epic poet to middling local historian.

‘A Fragment’ ends the book.  This very short piece (and for once ‘piece’ does not mean ‘work’, that is to say ‘whole’) describes a fictional poet, a literary figure of Pushkin’s imagination, a brother of Belkin perhaps.

One crucial thing this volume achieves is to make you realise how close Kharms is to Pushkin; a proper son of Pushkin was he.  There are some clues as to this relationship.  Kharms wrote an amusing riff called ‘Anegdotes from the Life of Pushkin’, as well as a weird little play where Pushkin and Gogol take turns falling over each other.

Both of these are well worth a read, but after you’ve read this excellent book, of course.  It has been excellently translated by Hugh Aplin and Adam Thirlwell’s foreword is chockful of insights about the writing of fiction – and about the author of the author of these tales.