Autobiography of a Corpse - New York Review Books Classics | Psychological Fiction Novel | Perfect for Book Clubs & Literature Lovers

Hidden among the great Russian authors, Krzhizhanovsky appears as unique voice at the end of the Soviet Union, giving the reader surreal and thoughtful stories that capture the struggle of communism and introduce the strange characters who manage to survive the regime.Any Krzhizhanovsky story owns its absurdity and Autobiography of a Corpse has yet to be recognised as a turning point in Russian literature.I bought this book because I wanted some strange fantasy to read that is different from all the vampire and zombie stuff out there. And these stories have clever premises. It's probably my own fault for not being better educated but a reader really has to known philosophy and philosophers to understand many things in this book. The book even has a glossary in the back explaining different philosophies so I think the editors probably realized that many readers wouldn't "get it."I still think it's a pretty good book but, unless you're really up with your humanities education, some of this will fly right over your head.This is yet another example of a writer who deserved to be published in his lifetime and given the chance to offer the world more of his genius. The stories are witty intellectual romps with twists of black humor and turns of brilliant absurdity. I highly recommend it as a lost gem.If you're into Russian surrealist books, you should get this. I won't give away anything else.They're not all perfect, but most of these stories are dark, dreamlike, and often hilarious. Wonderful stuff!This author is amazing. Such a shame he isn't more well known. My favorite. Pataphorical writing at its best.Why doesn't everyone know about this book? It's strange and dark and wonderful, and truly one of the most imaginative things I've read in a while.If you think that the times had changed, think again.Having read the other three volumes of Krzhizhanovsky’s writing translated by Joanne Turnbull and published by New York Review Books, I found myself well-prepared for this volume of 11 stories. Krzhizhanovsky’s interest in philosophy is once again to the fore; also his fascination for words, even the letters from which words are formed; and in the process of transferring words from the mind of a writer to that of a reader, by way of an editor/censor and ‘drops of ink’.Having written a fairy tale, Krzhizhanovsky noted that the letters ‘peered up from the lines like gnarled black gnomes’.And who but Krzhizhanovsky would observe in the course of a fiction that ‘In various languages, ‘I’ has a changeable root, but always a short phoneme. I-ich-moi-я-ἐγᾡ-io-ego-аз’?That fiction is the title story, ‘Autobiography of a Corpse’. The autobiography is the last testament of an intending suicide. Like Krzhizhanovsky, the prospective corpse was not a native of Moscow, but had moved there from a city that was surely Kiev. (Krzhizhanovsky himself moved to Moscow from Kiev.)Writing of a period that merges Imperial Russia’s part of the First World War and the Russian Civil War that followed, the corpse-to-be reports that ‘The city in which I lived changed hands 13 times’,* and that at night trams were used to transport wounded soldiers to the city hospital. The latter tallies with the known historic fact that, when the front with the German Imperial Army was close to what is now the north-eastern extremity of the Kiev Metro system, the city’s trams were used to take the troops out to fight.‘from the very first day newspapers and rifles divided us all into those who would die (those with rifles) and those for whom they would die (those with newspapers).’‘the [men] who, having snatched a two-week furlough from death, tried in vain to be happy among the unsympathetic men for whom they were dying.’There is insight there. In a later story, ‘Postmark: Moscow’, Krzhizhanovsky openly presents his own thoughts on soldiering:‘The idea of immortality is, I maintain, indispensable to the soldier. It is easy to sacrifice this life only in exchange for that. True, to the subtle and sophisticated mind, the idea of fighting for one’s own cause, a cause which will outlive those who perish for it, may replace the idea of personal immortality. But for a landsknecht, a professional seller of his life, or for a Moscow strelets,** bound to die for someone else’s cause, that wasn’t enough.‘That’s why, hard by a barracks, wall abutting wall, a church would be built; this is why the pre-Revolutionary soldier received seventy-five kopecks plus guaranteed immortality.’In ‘Seams’, written 1927-28, we find 13 short essays on feeling invisible, inconsequential, rejected and unwanted in Moscow, and encounter the term ‘minus Moscow’, which relates to internal exile, when Soviet citizens were banned from living in certain cities. Minus Moscow, M1, was relatively mild; M3 was minus Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev; and the number of possible minuses ran all the way up to M12. Joanne Turnbull’s notes on that and much other background information are excellent.Krzhizhanovsky writes of swapping the drops of ink mentioned above for roubles, but for the most part his writing was not published in his lifetime. ‘Postmark: Moscow’, the last piece in this book, is an exception; it was published in 1925. Clearly, although not a native, and painfully aware of the lack of housing provision and overcrowding, he developed a great love of Moscow. An example of the detail that fascinated him is this:'On Maroseika Street, now wedged between tall buildings, is the little Church of St. Nicholas the Miracle Worker. A very old church: Once upon a time, when it was surrounded not by brick buildings but by maple trees, it was called Nikola v Klennikakh (Nikola in the Maples); then they cut down all the maples (1504) and built armories for the manufacture of sword blades, and the church became known as Nikola v Klinnikakh (Nikola in the Blades); and finally, when in place of the ruined armories they built a pancake house, Nikola fiddled with the letters and began calling himself Nikola v Blinnikakh (Nikola in the Pancakes). Thus the name, its letters in lockstep, carried its root through five centuries without relinquishing the rhythm (klenniki, klinniki, blinniki) and changing its sound only around the edges.'Again, Krzhizhanovsky finds interest in words and the patterns they form.There is more: ‘Yellow Coal’ (1939) foresees global warming and the political non-response rather well; ‘Bridge over the Styx’ (1931) revisits Krzhizhanovsky’s interest in Greek mythology – a toad, ‘an evacuee from the once-black waters’ of the Styx, wants to provide a bridge over the Styx from life to death, and back again – and again Krzhizhanovsky laments enmity between nations and the deaths it produces; ‘Thirty Pieces of Silver’ (1927) explores possible fictional extensions of the story of Judas throwing his 30 pieces of silver on the temple floor.All the stories, including those I have not found space to mention specifically, are of considerable interest at several levels.* In 'White Guard', Bulgakov noted 14 changes of hands, of which he personally witnessed ten.** A member of a military corps in Muscovite Russia (16th and 17th centuries).Though Krzhizhanovsky wrote these stories in the 1920s and 1930s they weren't actually published until the Soviet Union was on its last legs. It's no wonder then that he is not a well-known writer in the west. I hadn't heard of him until a few months ago.The stories in this volume are surreal, fantastic tales; they remind me of E.T.A. Hoffmann and Kafka as well as others - at times he's like Samuel Beckett. But Krzhizhanovsky has his own very distinctive style; he's obsessed with topics such as identity, especially with how it changes over time but also what it means when we say 'I' - in short I guess we can say he's an 'existentialist'. He's also interested in scientific topics (in particular psychology) and some of the stories are like science-fiction.The stories included here are a bit of a mix; a mix of styles, topics and quality as well. So I thought I'd give a rating for each story as well as a bit of a 'taster' for some of them. I should state that I read the book quite slowly and ended up re-reading some of the stories as I went. I've just re-read 'In the Pupil' before writing this review and I must say that every story that I've re-read has improved on a second reading.Anyway here goes:The title story 'Autobiography of a Corpse' (4/5): A journalist from the provinces comes to Moscow and takes a room in a boarding house. Not long after he's arrived he receives a notebook from the previous occupant who killed himself in the room. There's a lot of brilliant imagery in this story as the 'corpse' relates his existential concerns. He's concerned that his soul is seeping away drop by drop and calls this effect 'soul seepage' - brilliant! He hopes that his 'I' will seep into the new occupant's brain.I didn't really like the second story much when I first read it, but on a re-read I much preferred it. The problem is that 'In the Pupil' (4/5) does sort of lose its way about half-way through. It's about a man who falls in love with a woman and he notices a little version of himself in his lover's eye. One day he sees this little man wave to him and then disappear. The rest of the story is the little man's story of what happened. It's actually quite good but Krzhizhanovsky seems to have this habit of completely changing direction whilst telling a story, which is good, but you end up reading a different story than you started.I can't remember too much about 'Seams' but I remember thinking it was ok - so (3/5) though a re-read may change that.'The Collector of Cracks' (4/5) is really strange: An author reads a recently written fairy tale to a small group of people. The tale is about a hermit who asks God for power over cracks!...yes cracks. Anyway the tale sort of peters out but one of the listeners is a Gottfried Lovenix who is interested in cracks, but he's more interested in cracks in time rather than cracks in space. He ponders over whether time is actually continuous or discrete and is concerned that people may be flickering in and out of existence...oh he has a thing about the time 1:27 and he doesn't trust the Universe....you'll just have to read it.I liked 'The Land of Nots' (4/5) but this was probably the strangest of the stories. It concerns Adsum from the Nation of Ises who is describing the inhabitants from the Land of Nots (humans I assume) and in particular Not philosophers who shut themselves away in a darkened room to prove that they exist. They are obsessed with death - until they die that is. It's a great satire on western philosophy and then it digresses into a strange mythological story before returning, sort of, to the initial narrative. Very playful, very strange and very funny.'The Runaway Fingers' (3/5) was quite amusing. A pianist's fingers one day separate from his hand in the middle of a performance. They lead their own life before returning.I really loved 'The Unbitten Elbow' (5/5). By this point in the book I was realising that Krzhizhanovsky didn't always know how to end a story or rather they seem to just end abruptly. This one had a brilliant ending (which I won't reveal). The story is simple, but absurd: A man comes to the attention of a magazine when they send out a questionnaire with the question 'What is your goal in life?' and this man answers 'To bite my elbow'. Ha! Ha! He ends up becoming a celebrity, philosophers (Kint and Tnik) debate the ramifications of this new phenomenon. So, does he bite his elbow? You'll just have to read it.And on to the next one, 'Yellow Coal' (5/5). Again, I liked this one because it was simple, silly and worked well as a story. In short: there's an energy crisis! But not if you can harvest human spite and bile (the yellow coal)! There's a never-ending supply of that! BE ANGRY OR GO HUNGRY! The police have to arrest people that won't stop smiling, it's outrageous! But can it last?The stories sort of fizzle out from here though. 'Bridge Over Styx' and 'Thirty Pieces of Silver' were ok, so (3/5) each. But 'Postmark: Moscow' was painful to read so (1/5). It has a subtitle 'Thirteen Letters to the Provinces' and is probably an amusing read for anyone who's familiar with pre-war Moscow but for the rest of us it's just dull. I think it's a bit cruel of me to criticise Krzhizhanovsky for writing it because as far as he was concerned no-one was actually reading his stories outside of his friends and family. But I'm not sure why it was included in this collection - it's expendable.Overall this is a brilliant collection by an amazing, inventive writer. He's not polished or slick...his stories are very rough and a bit hit-or-miss but when he hits it's brilliant. In that respect he's very similar to E.T.A. Hoffmann who's one of my favourite authors. I'll definitely have to read some other material from Krzhizhanovsky.one of the re-discovered writers from 1930's soviet times -- he's not really a short story writer more a philosopher -- whereas Borges who he suggests could meld the two he can't -- perhaps its the translation some of these re-issues are are so badly translated -- any case there's better russians from the period out there and better more interesting examples of this genre like Khams for instance. disappointingThough language and expression can sometimes be heavy, this a treasure chest of thrilling flights of fancy.great to have this forgotten classic available in such a nice edition. NYRB books - better than anything English publishers can manage