Monday, July 16, 2007
PAVIC
I am of more than one opinion regarding Serbian writer Milorad Pavic; his masterwork, Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel, was a chic bit of literary weirdness that came to the U.S. in the late Eighties to puzzled acclaim. It was a kind of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure with grander ambitions, a supposed cross-referenced dictonary of the Khazar people and their examination of the Three Monotheistic Religions, starting in the Middle Ages and running up to the present day, written in entries identified as Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. The book deserves praise, not just for its original format, but for its striking language. But it is so clever and original that it comes across as partly obnoxious, and the interviews with the man don't help.
Pavic obviously doesn't see the world as the rest of us do, and this could be a God-given blessing or a tiresome pose. His comes across as one of those European intellectuals lurking through a 1950s American film. You almost expect Gene Kelly or Rock Hudson to show up and put a stop to such yammerings as "The closer we get to something that we are afraid of, the closer we approach the best. Fear leads us to excess, real excess. This is where one can find the truth," which sounds like something you'd say to a liberal-arts co-ed to get into her capris.
But if it is a pose, Pavic has played the part with brio and consistency, refusing to drop the act even when his home nation descended into war. He also illustrates a point about poetry and myth: An author can get away with books written in fantastic language, containing otherworldly events, as long as he grounds it in the history of a little-understood ethnic group. Anyway, as odd as his prose gets, it's never uncomfortable or unreadable. Take a look at some stories he's put on the Web, and his latest book (I think that's what it is).
I am of more than one opinion regarding Serbian writer Milorad Pavic; his masterwork, Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel, was a chic bit of literary weirdness that came to the U.S. in the late Eighties to puzzled acclaim. It was a kind of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure with grander ambitions, a supposed cross-referenced dictonary of the Khazar people and their examination of the Three Monotheistic Religions, starting in the Middle Ages and running up to the present day, written in entries identified as Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. The book deserves praise, not just for its original format, but for its striking language. But it is so clever and original that it comes across as partly obnoxious, and the interviews with the man don't help.
Pavic obviously doesn't see the world as the rest of us do, and this could be a God-given blessing or a tiresome pose. His comes across as one of those European intellectuals lurking through a 1950s American film. You almost expect Gene Kelly or Rock Hudson to show up and put a stop to such yammerings as "The closer we get to something that we are afraid of, the closer we approach the best. Fear leads us to excess, real excess. This is where one can find the truth," which sounds like something you'd say to a liberal-arts co-ed to get into her capris.
But if it is a pose, Pavic has played the part with brio and consistency, refusing to drop the act even when his home nation descended into war. He also illustrates a point about poetry and myth: An author can get away with books written in fantastic language, containing otherworldly events, as long as he grounds it in the history of a little-understood ethnic group. Anyway, as odd as his prose gets, it's never uncomfortable or unreadable. Take a look at some stories he's put on the Web, and his latest book (I think that's what it is).
# posted by toner_low @ 9:46 PM 
