Joseph BrodskySelected Poems, 1968–1996Joseph BrodskyLess Than OneJoseph BrodskyOn Grief and Reason

Abstract

ostensibly referring to his lack of preparation for graduate school, for Wallace, it is a code for his lack of whiteness. Over the course of the weekend, Wallace begins a sexual liaison with his friend Miller, who insists that he is straight but is equally attracted to Wallace. In the course of their intimacy both Wallace and Miller reveal their traumatic pasts: Wallace’s early experience of sexual molestation, the deep-seated homophobia and abandonment by his parents , and Miller’s history of violent rage. The novel ends with profound uncertainty for Wallace and his future. The last chapter is a throwback to the innocent optimism of his early days in Madison, a day spent sailing on the lake and gathering by a bonfire to toast to their new life. For Wallace, the allure of this life of the mind and a place to fashion his own identity is still haunting. There are moments of genuine community, as with Wallace’s friendship with Brigit, but on the whole Taylor portrays the continuing marginality of Black queer lives in institutions of academic prestige. Lopamudra Basu University of Wisconsin–Stout Ayfer Tunç The Highly Unreliable Account of the History of a Madhouse Trans. Feyza Howell. London. Istros Books. 2020. 372 pages. IMAGINE A LARGE building facing the rough waters of the Black Sea: a mental health hospital. Now imagine that same large building not quite facing the rough waters of the Black Sea, because there are no windows on the side that overlooks the actual sea. Such absurdity, which is very much reminiscent of the mentality humorously related to that particular region in Turkey, is key to the narrative of The Highly Unreliable Account of the History of a Madhouse . With its back turned to the Black Sea, “evok[ing] an immediate and inexplicable sense of resentment,” this mental hospital in northern Turkey is the starting point of “the highly unreliable,” quite enjoyable, and rhythmically fast-paced account of the country. As the threads of the narrative weave in and out and stitch the stories of its many characters together, the omniscient narrator’s gaze travels through various cities and towns and moves back and forth in time. Yet it always comes back to the madhouse only to set out again on another narrative tangent. The Highly Unreliable Account of the History of a Madhouse represents the “human landscapes” of Ayfer Tunç’s Turkey, not quite the romantic epic that Nâzım Hikmet’s magnum opus is, but in style and tone, very much fitting her milieu and zeitgeist the way Hikmet’s did his own era. The novel opens on Valentine’s Day with the introduction of the first character, Ülkü Birinci, “an associate professor of psychology at an undistinguished private Istanbul university,” about to give a lecture entitled “Love: Self-sacrifice or Self-preservation?” at the hospital’s conference hall. While this opening is suggestive of a campus-novel storyline, it soon becomes clear that the narrative not only crosses time and space Books in Review JOSEPH BRODSKY Joseph Brodsky Selected Poems, 1968–1996 New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2020. 174 pages. Less Than One New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2020 (©1986). 501 pages. On Grief and Reason New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2020 (©1995). 484 pages. THE REISSUE THIS YEAR of a number of Joseph Brodsky’s works, to coincide with what would have been his eightieth birthday, could not have come at a more critical time. Before Brodsky’s arrival in the United States in 1972, the poet had passed through many of the shadowy depths that the twentieth century had to offer: wartime evacuation from Leningrad under the siege; arrests and forced “treatments” in Russian psychiatric wards; surveillance and harassment by the KGB; and transport in a prison train (the infamous Stolypin boxcar) on his way to internal exile after a trial based on trumped-up charges for “parasitism.” Due to the courageous efforts of friends, such as the journalist Frida Vigdorova, who compiled a transcript of his trial proceedings that was circulated abroad, his case became known in the West, which facilitated his release from internal exile and, six years later, his...