Russian Postmodernist Fiction: Dialogue with Chaos by Mark s> Lipovetsky Eliot Borenstein (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 735 Lipovetsky, Mark. RussianPostmodernist Fiction:DialoguewithChaos.Edited by Eliot Borenstein. M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY, and London, I99. xviii ? 33p PP. Notes. Biography and biographical notes. Bibliography. Index. f24.50. POSTMODERNISM, like God and the novel, has more than once been pronounced dead, but that there is a Russian variant is, even now, a matter for wonder to the outside world, farbetter awareof Russia'seconomic and social chaos than of its approach to chaos theory. Mark Lipovetsky's lucid monograph makes a distinguished contribution to literature on this vexed topic. Far from simplistic, yet less theory-driven than the work of Mikhail Epstein, his book is very much textuallybased, the focus being on the classics of the last decades of the twentieth century, especiallythe I96os and I970s, in particular,Andrei Bitov's Pushkinskii dom,Venedikt Erofeev'sMoskva-Petushki, and Sasha Sokolov's Shkola dliadurakov. Other writersgiven prominence are Vasilii Aksenov ('utopia as a fantasy', not, as might have been expected, Ozhog);Juz Aleshkovskii ('bodies versus ideas'); Tat'iana Tolstaia ('in the broken mirror'); Lev Rubinshtein ('creation of the kaleidoscopic self'); Viacheslav P'etsukh ('the enigma of the Russian soul'); Viktor Erofeev (his 'historical'stories);and Evgenii Popov and Vladimir Sorokin('mythologiesof the absurd').At one level, the monographwillprovide a cogent frameworkfor better understanding this rich and diverse assembly of writers and texts. At another, the texts provide a basis for the exposition of the author'sparticular approachto postmodernism. Lipovetsky(thepen-name of Mark Leiderman)introduces his book with a section entitled 'Chaos as System', which begins by considering whether, as has been suggested, Russian postmodernism is in fact an oxymoron (p. 3), going on to the rich theme of intertextuality, subverted dialogism (here Bakhtin comes into play), and ending with 'Dialogue with chaos as a new artisticstrategy'.Here chaos theoryand dialogismmeet: '[t]he artisticattempt to model chaos by mixing cultural languages, to search for "rhizomes" and "dissipative structures" hidden inside chaos and transforming it into chaosmos, is based on a contradictory interpretation of chaos' (pp. 34-35). How Russian writers maintain the balance between universal cultural teleology and 'fascinationwith chaos as a supreme manifestationof freedom from any cultural and ontological limitations' (p. 35) is the main enquiry which thisbook seeksto answer. Part Two, 'Culture as Chaos' presents perceptive analyses of Bitov's destruction of the museum, Venedikt Erofeev's otherworldy viewpoint, and the myth of metamorphosisin Shkola dliadurakov. In PartThree, 'The Poetics of Chaosmos', Lipovetsky discusses the following topics: Soviet utopia (Aksenov and Aleshkovskii); mythologies of creation (Tolstaia, Sokolov's Mezhdusobakoi i volkom, and Rubinshtein); mythologies of history (P'etsukh, Viktor Erofeev and Sokolov's Palisandriia); and mythologies of the absurd (Popovand Sorokin).Fromthese analysesLipovetskyconcludes that 'thiskind of dialogue between metagenres creates the artisticequivalent of chaosmos as the basic model of the Russian postmodernistartisticconsciousness'(p. 229). The wide-ranging final chapter, 'On the nature of Russian postmodernism' offersa witty overview of exemplaryclarity. 736 SEER, 79, 4, 200I In addition to notes, referencesand index, this well edited book has a very useful appendix of biographical and bibliographical notes relating to some thirtywritersand topics. It will be welcomed by studentsand teachersalikeas an admirablylucid attemptto showthewaysinwhich Russianpostmodernism is related to its Western counterpart,and to what extent it really is suigeneris. This is an excellent book which deservesa verywide readership. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies ARNOLD MCMILLIN University College London Sheinberg, Esti.Irony, Satire, Parody andtheGrotesque intheMusicofShostakovich. A Theoy of MusicalIncongruities. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2000. xii + 378 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Illustrations.Indexes. ?49.95. AFTER the flood of books about Shostakovich's life and purported views, including those that have used him like a second-division soccer ball, Dr Sheinberghas produced a very personalyet highly analyticalmonograph of a completely differentkind. Indeed, the subtitle gives the strongest key to this ambitious book's aim and purpose: to use structuralsemantics to study the semiotic correlationsbetween variousmodes of ambiguity,namely the fourin her title, producing a literary,semantic and musical model for each of them. Sheinberg's own model, we are told in the Acknowledgements, was Robert Hatten's MusicalMeaning inBeethoven (Bloomington, 1994) (p. x). It should be stressed,however, that copious referencesto a wide varietyof theoreticaland other sourcesis a featureof thisbook. Part Two begins with a...