Skomp, Elizabeth A. and Sutcliffe, Benjamin M. Helena Goscilo (review)

Abstract

SEER, 94, 4, October 2016 736 Skomp, Elizabeth A. and Sutcliffe, Benjamin M. Ludmila Ulitskaya and the Art of Tolerance. Foreword by Helena Goscilo. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI and London, 2015. xxix + 251 pp. Notes. Appendix. Works cited. Index. $55.00. Ludmila Ulitskaia is one of the most popular contemporary Russian writers both in her native land and abroad. While her name is well-known, it is striking how little attention Ulitskaia has received from Anglophone scholars, as the authors Elizabeth A. Skomp (Sewanee: The University of the South) and Benjamin M. Sutcliffe (Miami University of Ohio) note in the introduction to their monograph (p. 5). Ulitskaia’s texts have been translated into English since the 1990s, yet Ludmila Ulitskaya and the Art of Tolerance is the first book-length study of her in English. The approach Skomp and Sutcliffe have chosen in their book is writer- and text-oriented, taking as its starting point the themes of Ulitskaia’s texts and her ‘own wariness of boundaries and strict categorizations’ (p. 30). The authors manage to cover almost the entirety of Ulitskaia’s oeuvre, focusing on the novels and most important short stories. Skomp and Sutcliffe have sifted Ulitskaia’s texts for her artistic credo: sincerity (iskrennost´), tolerance (tolerantnost´), and corporality (telesnost´). The authors make productive use of existing research on Ulitskaia (mainly in English and Russian). In the introduction, Skomp and Sutcliffe construct the contexts of Ulitskaia’s writerly identity, most notably her affinity with the Russian intelligentsia (p. 3), whichcomprisesacritiqueof,ontheonehand,theSoviettotalitarianpast,andon the other the capitalist presence in today’s Russia. Ulitskaia is exceptional in that she incorporates these anti-totalitarian and anti-capitalist values into ‘serious’ literature whilst managing to be a best-selling author; she links ‘sincerity and sales’ (p. 5). Skomp and Sutcliffe rightly trace Ulitskaia’s debt and connections to zhenskaia proza, but curiously also develop a kind of antagonism between the two (‘Ulitskaya and Women’s Prose: A Reluctant Inheritance’, pp. 18–22). This is connected to Ulitskaia’s own bias towards the term zhenskaia proza. Thus, women’s prose, which is never fully elaborated on, appears to employ a rather simplistic view of gender relations and sexuality as if it is inherently negative, whereas Ulitskaia’s (early) texts appear to offer ‘more varied and optimistic’ images (p. 19). In addition, it is curious also that ‘feminism’ is mentioned only three times in this book (according to the Index), and always by way of Ulitskaia’s dissociation from it. Attitudes to feminism are far more complex in Russia than the authors let us understand, and a subtler discussion of the topic might have been expected. The four main chapters offer enchanting thematic interpretations of Ulitskaia’s works: the centrality of corporality (with references — by the way — to such REVIEWS 737 feminist theorists as Judith Butler and Elizabeth Grosz), the importance of intergenerational understanding, the ‘obsession’ with the past, and last but not least, tolerance. As telesnost´ forms the basis of Ulitskaia’s humanistic world view (it is ‘the body [that] makes us human’, p. 66) so the ‘families of affinity’ help to keep people and communities together (p. 99). The key image of Ulitskaia’s works, according to Skomp and Sutcliffe, is the Russian intelligent, an intellectual ‘who follows a specific code of moral behavior’ (p. 103). Coming to terms with the traumatic Soviet past is the task of the ‘great literature and moral instruction’ of the intelligentsia (p. 125). The fourth chapter discusses tolerantnost´, a central value in Ulitskaia’s intelligenty, and shows how Ulitskaia has become politically more active as a result of recent developments in Russia and her resistance to Putin’s regime. However, Skomp and Sutcliffe also recognize the limits of Ulitskaia’s tolerance: despite the notion that her depiction of homosexuality is ‘positive and innovative’ (which is exceptional in today’s Russia) it is nevertheless ‘schematic’ (p. 147); and, although Ulitskaia promotes multiculturalism, her ‘image of Muslims presents an even more complicated problem’ (p. 151). While enjoying Skomp’s and Sutcliffe’s eloquent and dense interpretations of Ulitskaia’s works, sometimes the reader would like to take a break and stop to think and read...