Moscow 2042 by Vladimir Voinovich (Владимир Войнович)

Moscow 2042

I'm not a student of either Russian politics or literature,, so I'm sure plenty of the deeper meaning (and possibly the jokes) passed me by on this one. That being said, I'm enough a child of the Cold War - and Voinovich is enough of a writer - that I didn't feel lost or let down. My sister asked what I was reading. I showed it to her and said, "It's funny as hell. It's a lot funnier than it looks from the cover." She, of course, replied, "It would have to be."

Moscow 2042 came out in 1986, written just a few years before perestroika and glasnost and the reforms that swept through the USSR. If you were around back then, you know the images that the American public received of life under communism - bread lines, ridiculous bureaucracy, censorship, drab clothing, heavy vodka drinking, plenty of propaganda at work. Interestingly, that's nearly exactly how Voinovich portrays his dystopian version of communism at work. Now, I have no real idea how day to day life in Moscow went in the early 80s, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't quite as glum as we were led to believe. Reading this one boosted that feeling - if it was already that bad, the dystopian, possible future would have been a hell of a lot worse.

I wondered a few things while I read this one. Who is he satirizing with his working class writer hero, ready to ride into Moscow on a white horse and be declared Tsar? How much of what he was satirizing was already happening and how much was extrapolation? And what is up with so many writers giving their late-middle-age alter egos young, willing, sexually gifted women to fuck? I mean, sure, I get it. But really? Were there honestly that many Russian spy babes out to rub their naughty bits up on aging writers? I doubt it. Probably helps keep warm, though.

But there were still plenty of tasty little bits to enjoy. The horrors of vegetarian pork. The concept of food and shit and whether one is the other. Long bills on caps to prevent the people from looking at movies projected on the clouds. I do tend to love books that take government control to the absolute extreme. Reading them is like whistling past the graveyard: can't happen to me! Nope, not here!

final thought: For me to get this much enjoyment out of a translated novel satiring something I know so little about is fairly amazing. I have nothing but praise for

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore (illustrated mostly by David Lloyd)

V for Vendetta

I watched the movie. It was sort of eh to me, mostly because Portman used up all her acting ability back around 1994. That being said, I dug the concept, so when a cool gal offered to loan me her copy of the collected comics, I pounced on it.

Who doesn't love a little chaos and humor in the face of fascism and repression? Who doesn't love the idea of the everyman who manages to evade the cops, slip between shadows, blow up the broken courts, do away with torturers and pedophilic priests? Do I think that bombing the halls of "justice" is a good way to get my voice heard at this time? Of course not - but I haven't got the government peeping in my bedroom every night yet or banning art and music yet or forcing a power-grabbing religion on me. Yet.

I'm drawn to anarchy as a philosophy. Not the punk's AN-AR-KEE!, necessarily (though I've still got a soft spot in my heart for those kids), but the empathetic don't-rule-me-and-I-won't-rule-you train of thought. Too bad I can't imagine it ever working. Get two people agreeing to pull together, you'll have a third bashing them both in the back of the head while they're busy.

In a less general sense, regarding the actual comic - I loved the story, I wasn't wild about the art. But then, it had a very 80s style that seems a little dated now, which pretty well excuses it. As an American, I have no cultural connection to Guy Fawkes or the masks, but I know enough about the whole thing not to be confused by the allusion and I think it worked. I wish now that I owned the collection, because I'd like to read it again in a few months and see if it's deep or shallow.

Oh, and because I am a dork with a head full of quotes and musical bits, I liked catching the meanings, here and there, of the lines that V dropped. Especially stuff like the Anti-Nowhere League. If you want your comic to have a soundtrack, that's the way to do it.

final thought: I'd like to see an English director film it with an English cast some time.

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Animal Farm

This is how you do it. There's a reason Animal Farm is a classic of both literature in general and political satire specifically - it's damn near perfect. The allegory is simple enough for a literate child to grasp, even if they have no information about Stalinism or Soviet Communism to base it on, and for those who have studied history it maintains its worth as a fable.

The telling of the story itself can scarcely be criticized. You know what's going to happen. It's obvious from Napoleon's first appearance that he'll soon be as much (or more) of a tyrant as the original farmer. Heck, I'd read it before, back in middle school, but I still felt the rush when the animals drove out their owner and burned the whips, seethed with anger at Squealer's endless propaganda (swallowed whole by the mostly-illiterate and trusting workers), shared Benjamin's rage and horror as Boxer is sold to the knackers to pay for the pigs' carousing.

I believe it was Terry Pratchett who said something like, "There's a reason they're called revolutions - it all just keeps coming around to the beginning again." What I found interesting, though, was that the book really isn't a flat out condemnation of socialism or even communism - it's about a promise broken, power seized, and ideals twisted into a horrible shape. I think that's part of why, even while USSR-style communism fades into history, you can apply the Animal Farm allegory to any number of political situations. It's not strictly tied to the obvious.

final thought: This book scared the crap out of me as a preteen. (I was already fairly paranoid and antigovernment way back then.) These days I find it less frightening, but I think it maintains a current of power found in very little political writing.

too close to home

The one thing that most perplexed him was that there could be a dictator seemingly so different from the fervent Hitlers and gesticulating Fascists and the Csars with laurels round bald domes; a dictator with something of the earthy American sense of humor of a Mark Twain, a George Ade, a Will Rogers, an Artemus
Ward. Windrip could be ever so funny about solemn jaw-drooping opponents, and about the best method of training what he called "a Siamese flea hound." Did that, puzzled Doremus, make him less or more dangerous?

Then he remembered the most cruel-mad of all pirates, Sir Henry Morgan, who had thought it ever so funny to sew a victim up in wet rawhide and watch it shrink in the sun.

(Sinclair Lewis, "It Can't Happen Here")

Ever watch W's face when he talks about torture or war or the death penalty? It's that everlovin' smirk that worries me most.