Drunk and sober reflections on reading
by Justina Dobush
Translated from the Ukrainian by Yulia Lyubka
1.
What is left with us after we have read a book? Is it a memory without any practical appliance, names and dates, stories you will never become a part of, or ideas you will never think of? Books are the infinity of human lives, which crave to be remembered. It is the only possible way to preserve every second and each personality in its incredibility and how much sense and beauty of literature is in this gathering of all those people together, so that no story is lost, so that everybody can continue living their habitual lives over and over again, on the pages of some book. It is good that they are not aware of it, for none of us can be sure that we are not a product of somebody’s imagination put into the pages of a novel ourselves.
2.
I have been trying to understand them for so long, and here they are, all in front of me. So small and yet so gigantic at the same time, they stand next to each other. They all pulsate, each with its heartbeat, arterial blood pressure — the pressure of its inner atmosphere. They glitter with colors, blend into one, scatter, and overflow. The first develops into the following one and the next ends in the middle of another. For where there is one human life, hundreds of others begin to live. It does not matter what each of them is about. The author is not of much importance either. What really matters are all the small letters and words in which all human existence drifts. Only words and nothing else. All in all, we do not exist until the moment somebody outlines us with at least a single word. We are just another species of mammals as long as we are not given a name. The essence of every one of us lies in words only. We will never be able to see ourselves in total for this reason. We are only a reflection in the mirror, screen, or windowpane. We are always just a stain from dirty fingers on the light switches. We are always just a footprint in the mud. We are always just the sound of our larynx. We are always just a photo of somebody. And it has some inconceivable intrigue: you can never see yourself fully. Perhaps literature reflects us in the best way; it describes us to the full. Only in literature can we draw ourselves or find ourselves precisely the way we need. After all, literature gives us this gracious moment of seeing ourselves and the whole world that cannot fit in our own pupils. It collects all that time which cannot occur on the dials of our clocks. Because one life will never be enough to recognize all people and the world, to see all possible scenarios we did not choose. Through literature, we write letters to ourselves. We read them never to write back, as if every time we send ourselves some reflection from the future to correct all mistakes, but apparently, we never do that.
3.
We live in books and consider them part of our lives. Each of them requires reading, and each work needs a specific type of attention, tempo, and intonation. It has always seemed to me (and not only to me) that something happened to reading itself. It lost its original sense, or we lost some initial component which made this process a true union between words and their meanings. Could it be due to the digital era, the Industrial Revolution, or capitalism? Or have we always been so kind and evil at the same time? I am not talking about the number of books we read (something older people always complain about when trying to outline the younger generation and its stupidity). I am talking about our reviews and reflections on what we read (thanks to social networks, we can find many of them nowadays). In these reflections, we either show that our reading and the books are a fetish, or, acting as pseudo-intellectuals, we try to offend and cut up each book (even those that have not been written yet). And this second type sometimes seems scary to me and causes a lot of questions.
4.
Have you noticed how a reader turned from an ordinary consumer to the one who laid down the rules over time? How did we end up demanding that literature be an accurate product as if it were synthetic clothing or cheap IKEA furniture? When did we realize we could dictate to the author how, what, and who to write about? Why did we change? How did the author's death turn into the reader's triumph and audacity? Why did we start to perceive literature as a business? Could money spoil this sophisticated industry, like everything else they touched? Maybe I have too many questions, but I lack explanations when looking for them. So, to avoid distorting my thoughts, I will write them in questions. Why do Ukrainians believe that contemporary Ukrainian literature is worse than modern American literature when they did not read a single page and did not do any detailed comparative analysis of them? Why do readers believe that the writer wrote a bad book because he decided to resurrect characters from his previous book in a new one? Why do we read separate paragraphs and not books in full (and long articles)? Why do we reflect on a separate passage of a book and not try to find out the book’s main intention? Why did we stop discussing what this or that very book meant for us? Why are we afraid to admit that a young Ukrainian author impressed us as much as a classic French author of the 19th century? Why are we afraid to talk passionately about books? Why are we so afraid to praise authors? Why did we become so critical and skeptical? Why do we read books if we say they are not good enough afterward? Why do we acknowledge the scornful thoughts about literature heard from other people's mouths? Why can't we trust our minds and impressions when reading a book? Why do you need to consider the author's origin and the language he uses? Why do you no longer respect and perceive a book simply for what it is? And what if, according to the reader's behavior, the author could choose the audience and ban the sale of his books to a particular circle of readers? What would you feel if the author said, "You cannot read my book. You are not worth it"? Does it hurt? How would you feel if writers forbade you to read their books because you are not stylish enough? What if you were discriminated against for being a Ukrainian reader? Imagine Stephen King prohibiting the translation of his book into Serbian because Serbians are "bastards and Russophiles" for him. Would it be OK? Would it be fair? So why do we think we can treat writers and their books like that?
5.
Let me give you an example that made my disappointment grow to unprecedented proportions. A new book by the living classic author of contemporary Ukrainian literature will be published soon. Yuri Andrukhovych and his publisher announced the release of a brand-new book called "Darlings of Justice.” Ukrainian readers have been waiting for this event for seven long years. But problems appeared as soon as the announcement was made because the book is a collection of short stories, while the author calls it a para-historical novel, having been written over 27 years. Ukrainian readers had a chance to read some of its passages, i.e., short stories, earlier. All this information is indicated in the short announcements, numerous predictions, and "reviews," which also point out that the stories are about villains, whom, allegedly but not for sure, the author wants to justify.
My first thought about the text was that I did not want to perceive its main characters, its topic, the image of the book in general, and how the author and his publisher presented it. This image was more likely to interfere with me, so I had to meditate and enter the text apart from everything I knew. This was when all the beauty of this artwork revealed itself to me. I did not look at it as some historical interpretation of the lives of Galicia's best-known (or even iconic) criminals, who were convicted and put to death. For me, this is a mere image of Galicia’s worst traits. This is some kind of representation of mythical Galicia, this “land of milk and honey,” which is, in fact, the place one wants to flee from because it is impossible to live there. It is all about endless gossip, hatred, thirst for sensations, and, at the same time, the inability to bring matters to their end, the imagined heroism, and so on. That is the true darling of Justice. That is who was always left untouched by Justice (probably due to its indulgence, for they are mistresses). It is a lesbian love, and that is where the book’s sexuality lies, for only women can work an angle so skillfully and thus take such a masterful revenge on men (for some reason, there are no women among the protagonists). Similarly, Galicia adapts itself to all possible state structures, and its inhabitants do not hesitate to sentence to death all those who dare to disturb the balance and ecosystem of the place. Galicia goes down on her lover Justice to exist in the cruel world of ever-peripheral and provincial land for the longest possible time.
Yet "Darlings fo Justice" is also the world of the absurd because Justice cannot be the same for all (even Plato could not tackle it). So that is how main characters appear in the world of the absurd and are doomed by default. For no argument is valid when Justice took the other side. The question is not whether convicts are worse scoundrels than Justice herself; the scoundrels here are neither criminals nor Justice but the observers and witnesses of these processes of punishment and justification. After all, spectators allow Justice to kill and let perpetrators become who they are. Spectators believe this absurd Justice is some supreme will, and its central dogmas cannot be questioned because Justice has a divine origin. None of them has ever asked why scoundrels became scoundrels. Or why are these people who do not perceive any rules of obedience? The essence of these stories is not to justify the convicts but to show the duality and ambiguity of Justice and its fans regardless of any specific territory or type of state structure. This absurdity and impossibility of Justice reveals the true irony of life — if you do not obey the rules, the sentence will be handed out immediately.
And here is a guaranteed orgasm from the book, even though I have not seen any reader (including professional critics) who managed to dig more deeply into the book. It leads to the conclusion that the two weakest places of the book are the circumstances in which it appeared and its readers. After all, when it comes to a well-known author who has not published a new work for a long while and whose PR campaign was conducted on a very high level, readers begin to expect a miracle, and when this miracle comes out, they do not know how to decode it. They took the announcement at face value and consumed the book this way. Or they did not manage to understand it, and that is why they picked it to pieces. The third option was not spotted in the form of somebody’s personal vision and new interpretations. Perhaps this is a problem of the digital era and the distorted way of reading, the reader's triumph over the author or somebody’s jinx. And I'm not so sorry for the writers as for those readers who did not manage to discover literature for themselves in all its infinite number of alternative realities. It seems like somebody played a cruel trick on the author who wrote about Justice and her lovers and who eventually became her new victim because most readers could not evaluate the book justly.
6.
It seems so freaking selfish to demand a book always tell you something new and unique, to be absolutely unlike any other piece of literature, and to make claims because a book can quite rightly blame you for your more significant faults. If you attribute features you do not possess to a book, if you do not know and do not want to immerse yourself in it, to accept its minuses, it can only testify to the fact that you neither feel literature’s essence at large, nor understand any book in particular. Because literature, like any other world phenomenon, must have its flaws. It can be imperfect because it is a human creation of its image. If literature were perfect, then it would be a god. And it is not. Then it turns out that when we boldly refuse to admit that literature permanently repeats itself, returns to the basics, and at the same time gives birth to so many sideslips, crazy people, slimeballs, tyrants, and dictators, we love and respect not literature as it is, but the product of our imagination. We love the things that we made up; we adore ourselves. Although such behavior is entirely predictable for a person, doesn’t literature deserve to finally be unconditionally loved? To fall in love with its inability to explain our existence, war, fratricide, genocide, suicide, death, injustice of the world, and the world itself in its essence. When we do not accept these sides (though it is our creation — the creation of our species), we do not accept ourselves in our true essence. Over and over again.
7.
So, how about creating a literary movement against oppressive readers and reading rules imposed on us by our education system? And what if we released reading from all conventions, letting everyone read what they want, where they want, and how they want? And let this movement's manifesto allow us to read a book when we know nothing about its author; let it allow us to disregard any chronology and the most famous works. Let this manifesto claim that no literary works or authors are mandatory for reading because only you decide who is worth your Nobel Prize in literature. Let this movement turn over the shelves of the "recommended top 10 list" in bookstores. Let it deliberately create chaos in major book retailers. Let this movement disrupt literature lessons and lectures in schools and universities. Let this movement’s manifesto contain grammatical errors and typos. Let it result in people starting to read books from the middle chapters, reading philosophical works and non-fiction, omitting footnotes; to use speed reading for James Joyce's "Ulysses"; to highlight your favorite pieces of the book with bright pens and markers, tearing out your favorite pages if needed; to keep books in the kitchen and toilet; to steal books and present them to somebody for no reason; to make love on books and sniff cocaine from their covers; to wear clothes matching the book cover; to read aloud in public places; to allow yourself to ignore what others say when you read; to punch those who distract you from reading; to publicly say that you like Beigbeder and Coelho; to be brave enough to confess to writers that you masturbate while reading their books; to derail the round tables of annoying intellectuals who say that "nowadays young people do not read"; to stop expecting anything from the writers; to use party literature of the Soviet Union as toilet paper; to defend your right to read literature of the right-wingers to the left-wingers and vice versa; to not to belong to any political movement except for the movement for free reading. Just imagine how beautiful the world of free reading would be then and, who knows, maybe we could finally discover some form of utopia.
8.
I have to admit that I love books more than literature itself. My life had so many loves and passions, but I still only go crazy over books. No matter what the books are about, where or who I got them from, no matter if I can read, understand, or accept them. They have to be somewhere near; this is the only thing that matters. I have to know about their existence so I can touch them sometimes and inhale the smell of dust from their yellowed pages; so I can feel the warmth of newly typed words and notice some failures of the printing press, which left scars where they did not have to be; so I can run my finger down the binding and hug the book so tightly that it would leave a mark on my chin; so I can cut my fingers on sharp pages of thin sheets because the publishing house tried to save on quality paper; so I can be angry with the poor type size and go blind from white pages; so I can carry books of an "indecent" size in my bag like the Gutenberg Bible; so I can feel back and neck pain and rejoice when my eyes burn and seem just about to pour out on the pages; so I can own the books, dragging home all those abandoned books from the secondhand bookshops, like homeless cats; so I can wait for new book releases, as if for the next Advent; so I can break into bookstores, knowing exactly where my cherished miracle stands; so I can spend the last of my money on them, slipping from one store to another, looking for something extraordinary; so I can discover my own Atlantis when the rare book dealers show what seemed to have been lost for ages. I weep with happiness because I love and cannot live without each of them. And I thank every one of them for their existence. I want to read them all, and every day, I curse time for its elusiveness. I begin believing in reincarnation, which allows me to beat time. I shine with them, and they shine with me. I am afraid to lose them and them alone because in life, you can’t help but people — they will not defeat the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, and politics. But books... They will live forever like the atlases holding up the sky, like some silent witnesses of our lives, as notary officers, monks in the cells, chroniclers, the All-Wise, who remember all our mistakes and send us signs we never notice. Just like our children, who will never grow and will not die sooner than us, as our sins, victories, and secrets we keep silent about even in moments of total solitude. We come and go, and they remain on guard for future generations to tell them about our foolishness, weaknesses and strengths, fears, dreams, happiness and joy, pain and despair. We go, and they stay. We are one thing with different properties. We remain in them, and they remain in us. Together, we are immortal.
Author photo by Yura Futalo