How does it compare to audio works by the same author?
Not applicable
Advantages:
It's a book
Disadvantages:
Dull, uninteresting writing and characterisation
Recommend to potential buyers:
no
Full review
"Babylon" is the fifth novel by up-and-coming Russian author Victor Pelevin. I must admit that I bought this under false pretences - I was looking for another Russian science-fiction author. Buying the wrong book does not normally however affect my enjoyment of the cuckoo in the nest, and certainly does not influence my view of the usurper. It can sometimes lead to discovering a new author.
Tatarksy (first name Babylen but calls himself Vladimir) is an impoverished graduate in translation with unfulfilled poetic aspirations from Generation "P" (for Pepsi). The novel starts with the narrator telling us of a generation that chose to drink Pepsi then goes on to tell us it was actually selected by party officials. What choice? He ends up working for a pittance for shady Caucasian interests as a kiosk attendant. By pure coincidence a former classmate turns up at the kiosk and extols the virtues of working in advertising offering to provide Tatarsky with an introduction to the industry.
Tatarsky joins a company where he prepares pitches for foreign companies not yet in need of advertising but in the future, who knows? A bit like Kurkov's "Death and the Penguin" where the character writes obituaries for people who may yet have many years to live.
The more Tatarsky gets into the role, the more he realises that the advertising moguls are not just controlling the agenda, political and otherwise, but actually creating the politicians whose actions and agendas they then, as a form of soap-opera, control for their benefit whilst pretending to the general public that everything is for real.
The parallel plot concerns Tatarsky's drug-inspired search for knowledge of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar whose all-seeing eye - later compared to television - he sees in a (magic) mushroom-induced haze. This search recurs at various times during the novel and eventually comes together with the main narrative strand in what passes for the novel's climax.
Characterisation? Well, let us just say that whilst I got a good idea of how a character like Tatarsky acts I know next to nothing of either his physical features nor his inner being. Little of substance about his family circumstances, and only some information on those friends from his present who relate to his university days.
Knowledgeable critics will enthuse about the humour Pelevin's novels. Surrealism is not always funny of itself and absurdity can sometimes just be, well, absurd. Apparently, according to Pelevin, it is the reader who infuses the text with meaning. That at one level is a truism, we all approach a text from different perspectives. At another level it's a copout with the author absolving himself of any responsibility for engaging his reader - but still pocketing the royalties from sales anyway.
The way in which Tatarsky comes up with oblique, tangential - from barely applicable to totally unsuitable - slogans for his clients hardly lends credibility to the scene he moves in Whenever writing a fantasy, and I suppose this could in part be described as such, the author needs to create a believable world. Tatarsky's advertising pitches are so stupid that even in a world of lemmings they wouldn't sell a sausage.
Whilst some of the other characters are recognisable as "new Russians"; obsessed with gadgets, blondes and as financially driven as the finest Austenian matriarch, Pelevin treats them in very clichéd terms. The reader gets little sense of individuality and none of the characters is shaped in such a way as to make them believable.
Frankly, and I want to be fair here because the devil may conceivably be in the translation, Pelevin has an extremely tedious turn of phrase and a garbled, cluttered way of expressing himself whether as narrator or through his character. It is impossible to empathise, sympathise or anythise with any of the characters because they lack themselves lack these qualities.
The idea of this book might be of peripheral interest but its execution offers no concessions to the casual reader. We are asked to swallow hook, line and sinker this colourless protagonist, and to follow him through increasingly preposterous yet uninteresting scenarios. Whilst Pelevin is dealing with the serious existential void left in Russian society, especially felt by the aimless young, by the collapse of Soviet power and its replacement with mindless capitalism, his failure to engage the reader defeats any purpose behind his writing.
Pelevin seems to be writing for an intelligentsia of one - himself. There is absolutely nothing here to appeal to lovers of Russian literature, thrillers, science-fiction or any recognised genre. If you want to read a novel by a contemporary Russian author, go ahead, but notwithstanding the undoubted truth of Pelevin's attack on the shallowness, lucre-obsessed society he inhabits, there are more elegant and entertaining ways of doing this than through this stodgy, unappetising word-broth. The worst novel I have read in years, maybe in a decade.
Those of you who, like myself, prefer to make up your own minds can find this book published by Faber and priced at £6.99. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Evaluate this review
How helpful would this review be to someone making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
