I count three bona-fide works of fiction in the sense that they aren’t objectively, self-evidently autobiography (but which likely are autobiographical), two personal essays and a set of curated letters which could pass as stories, and two entirely non-fictional ruminations on Russian literature, literature in general, and the author’s own novels. So the title is a bit misleading. But with the exception of the two extraneous critical pieces which did next to nothing for me, these are very good indeed. Of the unequivocally “fictional” (quotes because Shishkin has succeeded in blurring my understanding of the term) pieces, the stand-out is “The Blind Musician”, a confusing polyphony in which voices who don’t self-identify accuse, condole, recriminate, chew over a life’s worth of mixed up familial and amorous relationships. Reminded me a lot of Beckett. I also loved “The Bell Tower of San Marco”, told through the letters of a Russian revolutionary to her Swiss husband and his diary entries, which maps out the despair that succeeds to idealism in prolonged contact with reality. “Nabokov’s Inkblot” and “Of Saucepans and Star-Showers” both explore the author’s relationship with the dysfunctionality of his home country, and both also probe the nature of paternity. Subtle and moving.

I come away from this keen to read more by Shiskin, but rather put off his novels by his own discussion of them in the closer, “In a Boat Scratched on a Wall”. Bumping up to four stars despite its unevenness because of the very high ceiling. ( )

Mr Shishkin is new to me. But what a writer. Someone who uses words like a master craftsman. Each one carefully weighed before being put in place. The underlying construction masked and hidden. He joins a long historic list of Russian writers in exile. What is it about Russian writers and their self imposed exile followed by chronic nostalgia? Why is it that they can't write when at home in Russia? ( )

A nice collection, though perhaps not an ideal introduction to the author (I say, having never read him before). Shishkin is meant to be a great stylist, which doesn't come through in any of these translations. They swing wildly between academic obscurity and a philistine use of slang, thus combining the two worst tendencies of contemporary prose. It's also a little discomforting that the worst pieces here, by far, are the most fictional (special dishonor going to the ridiculously boring 'Blind Musician'), while the best are either essays, literary anecdotes, and naked memoir. That's not a problem, except that Shishkin is meant to be a great novelist, so presumably he's not totally at sea when it comes to fiction. Anyway, I've seen enough here to give Maidenhair a go, if only because Shishkin (as he appears from the essays here) is a militant defender of literature and language; I grow very tired of writers who are always dithering about whether what they do is worthwhile. It is, okay? Unless you're writing utter crap, it's worthwhile.

Also, typically good book production from the excellent Deep Vellum press. ( )

This collection includes both fiction and essays. Shishkin talks about writing in exile, the inadequacies of language, and the impossibility of translation. Some of the material is memoir about growing up in the "slave state" that was the USSR.
Contents: The half-belt overcoat / translated by Leo Shtutin -- Calligraphy lesson / translated by Marian Schwartz -- The blind musician / translated by Marian Schwartz -- Language saved / translated by Marian Schwartz -- Nabokov's inkblot / translated by Mariya Bashkatova -- Of saucepans and star-showers / translated by Leo Shtutin -- The bell towers of San Marco / translated by Sylvia Maizell -- In a boat scratched on a wall / translated by Marian Schwartz
My copy via subscription to Deep Vellum press. ( )

Thoughtful, inventive collection of short fiction, essays and assorted bits of creative ‘life writing’ from a writer who, it seems, has been lauded with just about every literary prize going in Russia and is now finally being made available in English. The pieces collected here use translations from four different translators, allowing you to triangulate in on his prose style quite well – and it's important to get a feel for it because Shishkin, who lives in Zurich, is often talked of as uniting a traditional Russian sensibility of literature with a more Western focus on formal experimentation and wordplay. Expect shifting narrators and multiple borrowed voices – a confusion that may be exacerbated by all the references to Russian literature that you can admire as they go sailing over your head.

In ‘The Blind Musician’, the blurring of character and perspective forces the reader to accept a formal counterpoint to the blindness of one of its main subjects. That, or he's just fucking with you. With the title story – which launched Shishkin on to the literary scene in 1993 – a translator's note attempts to clear up some of the confusion, though those of you who have a greater familiarity with Russian lit than I do (everyone, in other words) may be less in the dark. I found this story less successful, although the central descriptive tour-de-force, about how to write the word невтерпёж (‘fed up’), showed such a love for the sensuality of writing that I was quite won over.

Much more to my taste, though, were the more apparently non-fictional efforts, which ruminate calmly but broodingly on the experience of being a Russian in exile (not actual political exile – just a Russian living abroad, really) and take in a bizarre constellation of reference points that include Robert Walser, Nabokov, Joyce, Chekhov, and the Swiss-German nursery rhyme Schlaf, Chindli, schlaf. ‘The Bell Tower of San Marco’, an essay of pure archival research, left me, to my surprise, drained and on the point of tears on the train, though flicking back through it afterwards I couldn't work out how his simple presentation had spun the story with such emotional lethality.

Recurring again and again is the notion, the theory, the practice, of language. A jobbing translator/interpreter, Shishkin had lots of time and reason to think about how concepts shift and change when they are transposed, however carefully, into new tongues: having experienced something similar myself on a much smaller scale, it was fascinating to see him write about how his novel, begun in Russia, made no sense when worked on in Switzerland. ‘The letters I'd traced out there had a totally different density here. The novel ended up being about something else.’ Here is a writer of whom reading him in translation can truly be said to amplify his themes. And, just occasionally, he'll leave you speechless with delight:

Language has a grammatical past and future but no past or future. In the dimension of words, time twists like a screw with a stripped thread. Time can be opened at any line. Open the first line a hundred times, and you will force Him to create heaven and earth a hundred times and race over the water. He is racing right now. ( )