Books: Life and Fate

I've been reading Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate, his massive, sprawling novel of the Soviet Union in late 1942, when the battle of Stalingrad was raging. Of course, individuality in character is almost nonexistent, what with the cast of hundreds. But the real interest is life under an insane dictatorship: naturally people say, in response to someone being arrested, that "they never arrest innocent people." The same thing could be said today, here in the U.S. I can't help but recall the insane conversation I had with a friend from graduate school, undoubtedly a Communist of some sort, about the Soviet Union. When I asked her if there was anything wrong with the Soviet Union--remember: this is in the 1980s, the desultory Brehznev Era--she, with great difficulty, said that maybe they had some problems with women's equality. I said that, were the Communists miraculously to assume power in the U.S., we would be the first people to be arrested--no question about it. Anyone who questions the prevailing wisdom is seen as a malcontent. And, yeah, apparently we have denunciations at the place where I am privileged to teach. And naturally the novel includes instances of arbitrary arrest. And science is dictated by commisars who have no knowledge of science. A new theory in physics may not conform to the Leninist notion of material reality. On a less brutal scale, to be sure, we do the same thing here: certain axioms are given, never to be challenged or questioned. And, yeah, we tend to place mediocrities in position of authority, so that idiocy is made to seem like wisdom, incompetence achievement. Fortunately, we can depend on their laziness--it's too much trouble to make a great effort to dominate others--to completely eradicate the life of the mind. In the novel, a moronic notion of ideology--and a moronic ideology--rule. Here, money is the sole value. Whoever has the gold makes the rules.

At any rate, Grossman's novel, while not great, is probably better than the previous novel I read, Paul Beatty's The White Boy Shuffle, which, while amusing at times, ultimately fell flat on its face. Hip hop novels, of which I've read two, need to have certain basic characteristics: a nerd-like main character and a hip patter. "Negro, please" is the basic joke.

True freedom is a fragile thing--not to be scoffed at or trifled with.