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Title: Novel With Cocaine (European Classics (Evanston, Ill.).) by M. Ageyev, Michael Henry Heim, M. Agieev ISBN: 0-8101-1709-6 Publisher: Northwestern University Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: True Decadence
Comment: This strange little tale of a young man's descent into cocaine addiction is less interesting for it's portrayal of the youthful anti-hero's chemical use as his astounding philosophical insights. Vadim does not actually use cocaine until the end of the novel ('the beginning of the end', as it were) and the novel is mostly composed of his Dostoevskian self loathing and inability to relate to his peers on any level. It is almost an exercise in depressive solipsism; while Vadim's peers play a large role in the novel his inner world is so tortured and miles apart from them that the author might as well have portrayed him as a complete misanthrope. In the opening we get a feel for where his moral compass is swinging; he gives a venereal disease to a young woman in full cognizance of what he is doing. He agonizes over it, but this does not prevent him from actually doing it. The most catching scenes in the novel are when his classmates, thrown into a kind of cocaine induced revolt against the orthodoxy of the school they attend, verbally attack priests and teachers. Burkewitz, a character we encounter later in the book, gives a particularly interesting speech to the headmaster priest of the school in the middle of a sermon. There are thoroughly disturbing scenes; Vadim strikes his mother, steals from her, all the while recognizing her basic goodness and frail attempts to relate to him. Vadim wants to consider himself exceptional, a unique student and son, and at the same time loathes himself. Many of his self evaluations strike a schizoid note. His entrance into the world of cocaine use is preceded by his rejection of a girl with whom he was too fearful to consummate his relationship. Like everyone else, she has a false image of him and rejects him entirely when he fails to live up to it. We are only given blurry pictures of the lengths to which he goes to obtain cocaine after a few seamy scenes in which his 'friends' instruct him in the mechanics of use. "My son is a thief", his mother wails. Vadim's disturbing coke dreams are not of the usual variety; far from being visions of grandiosity, they are unconscious and violent recognitions of his own guilt and wretchedness. I wouldn't hesitate to say that this is one of the most bizarre novels I have ever encountered. It oscillates between philosophy, self loathing and insanity, and does not strike an even balance. I would recommend it to anyone, not for knowledge of a cocaine addict's world (this is not a realistic depiction) but as a jolting primer for any study or enjoyment of the literature of decadence.
Rating: 3
Summary: Uneven, and only Mildly Interesting
Comment: This book had been so built up by other people who had read it that I expected more. The writing is uneven and the first two thirds of the book seem to have almost no relation to the last third.
The first two thirds of the book gave a few interesting details of life in Russia just before the Revolution, but other than that I foundit very uninteresting. It is not until alomst the end of the book that the element of cocaine is even introduced and when it is the book quickly winds to its unsurprising end.
Rating: 5
Summary: Existentialism without the pompousness of Camus & Sartre
Comment: Having already been a fan of Dostoevsky & Tolstoy, it was Charles Bukowski who pointed me back to the Russians as being the only producers of literature that's worth reading. "A Novel with Cocaine" is a fine example of a novel that has something worthwhile on its pages.
Might we say that it's existentialist in it thinking? The individual caught in a universe that really doesn't give a damn about the individual... and the individual's struggle to find something to do, and a place to fit.
Camus and Sartre are puny little runts compared to Ageyev! Ageyev gives us the moment-to-moment REAL stuff that actually matters. One character goes up in front of his high school math classs to work out a problem... he sneezes and boogers are hanging out of his face while the class laughs. How does he deal with this?
Ageyev keeps his work as something regular folks can identify with. Not all of his situations deal with boogers (or things just as gross), but they're all common enough to keep a reader's interest without drawing the reader into pompous brain-teasers that few of us can access.
Conversely, Camus and Sartre take us into a high-minded realm which is interesting, but when will I ever have to think about whether or not to kill a wheelchair-bound guy because he doesn't have the nerve to do it himself? How many of our lives are impacted by such decisions?
Ageyev is much more interesting. He's a great writer. He's got a great sense of humor and he's FIRMLY rooted in common existence.
Though the book is titled "A Novel with Cocaine," sure there's a great deal about the main characters travels through the underworld of drugs and drug people and the activities between them. But, I think that this is more of a way for the writer to access his more interesting ideas--as opposed to writing a book that's really about cocaine.
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Title: Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine ISBN: 0811208478 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation Pub. Date: 01 January, 1983 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Moscow to the End of the Line by Venedikt Erofeev, H. William Tjalsma ISBN: 0810112000 Publisher: Northwestern Publishing House Pub. Date: 01 September, 1994 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Hunger by Knut Hamsun, Robert Bly, Paul Auster ISBN: 0374525285 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: 01 February, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Man With the Black Coat: Russia's Literature of the Absurd (European Classics) by Daniil Kharms, Alexander Vvedensky, George Gibian ISBN: 0810115735 Publisher: Northwestern Publishing House Pub. Date: 01 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin, Andrew Bromfield, Victor Pelevin ISBN: 0811213641 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation Pub. Date: 01 February, 1998 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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