In Search of Melancholy Baby
Aksyonov, Vassily
All of us long to know how others see us, and Alexis de Tocqueville showed that outsiders are sometimes the most perceptive interpreters of American society. The special attraction of Vassily...
...Not only did my students feel no shame at their ignorance of contemporary Russian literature...
...The Americanophilia was taken to comical lengths...
...But the magnetic pull didn't derive from mere style: "America rose up out of the mist as an alternative to the outdated and nauseating belief in Socialist revolution...
...You may never find it, but the fact that it is there gives your life an entirely different perspective...
...Jazz became more than music...
...Beneath its bouncy charm, the reader detects the author's palpable devotion to his adopted country and a surprising lack of nostalgia for his native land...
...The former is illustrated by his apartment manager's well-meaning explanation of the automatic elevator: "Don't panic now," he says as they ascend...
...But in many ways his new country exceeds even what he had dreamed—in its dizzying abundance, its natural beauty, and its openness to outsiders, whose numbers and diversity make the newcomer feel welcome...
...It turned out the soldier had just spent several years' savings on a new motorcycle and was afraid the Chinese would invade and take it away...
...But it is redeemed by the author's indomitable good humor, his flair for the off-beat, and, not least, his clear-headed patriotism...
...He and his friends wore American clothes, read American novels, and devoured American movies, which were shown with new titles: Stagecoach, for example, became The Journey Will Be Dangerous, and an introductory statement said the movie "treats the heroic struggle of the Indians against Yankee imperialism...
...The special attraction of Vassily Aksyonov's book is that it reveals how America looks to a native of our most powerful enemy...
...More often, Aksyonov finds his original attraction to America fully confirmed by experience...
...The latter is illustrated by an acquaintance who announces that he will soon be off to Europe to protest the deployment of the Pershing II, and who is surprised to learn that the Soviet Union's "peace movement" is a creation and instrument of the state...
...Jazz was a platonic rendezvous with freedom...
...In Search of Melancholy Baby is almost as much about the Soviet Union as it is about America...
...Aksyonov recalls a visit to Kazakhstan on which he met a drunken military officer weeping in the hotel restaurant...
...they felt.that contemporary Russian literature had to be flawed because they were ignorant of it...
...At a Texas truck-stop, a waitress shyly approaches him:"The fellows say that Russia has the type of government that doesn't permit you to write the books you want...
...One habit Aksyonov acquired early was disbelieving everything the Soviet propaganda organs reported about the United States...
...The Chinese, on the other hand, they think of as being from outer space...
...Equality is static...
...cans respect private property...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1987 51 It must therefore instill in its population a passionate desire to defend its multiplicity, its ferment, its intellectual and aesthetic waverings, its hedonism, its morality, its ecumenism, its ethnic variety, its Anglo-Saxon foundations, its generosity...
...After all, everyone is equal (except, of course, for those who are more equal...
...Unlike some emigres who are appalled by the apparent chaos and undiscipline of Western life, he understands the value of freedom: "What the Soviets cannot fathom is that America's 'fragmentation' (in other words, its diversity) is the source of its magnetic strength...
...Aksyonov writes not as a visitor trying to capture the essence of a new country on a brief visit, but as an emigre who is established here, intends to stay, and has come to regard himself as an American...
...that is, the revolt of the slaves against their masters...
...Everywhere he turns, Aksyonov is perplexed by Americans' ignorance of their rival superpower...
...The romance began in World War II, when "bags of yellow egg powder and containers of condensed milk and cured ham saved hundreds of thousands of Soviet children from starving to death...
...Strange as it may seem," he writes, "the Russians still think of Americans as close relations...
...it took on an ideology, or, rather, an anti-ideology...
...In Aksyonov's case, the affection for America was deepened by his discovery of jazz...
...On assorted matters, he writes, "the American public cultivates a curious kind of snobbery...
...In his college circle, Aksyonov recalls, "wearing a shirt with buttons that had two or three holes instead of the requisite American four, for example, was considered a disgrace...
...In America, the land of inequality, your chance—the chance for you to change your life—is waiting for you somewhere in the chaos of economic freedom...
...In Search of Melancholy Baby suffers from numerous flaws—haphazard organization, a penchant for meandering, and a baffling recurrent feature called "Sketches for a Novel to Be...
...it squelches all hope for a new and different life," he writes...
...Aksyonov is a highly regarded Russian novelist who came here in 1980 after being expelled for his dissident writings...
...The cabin will deliver you safely to the floor of your choice, where the doors will open automatically...
...From his account, there was never any doubt where he would go...
...asked Aksyonov...
...He and his friends cherished it for "its refusal to be pinned down, its improvisatory nature...
...Prove it ignorant of something and it will counter by asserting that your 'something' is simply not worth its attention...
...If nothing else," writes Aksyonov, "the variety helps to remind us that we are not the only ones to have washed up onto these shores, that we are not alone but part of a community...
...The paradox is that to remain what it is, America must defend even its own anti-Americans...
...Came the firm reply: "AmeriStephen Chapman is a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune...
...Most vexing is American provinciality, which takes both trivial and serious forms...
...Although he would like to see more comprehensive social welfare programs, Aksyonov praises inequality...
...Wartime contacts left the average Russian with an image of the United States as "a country of fabled riches and munificence" and with an enduring affection...
...His purposes differ from Tocqueville's...
...What about the Americans, Lieutenant...
...Is that so...
...By contrast,he finds Europe xenophobic and monotonously homogeneous...
...Are you scared of them...
...That America could produce a memoir like this is a validation of his allegiance...
...Living as we did in a totalitarian society, we needed relief from the structures of our minutely controlled everyday lives...
...Since his youth, he and his closest friends had been enchanted by everything American...
...In the Soviet Union you are doomed to the life of a state employee, and unless you turn thief, nothing in your life will change...
...By now, though, Aksyonov feels no .13 hesitation about offering criticism...
...That is the kind of insight that can come only from an outsider, who is endlessly surprised by things that natives either take for granted or fail to notice...
...The book's second attraction is the glimpse it offers of the Soviet Union, as seen by a Russian whose liberal ideas made him intolerable to the Kremlin...
...As a result, he has often found American reality jarring, as on a subway ride through one of the nation's worst slums: "Picture a Soviet who has never believed a word of that [Soviet] propaganda set down by some miracle in the South Bronx and told, `Welcome to America!' The first thing he would do is cover his eyes and moan, `So they weren't lying.' " Poverty, crime, and unemployment all come as an unpleasant surprise to Russian emigres...
...If America was unified along Soviet or Iranian lines, it would no longer be America...
Vol. 20 • October 1987 • No. 10
