Customer Reviews

Life of Insects Pb

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Victor Pelevin's The Life of Insects, a tale of the absurd, opens with one of many startling metamorphoses. Samuel Sacker, a hard-driving American businessman, is visiting a crumbling Black Sea resort hotel with two shabby Russian business contacts. The three would-be entrepreneurs are looking for ways to exploit possibilities for easy money in a new Russia.

After this trio coordinates its vague business strategy, they abruptly transform into mosquitoes. Sam is the luckiest...he becomes an impressive, agile brown creature, while the two Russians take on "that miserable hue of grey familiar from prerevolutionary village huts." Together they fly to a nearby town to have dinner, i.e., to suck the blood of the local residents. Sam, who refuses to listen to the warnings of his partners, becomes perilously drunk after sucking one man's cologne-slapped skin. So much so that on the return to the resort, he must suffer the consequences.

A shimmering satire of post-perestroika Russia, the characters in The Life of Insects metamorphose from human to insect to insect-like human to human-like insect from sentence to sentence, so seamlessly and frequently that the attributes of the different species appear more as transparent overlays than as fixed, distinct qualities. They are people and they are insects, and as such their actions can be viewed both literally and metaphorically.

In these fifteen loosely linked stories, Pelevin successfully walks a very delicate line: he simultaneously builds believable characters with real human struggles, matches their personality and personal quirks to vivid insect lives and spoofs various aspects of Russian culture and international literature.

There is Natasha, a naive, young greenbottle-fly prostitute who paints "the suckers on her hands" with lipstick, the better to seduce her prospects. When Sam is dining in a restaurant, he finds Natasha on his plate, "sitting on the edge between the potato and the sauce--at first he's taken her for a bit of dill." In a short time, however, she "put her glass on the table and moved her hands and arms as though stretching a chest expander."

And then there is Marina, a daft and dreamy ant who descends on a boardwalk wearing a denim skirt and red stiletto heels, craving a life out of romantic French movies, but instead suffering a bossy army-ant boyfriend, an unwanted pregnancy and a tragedy at a high-society ball that could rival anything in War and Peace.

There is the heart-rending coming-of-age story of a young dung beetle, initiated into the sacred rites of scarabs and their arcane Egyptian religion. There are hip, counterculture bugs who smoke marijuana ceaselessly while spouting paranoid religious and political theories. There is the cicada with an identity crisis; is he a cicada or is he a cockroach? Should he stop digging tunnels through the earth and become a computer programmer instead? Is life about struggle or pleasure? One insect even recalls the horror of almost becoming the victim of DDT and pleads with her lover to understand "what it's like when they sprinkle vitriol on a cesspool and it's too late to fly away."

Änd then there are Mitya (male), and Dima (female), two moths with wings "like a cloak of silver brocade," who ruminate in cryptic nonsense about their deadly attraction to bright lights. With Dima, Mitya flies around Russia seeking his true identity. Mitya and Dima, however, are both diminuatives of Dimitri, and, like Russia, they are divided between east and west, old and new, communist and capitalist, and forever looking for ways to end their dichotomy.

To emphasize the absurd, Pelevin lets ambiguity reign throughout. The plot is loosely woven around Sam and his partners, although only a few chapters are really devoted to this trio.

The settings, too, are often unclear. Locations are described sparingly and insects often inhabit the human world and vice versa. By revealing the characters' forms and surroundings sporadically, Pelevin suggests that we are all small parts of strange worlds in which we often mistakenly allow our surroundings to define us.

Pelevin expects us to feel just about as confused as his characters do. The book is narrated by an omniscient narrator, a seeming promise of total knowledge on completion. But total knowledge is exactly what is missing from this book, all to its credit, since life never offers us total knowledge anyway.

Although many may find similarities with Kafka's Metamorphosis, Pelevin's fictional universe is more reminiscent of Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics. Absurdly funny, inventive and playfully philosophical, The Life of Insects projects the complexities of human life onto the sparkling strangeness of the insect world with utter perfection.

I must express my outrage with the utter lack of accuracy in the translation. I understand that no translation could possibly retain all the literary elements of the original text (I myself translate, amateurishly) however, that does not mean that the text must be deliberately mangled. In other words, this book MUST be read in Russian in order to truly appreaciate it's brilliance.

We're in the midst of a spate of bad novels involving dogs, ants, and apes who have been blessed with the gift of speech. Most of these suffer from a heavy-handedness, a portentous style that outweighs the book's content and the author's ability.

Victor Pelevin is in a different league altogether. His ability is magnificent, his subject matter is immense, and he does it all with a light touch. The protagonists in "The Life of Insects" are neither insect nor human in the usual sense, but transcendant creatures who flicker back and forth between the two. The transitions are shocking, sometimes gruesome, and frequently funny, but never seem contrived. And why not? Despite our free will and our intellect, we humans too are subject to the full force of biology and social organization. We grow up, mate, find a niche in the established order, deal with catastrophe, and die. Along the way, we occasionally wonder about the meaning of it all. This may be a trite message, but in Pelevin's hands, it soars.

This book, among with a couple of his others, is the most innovating and original work of literature to come out of new Russia populated by the new-Russians since Sorokin's "Norma". The closest comparison to it can be probably found in music by the likes of Nirvana and Kino.

A translator's note at the beginning of Victor Pelevin's "The Life of Insects" states that "Mitya and Dima are both diminutive forms of the Russian name Dmitry." This struck me as an interesting and enigmatic note, standing starkly alone in the middle of the page immediately preceding the book's epigraph. As it turns out, Mitya and Dima are moths (or are they humans?) drawn to the light in one of the many episodes in Pelevin's remarkable and imaginative satire of life in modern Russia. As Mitya explains, "if I wrote a novel about insects, that's how I'd represent their life: a village by the sea, darkness, and a few lamps shining in the darkness above this repulsive dancing. But to fly to those lamps means . . . [death]."

"The Life of Insects" is the novel Mitya would have written. Set in an old resort hotel by the sea, the story begins with intrigue: Sam, an American, meeting two Russians, Arthur and Arnold, while a loudspeaker blares, first in English ("The Voice of God, Bliss, Idaho, U.S.A."), then in dreamy Ukrainian. The conversation among them immediately puzzles the reader, talk of hemoglobin, glucose, insecticides in the blood. "Sam looked around at his partners. Arthur and Arnold had turned into small mosquitoes of that miserable hue of gray familiar from prerevolutionary village huts, a color that in its time had reduced many a Russian poet to tears." Arthur and Arnold, the Russian mosquitoes, in turn looked enviously at Sam, an American, "a light chocolate color, with long elegant legs a small tight belly, and wings swept back like a jet plane's."

From this first episode, I realized I was in for a wild imaginative ride, and Pelevin did not disappoint me. Weaving his story from chapter to chapter with stunning imagination and verve, "The Life of Insects" is an episodic narrative of many lives, all of them adumbrating ideas (from Ancient Egyptian religion to Buddhism to Marcus Aurelius) and biting satirical commentary on modern life in Russia and America. Appropriately described as a "satirical bestiary" by one reviewer, Pelevin's narrative tells not only of Sam, Arthur and Arnold, but also of a father and son, dung beetles, whose life is defined by the sphere of dung that they push along. "I know it's difficult to understand, but there simply isn't anything other than dung . . . and the purpose of life is to push it along in front of you." And there are Mitya and Dima, the moths, whose lives are dominated by the need to fly towards the light. And there is Marina, the pregnant female ant whose daughter, Natasha, decides to become a fly. As her mother watches, Natasha leaves her cocoon, "and instead of a modest ant's body, Marina saw a typical young fly in a short sexy dress with spangles."

"The Life of Insects" is the work of a remarkable imagination, a biting satire that, at the same time, is laden with insightful reflection and commentary. I highly recommend it!

"The Life of Insects" is not for the Disney-minded, though it delves quite frequently in the silly and absurd, and uses animals -- well, insects -- to represent people. The book is written as a comical "Metamorphosis," at times witty, silly, morbid and profound. Humanity is viewed as insects through some dismal, cosmic microscope. We are the insects always trying to find the light, but finding only darkness, pushing along a ball of dung (our corporeal body) and never rising above our materialistic predicament. As much as the novel describes these squallid Russian characters living in a sad state of affairs, reduced to the cruel plight of an insect existence, Pelevin is also pointing out that the majority is weak-minded in the first place, never questioning their dim fate and resigned to make contact only with dung. Pelevin's prose slaps the reader in the face, both poetic and philosophical, a mix of Bukowski, Emily Dickinson and Andy Goldsworthy, a stark raving loner, content to watch the paint peel and pick up from it designs of brutal bent.

In 1994, Russian author Viktor Pelevin first published his commentary on Russian society after perestroika and even after the fall of the Soviet Union. While many reviewers focus on the unique Russian character of Жизнь Насекомых [The Life of Insects], I was struck by its quality as an allegorical commentary on Russian society. While obvious comparisons to certain Russian masters like Chekhov and Turgenev seems inevitable, I thought more of the allegories and social commentaries of authors such as Zamyatin, Nabokov, and even Orwell. I read a 1996 translation into English by Andrew Bromfield.

The Life of Insects Rather than focus on the story of a single protagonist working his way through society, Pelevin opts to tell several stories in a single novel, allowing a picture to emerge of a society as a whole, not from the top-down as if by some Soviet-style central design, but rather from the bottom-up, where individuals live their own lives, only vaguely aware of others outside of their sphere. The Life of Insects becomes a commentary on modern society, Russian society, with various factions each being represented by some variety of insect, beginning with enterprising mosquitoes in a clear reference to the "New Russians" that emerged at the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Readers of Russian works will feel at home in The Life of Insects, as the story and its presentation has a distinctly Russian feel to it, something of a fatalist acceptance that whatever superficial changes we might make, nothing will ever be fundamentally different. Especially in the case of ants and dung beetles, we are shown very clearly that for whatever struggles might take place at the individual level, circumstances far beyond our control will dictate the manner of our daily lives as we hope to produce another generation of the species before we meet our own ends. If we live long enough to observe and pause long enough to reflect, we'll see our children doing exactly as we did-and only then will we really understand why our parents said what they said and did what they did as we struggled to reach maturity.

Some will be more pensive, actively thinking about where they are going instead of being shocked to see history repeating itself in front of their eyes. They will think about terms like paradise that people talk of, thinking about how pointless it is to dig, always to dig through the dirt, where breakfast and lunch are largely the same, and one always struggles to dig well enough to reach the surface. When finally getting there, realizing just what it means, and unable to share the insight.

Others will be more social, staying abreast of the news, sharing observations, insights, and experiences with others. While they experience their own ups and downs, their friends will be there, always supportive and a force for balance and stability. The trick, of course, is not to attract too much attention along the way, lest they find themselves on the receiving end of some action by the authorities to limit their influence.

Each of these has particular meaning in modern Russian society, with commentary not being difficult to follow-the text fairly clearly spells out the necessary parallels. Even so, similar lessons can certainly be drawn for other social structures as well.

I thought the translation equal to the task of presentation of the book in English, making it accessible even to those unfamiliar with Russian society beyond a place where one might see abbreviations such as NKVD and KGB. (One unexpected joy comes from familiarity with the issue of translation of language between Russian and English and the ability to sense the quality of translation. I am anxious to see the text in the original language and what construction Pelevin himself used that required Bromfield's nice little trick with the use of Ai- й + а, perhaps? Addendum: as it turns out the text is available online and it was just as I suspected.)

I thought the text an interesting tour of contemporary Russian society, as told by someone who lives within it but clearly sees it not just as a whole but in all its parts. The novel's structure was worthy to carry its ideas and the ideas worthy of consideration for society more broadly.

Pelevin's The Life of Insects is a stunning allegorical novel chronicling life in post-Soviet Russia. It masterfuly portrays the search for identity after the fall of the Soviet Union by taking the reader deep into the Russian soul and laying bare the Russian psyche.Its prosecution of Chernomyrdin's "Shock Therapy" and the pillaging of the Russian people by Western Business men and Russian Mafia is cleverly intimated. It is at times difficult to understand the full impact of some passages without knowledge of current Russian history but it is a truly beautiful novel, one of the best I have read. It is a truly Russian novel and I recommend it to all who possess even a superficial interest in Russia and the Russian people.

I was in a different world for two weeks after reading 'The Life of Insects.' Absolutely tremendous! However, I read it in Russian. I am not sure how well a translation into English would preserve and express the author's amazing command of the language and the style of Russian thought in general. The Russian way of thinking and of expression in literature have always been hard to translate into the Western, much more logical, style. However, I think a lot of Pelevin's images and ideas are universal. As a whole, if you can truely detach yourself and take the book as it is - going with its flow - I think you could receive great pleasure from reading it, both intellectually and spiritually. (Of course, if you are reading a good translation!) Pelevin is truely a master!

A translator's note at the beginning of Victor Pelevin's "The Life of Insects" states that "Mitya and Dima are both diminutive forms of the Russian name Dmitry." This struck me as an interesting and enigmatic note, standing starkly alone in the middle of the page immediately preceding the book's epigraph. As it turns out, Mitya and Dima are moths (or are they humans?) drawn to the light in one of the many episodes in Pelevin's remarkable and imaginative satire of life in modern Russia. As Mitya explains, "if I wrote a novel about insects, that's how I'd represent their life: a village by the sea, darkness, and a few lamps shining in the darkness above this repulsive dancing. But to fly to those lamps means . . . [death]."

"The Life of Insects" is the novel Mitya would have written. Set in an old resort hotel by the sea, the story begins with intrigue: Sam, an American, meeting two Russians, Arthur and Arnold, while a loudspeaker blares, first in English ("The Voice of God, Bliss, Idaho, U.S.A."), then in dreamy Ukrainian. The conversation among them immediately puzzles the reader, talk of hemoglobin, glucose, insecticides in the blood. "Sam looked around at his partners. Arthur and Arnold had turned into small mosquitoes of that miserable hue of gray familiar from prerevolutionary village huts, a color that in its time had reduced many a Russian poet to tears." Arthur and Arnold, the Russian mosquitoes, in turn looked enviously at Sam, an American, "a light chocolate color, with long elegant legs a small tight belly, and wings swept back like a jet plane's."

From this first episode, I realized I was in for a wild imaginative ride, and Pelevin did not disappoint me. Weaving his story from chapter to chapter with stunning imagination and verve, "The Life of Insects" is an episodic narrative of many lives, all of them adumbrating ideas (from Ancient Egyptian religion to Buddhism to Marcus Aurelius) and biting satirical commentary on modern life in Russia and America. Appropriately described as a "satirical bestiary" by one reviewer, Pelevin's narrative tells not only of Sam, Arthur and Arnold, but also of a father and son, dung beetles, whose life is defined by the sphere of dung that they push along. "I know it's difficult to understand, but there simply isn't anything other than dung . . . and the purpose of life is to push it along in front of you." And there are Mitya and Dima, the moths, whose lives are dominated by the need to fly towards the light. And there is Marina, the pregnant female ant whose daughter, Natasha, decides to become a fly. As her mother watches, Natasha leaves her cocoon, "and instead of a modest ant's body, Marina saw a typical young fly in a short sexy dress with spangles."

"The Life of Insects" is the work of a remarkable imagination, a biting satire that, at the same time, is laden with insightful reflection and commentary. I highly recommend it!