The New Sweet Style [Hardcover]

Vassily Aksyonov (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 23, 1999

Few writers enjoy the kind of international praise and prestige that Russian émigré novelist Vassily Aksyonov has earned for his previ-ous books. In his latest and most surprising novel, The New Sweet Style, Alexander Korbach--a singer/composer/playwright adored by the counterculture in Moscow and reviled by the Communist powers-that-were--comes to the United States to start over and to search for new ways of pursuing his art.
    
No one is at the airport to meet him. Oh, well. Sasha soon discovers that he's a distant cousin of a rich American retailer with an elegant flagship store in New York. But before he can "capitalize" on this connection, Sasha has to work as a garage attendant in Santa Monica, deal with his Russian ex-wife, face down the KGB, get in bed with the KGB, and drink a goodly  portion of vodka now and again (and again).
    
With his inimitably hilarious and melancholy sensibility, Vassily Aksyonov draws a sharp portrait of a flawed but resilient hero who wanders through his new homeland in search of happiness and an audience for his work. It's a  perfect, wise vision of a world that somehow manages to grow smaller and crazier with every passing day.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Vassily Aksyonov (Generations of Winter) is clearly a man of vast ambitions: his writing has an invigorating wildness, veering off into the stratosphere at regular intervals. Aksyonov was forced to leave Russia in the '80s because his work was considered too controversial for publication. One senses there is nothing he would not satirize, even the "great Russian writer" aristocracy he so clearly sees himself descending from. At times his remarkable, frustrating The New Sweet Style seems composed in great Russian writer drag--an elaborate and garish parody of the old style, a fabulous product of that country's strange vanishing.

At the novel's shifting center is Alexander Korbach, a director-folksinger-Renaissance man who has been forced out of Russia and seeks fame in America. He steps off the plane in New York expecting to be greeted by the press, but they're entirely focused on a tennis player, and in this sad passage Aksyonov beautifully renders his exaggerated sense of his own importance:

Korbach dragged his suitcase on its little trolley around the terminal for no less than an hour and drank water from a fountain so that he wouldn't have to order a Coke in English, until the staggering thought hit him: No one is meeting me here! Yet Maurice told me that they would! That there had been loads of reports in the American press! Every American he met had exclaimed: "Alexander Korbach! It's a great name in the States!"

The New Sweet Style is a long, sometimes confusing book, but its pleasures are vast, its multitude of characters consistently engaging and distinct even as they crowd in on one another. Aksyonov occasionally engages in metafictional asides that can be intrusive, like someone talking during a movie. But when he shuts up, the sounds and colors flourish and his world becomes as vivid as a spinning vodka dream. --Emily White

From Publishers Weekly

Alexander Korbach, the hero of acclaimed Russian ?migr? Aksyonov's picaresque new novel, is, like his author, so disliked by the Soviet authorities that after a career as a protest singer and dramaturge for a troupe called the Buffoons, he's pressured by the KGB to leave the Soviet Union. He heads for Venice, Calif., where he gets a worm's-eye view of Reagan's America, working as a parking attendant, hanging out with the riffraff patrons of a local bar called First Bottom. But fate catches up with him in the person of millionaire Stanley Korbach, a distant relative. Alex refuses Stanley's assistance, but he does go to a big family reunion on Stanley's estate in Maryland, where he meets the love of his life, Stanley's married daughter, Nora Mansoun. The problem is, Alex is broke. He even has to sell cocaine to afford to see Nora. Eventually, Nora persuades Pinkerton University to hire Alex for the drama department. At this point, the story goes haywire. Stanley Korbach, now a blend of Daddy Warbucks and George Soros, showers Alex with a director's job in Hollywood and a position in an American/Russian political fund. Nora becomes an astronaut, then leaves Alex to go to a dig in Iraq. Alex as a celebrity, with Stanley acting as his personal deus ex machina, becomes a device by which the author can insert his historical observations about the fall of Gorbachev and the events of August 1991. At the very end, this massive book recaptures its manic but focused energy, when Korbach's Hollywood career falls apart. Despite the novel's lapses, Aksyonov is a fantastic talent, a master of "Mr. Gogol's style of lyrical digression," by which he ponders literature and fate in large, sometimes autobiographical asides, like a series of genial showman's winks. Agent, Georges Borchardt. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Random House; First Edition edition (November 23, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679444017
• ISBN-13: 978-0679444015
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,249,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sporadically Briliant But Ultimately Disappointing, January 24, 2000

By 

Leonard Fleisig "Len" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The New Sweet Style (Hardcover)

I picked up this book wth great antipication. I arrived at the bookstore and was thrilled to see a new Aksyonov novel in the just-released fiction section. After reading the jacket-cover I left with great anticipation. Perhaps my great anticaption fueld my ultimate disappointment. The first third of the book was compelling and well-written. I devoured the this part in rapid fashion. Unforunately, I became mired in and not a little confused by the author's flights of fancy, spinning off from the text in all directions, a frolic of its own. Others may find the diversions delightful. I found it increasingly difficult to focus as I worked through the book. It also occured to me that I was "working" through the book in an effort to finish it rather than devouring each page. There were delights to be found in the latter two-thirds of the novel. In my opinion, those sporadic delights do not overcome the rather esoteric complexities of major portions of the work. As always, others may be delighted by the tone and content of the novel.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A post-Cold War extravagance., October 29, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The New Sweet Style (Hardcover)

One would think that more attention would be paid to a writer with Vassily Aksyonov's history. Author of an anthem for his generation ("Ticket to the Stars"), he rankled his government so much with his phantasmagoric subsequent works ("The Burn," "The Island of Crimea") that he was compelled to emigrate. On US shores, he expanded his repertoire to include more straightforward fiction and created historical novels of the Stalinist era ("Generations of Winter," "The Winter's Hero"). In our post-Soviet age, however, the sex appeal of credentials like these has faded. Perhaps that was part of the inspiration for his latest novel, "The New Sweet Style." In it, Alexander Korbach, a leading figure of the Moscow cultural scene who models himself after Dante Aligheri, finds himself forced out of his country and underwhelmed by America's disinterested reception. While Korbach is occasionally bemused by his new surroundings, he's amost always amused; Aksyonov is similarly open-armed. His prose delights in idioms and puns of the sort that madden translators, and the novel ranges from reportorial descriptions of parking lots in Venice, California to lyrical speculations on cosmology, placing itself squarely in the class of loose, baggy monsters. Assisted by considerable authorial interruption, Korbach lurches from a seedy Inferno in 1980s California toward a unique Paradiso, a ridiculously sublime millennial reunion in Israel with the mummified remains of his earliest ancestor. It's impossible to discredit the work for its lack of cohesiveness, though, given its good-natured refusal to meet that expectation: "We do take leaps, even into the past, within our chapters--modernism is a contagious disease, ladies and gentlemen!" One of these leaps finds Korbach returning to the USSR to lead a revolution. Aksyonov somehow manages to equate totalitarianism with traditional realism, so that when we root for the hero to face down a tank, we're simultaneously rooting for the success of Aksyonov's sweet, idiosyncratic style.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Factual, interesting, lengthy read, July 10, 2000

By 

Brenda "MYSHELFDOTCOM" (United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The New Sweet Style (Hardcover)

The author Vassily wasn't forced out for un-pure blood, he forced out of Russia after too many clashes with the government. After reading about him the only thing I found him guilty of was having a talent and using it to make a difference. I think we all know that any establishment, government or not, does not want their faults or wrong-doings pointed out... even if it is in the best interest of others. For those of us who have fought the good fight, it was most likely a small establishment or department we dealt with, but with Vassily it was a entire country -- I admire him. In my opinion, Russia's loss is our gain. Vassily is a talented, skilled writer.

The novel THE NEW SWEET STYLE starts when Alexander Korbach reaches America on August 10, 1982, it's his 43rd birthday. Alexander Korbach isn't his real name and he isn't really Jewish. As a child he was known as Sasha Izhmailov. He was born and raised in Russia with his parents, a mother that loved him and a father who didn't. He also has a younger brother and sister. He tells us of a family secret that came out when he noticed his grandmother would come bearing gifts for him only when his father left, and how she seemed to behave as if she had some sort of ownership over him. Now in America Alexander tries to make a life for himself as and singer and playwright. He meets and woman named Nora and finds himself in a relationship with her and New York City.

THE NEW SWEET STYLE is a mature novel, in the sense that Vassily has his hero landing in New York, so we can expect the usual mature predicaments with the hero and those he comes in contact with. I found the presentation of the book different in that the narrator doesn't just talk to the the reader, he also directs him and points things out. Be ready for a factual, interesting, lengthy read.