2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Passion and tension in Central Europe!, October 23, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Skinswaps (Writings from an Unbound Europe) (Paperback)
I've read this in Croatian translation and really enjoyed it, especially the story about the death of Tito, the former Yugoslav dictator, which perfectly captures the feelings of my generation at the Yugoslav breakup, the one about tea-drinking ceremony and the "Billie Holiday" which manages to express the sad passion of Ms Holiday in a story of a contemporary couple. The other stories are also excellent, funny and tense at the same time.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Stuff, Let's See Some More!, April 21, 2004
This review is from: Skinswaps (Writings from an Unbound Europe) (Paperback)
A year ago, I found myself rather unexpectedly in Slovenia, and passed a very enjoyable few days in Llubljana. So, when I stumbled across this slim collection of sixteen short stories (originally published in 1990) by a Slovene, I let serendipity guide me again, and took it home. Most of the stories are quite short (one is a mere sentence), lasting only a few pages, and five of them appeared previously in the anthology The Day Tito Died. Although one expects writing from Central Europe to be at least somewhat political (especially when published as part of a series called "Writings From An Unbound Europe"), these stories are Carveresque pieces about people and relationships. In that sense, they are truly international, telling the reader next to nothing about Slovenia or the the nature of its national character.
The shorter stories are quick sketches, showing a band the moment before it starts playing, a child who's fright at a horror movie itself turns into a horror movie, a Jew attempting to escape a Nazi cattle car, and a number of conversations and interactions between lovers. Some of these are excellent, others easily forgottenóand the brevity is reminicient of one of the modern. More interesting are the three longer pieces. "Kyoto" tells of a group of Americans in Kyoto at a school to learn how to drink tea, and of what happens when one of them challenges the validity of the teacher's methods. "The Taste of Blood" finds a young woman watching when a body is pulled from the river, and turns very creepy as a policeman takes her home to seduce her. "Scratches on the Back" is the story of a self-absorbed architect who finds the wife of a former colleague on his doorstep one day, and of what happens when she moves in. The writing (and translation) is nicely honed throughout, and the style displays promising talent. It would be nice to see if Blatnik could sustain it over a whole novel, and introduce a little more narrative structure, but none of his novels has been translated into English yet.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
And this usually requires a lot of gesticulations, April 19, 2004
Blatnik's collection of short stories is memorable for its unusual, cynical and somehow familiar tone. It is concise in its ability to convey just what you need to know, and familiar in that you can, given a somewhat cynical frame of mind like mine, recognize some of your own thought processes unfolding in the narrative.
This collection of short stories is true to the term "short stories"... several stories are mere paragraph-long vignettes, but nevertheless worthwhile.
Of particular note are specific stories: "Isaac", "The Taste of Blood" and "Scratches on the Back".
In "Isaac", he tries to escape from a moving train, but manages to escape only as the train is slowing. An officer apprehends Isaac, asking him if he was planning to leave them. Isaac mutters, "Animals," about the officers, to which the officer replies, "I may be an animal, but this animal is philosophical. If you can't change the fate of the majority, you have to share it." The story, in its brevity, conveys the sense of courage Isaac felt, not believing the sheep-like nature of those accompanying him in the train car (presumably riding toward their deaths). How, he wonders, can these people not fight against this fate? Isaac displays courage, but the story illustrates how even the most courageous of acts are often met with futility.
"The Taste of Blood" is written in an unusual way, leaving the reader with an ominous feeling, as though something could go terribly wrong at any time.
In "Scratches on the Back" the narrator is sarcastic, set in his ways, but despite being set in his ways, does not fight against the tide of change when something alters his life. He goes through life in a laissez-faire sort of manner, but he finds that by doing nothing the course of his daily life changes, even though he has done nothing to alter it. Although the direction of the story and plotline were not particularly engaging to me, I was fond of the narration provided by the "protagonist" of the story. In the beginning of the story, he relates the tale of throwing a party for someone, only to find that the guest annoyed him and were careless enough with their drinks as to stain his rug, "All I could figure was that I had invited the wrong people to the party last night. People who didn't appreciate hand-woven rugs made of mountain-goat hair. People who let wine splash over the rims of their glasses while they went on about their adventures and waving their hands in the air. Some adventures. People obviously think that they can turn everything nothing into something if they pump it up enough. And this usually requires a lot of gesticulations."
The best story in the collection is "Kyoto", which chronicles an encounter between an American tea-ceremony teacher in Kyoto and three American pupils. One of these pupils is a stereotypical "ugly American" abroad. He is irritated when he learns he cannot acquire all the knowledge and skills needed to drink tea in the traditional Japanese way in just a few days, and as a result attempts to use cold, hard (though simple, direct, blunt and crass) logic to make a point.
The narrator is one of the three pupils, an onlooker really to the unfolding dialogue between Jay, the teacher, who claims to be at one with all of nature when engaged in the complex art of drinking tea, and Sam, the ugly American who does not grasp the complexity and time-consuming nature of mastering tea nor its spiritual or theoretical foundations. Sam's "logic" is to challenge Jay's assertion that he is in fact "at one" with nature. "So that you form a harmonious whole with all living beings...; ... and that nothing natural is alien to you, that nothing living disgusts you." Sam dares Jay to eat a live caterpillar to prove this "oneness" with nature.
Up to this point, Jay seemed to be the one in control of the conversation. Sam was too crass and outrageous to seem anything more than an annoyance to Jay. But Jay was tempted by the bet. Sam offered Jay a considerable sum of money if he could indeed eat the caterpillar. On the other hand, if Jay could not eat the caterpillar, Jay would have to return to the United States with Sam and open a tea school there.
The story comes alive and, despite being without overt action, is riveting because you wonder if Jay will be tempted enough by some lingering greed/material need (which he claims to have rescinded in becoming one with nature). You wonder if Jay will succeed in eating the caterpillar. Will Sam have to pay up?
Jay, after eating the caterpillar, becomes violently ill. He vomits the whole caterpillar, still intact, and thereby loses the bet. Jay is forced to return to America and figures he probably belongs there because his decade of tea training has obviously done him little good if he was tempted by money. Sam, self-satisfied, says, "What is Japan nowadays but a poor-quality instant copy of America? What else are all these McDonalds, all these slot machine halls, all these copied metropolitan streets, all this neon and metal?"
"This," said Jay, "is Japan without tea."
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