The View from Stalin's Head (Paperback)

This debut collection of stories, most of them set in Prague, brings to mind the dream Kenneth Tynan tells of in his diaries in which his friend Antonia Fraser is asked if it's true that she has converted to Judaism. "Yes," she says. "But as Dr. Jonathan Miller once said, 'I'm not a Jew. I'm Jew-ish.' " The narrators of several of these 10 clunky and unpolished tales are American, gay and Jewish, but the most urgent question in the stories is the extent to which the characters will embrace any categorical identity. " 'Art is my religion,' " the narrator says in "Exile." " 'I'm not a big fan of Judaism. It excludes certain groups, like women.' I paused. 'And fags.' " He's not quite comfortable with being a Jew, but he's obsessed with the fact that he's Jewish. His commitment -- even to the religion of art -- is halfhearted at best. In the same story, the narrator asks a Czech friend if he agrees that Milan Kundera is a genius. The friend replies that he's never read Kundera's books, and then the narrator admits to himself that he "only made it halfway through" one of Kundera's novels but had just "wanted to offer a compliment" to his friend's country.

There's a depressing absence of commitment to anything in these stories, except being gay, which is easy to accept for these hip (or hip-ish) young men. Even being gay means little more to these characters, though, than noticing cute guys and kvetching mildly about not being wholly accepted by the conservative people and institutions with whom they persist in maintaining contact. The rule for these urbane American twentysomethings is not to care too much. The narrator of "Exile," arguing with his friend about Judaism and homosexuality, realizes he's on the verge of losing his cool: "I was skirting dangerously close to sounding like I gave a [expletive], so I wound it up with, 'All religions are a lie.' "

The most affecting of the stories is the one with the same title as the collection and the only one in which no American appears. Franta, a 13-year-old Czech boy (whose nickname is "Daisy") with a doting mother, distant father and shy demeanor, befriends Javor, the more experienced and bolder new kid in town. Javor refers to himself as a communist; he's also a troublemaker who steals, smokes and, when the teacher's back is turned in the classroom, calls out "Mickey Mouse!" "Michael Jordan!" "Hamburger!" Javor makes the acquaintance of a strange old man with an enormous homemade papier-mâché bust of Stalin in a spare room and a penchant for masochistic reminders of the bad old days when he was harassed and strip-searched by party thugs. Javor gradually catches on that the old man likes to be treated roughly and is willing to pay for it, and eventually he persuades Franta to join in the fun, but Franta proves too weak and soft for the role and is promptly defenestrated. Back at home, Franta makes a feeble attempt to assert himself with his mother, who, "with that legendary firmness of which only mothers are capable," orders him to bed.

Prague in the 1990s, as Hamburger describes it, is mired in a melancholy, disappointed post-Communist heaviness, with little appeal and no glamour at all. The Americans in the stories are themselves vaguely disappointed by the city, and it's not clear why they stay. Real melancholy, however, does not come across in these stories, which are preoccupied with the young tourists' ordinary pursuits: flirting, eating, amusing themselves, and thinking about going elsewhere, either back to the United States or to Israel.

One of the stories, "Law of Return," is set in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Gay Michael and his heterosexual girlfriend Becky have come from Prague to visit Michael's Israeli relatives, a humorless, imposing aunt, her crude husband and Eli, their young son and Michael's cousin -- and his lover. Michael, who'd been sent to Prague by Deloitte & Touche "to consult for CzOL, a Czech service provider modeled on America Online," decides in the end to quit his job and stay in Israel with his cousin. Israel's Law of Return conveniently makes it possible for him to be "on the government dole for six months." Becky, naturally, feels estranged, and is, in fact, rudely abandoned by her friend. The story could easily be true, but it is not poignant or disturbing or sad or thrilling or memorable.

Hamburger's rather quaint use of simile -- "the old lady, who had a charming old-fashioned accent, bit crisply into each syllable of her words like they were expensive chocolates" -- sometimes seems an awfully arty stretch of the imagination. But occasionally he gets it right, and uses similes effectively to produce his best sentences: "Endless rows of gray cement apartment buildings flashed past like an unbroken monotone, a single note held for fifty years." Hamburger's writing lacks nerve. He's bewitched by content, by material, characters and situations presumably taken from life -- none of which is sufficient, in this case at least, for the creation of a powerful, meaningful story. Who can say what it is that turns a story into a work of art? That's the great mystery about writing: either it works or it doesn't. But if there is a single quality in a writer that's essential, what's better than what Aaron Hamburger hasn't quite got yet -- chutzpah?

Reviewed by Rick Whitaker

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