The Life of Insects

Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant and Imaginative Satire
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant and Imaginative Satire
Review: Are Scarabs (and perhaps other insects) enlightened by rolling their roll of dung, their Ai, in front of them? Is all Ai? Is moth enlightment found by falling in a well (towards the dark) and relating the experience to the I Ching hexagram? Is the path to happiness plotted in French movies of love? Is life more than digging tunnels, flying towards the light, cannibalism ...?

These and the other mysteries of life are explored in Pelevin's The Life of Insects in which the characters are people/insects in an ambiguity changing within a paragraph. Like Pelevin's The Yellow Arrow the focus is both on post-Communist USSR and in humanity in general. Also like The Yellow Arrow, the conceit of the novel would fail in the hands of most authors - but Pelevin pulls it off with quiet mastery of his craft. Add this to your list of must reads.

Rating:
Summary: Shimmering Satire of Post-Perestroika Russia
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Original, Gloomy, At Times Disgusting
Review: Pelevin is was born in 1962, if I remember correctly, and is now considered one of Russia's best writers by many authorities. One thing about his approach in general: Pelevin's characters are phantoms, they are just not there, not developed. I am sure that the author would make no apologies for this. That's just his style. So this is not Charles Dickens. Do not look for well fleshed out real-life characters here. It is all abstraction and imagery.

Pelevin achieves some originality in this Kafkaesque, Chapek-like remix of insects like human beings allegory. I found this novella a bit too pessimistic, dark, and dismissive. According to Pelevin, everything is "dung." People of Russia are caught up in a life inside the filthiest toilet that has ever existed. That's how Pelevin sees things. I don't agree.

Most characters, if this is an appropriate term for Pelevin's phantoms, are stereotypes, e.g. Sam, the American businessmen, Natasha, an adolescent Russian girl... I grew up in the Soviet Union. I think this maximalist attitude and go-for-the-gusto pessimism that Pelevin dispalys is somehow very Russian. It is rigid and uncompromising, and wrapped up in despair. It craves something drastic. A revolution perhaps, or maybe anarchy. I don't know.

Rating:
Summary: grotesque, pornograpic interactions between insects
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Unique and challenging
Review: Pelevin, one of few prominent Russian modern writers, impressively creates a cast of characters that exist simultaneously as humans and insects. The transformations and comparisons are fascinating, as is the portrait of Russian life during perestroika. The book is heavily philosophical though and much of it is hard to comprehend. According to a Russian friend, "the only way to understand some of it is to smoke a joint, then read it."

Rating:
Summary: Unique and challenging
Review: Pelevin, one of few prominent Russian modern writers, impressively creates a cast of characters that exist simultaneously as humans and insects. The transformations and comparisons are fascinating, as is the portrait of Russian life during perestroika. The book is heavily philosophical though and much of it is hard to comprehend. According to a Russian friend, "the only way to understand some of it is to smoke a joint, then read it."