Description
Each of the twenty-seven stories included in The Death of Samusus, written over the period of two decades, takes its origin and inspiration in the patchy fabric of Pavel’s experience, however fictionalized or amplified the final product may be. Their moods range from mildly transgressive, experimental, darkly surreal to fairly conventional, even “realistic,” though never without a tinge of irony, and, on occasion, a smear of sarcasm. The shifting subjectivity of the narrative voice owes a debt to Bakhtinian polyphony, and, to some degree, Flaubertian neutrality. Thus the storyteller in some texts may appear ill-informed or confused, his perspective is likely to change from story to story, and his first person privilege suspended.
Pavel’s youthful fascination with the chiseled prose of Isaac Babel or the profound flamboyance of the Russian Dadaist Daniil Kharms could not help but put its stamp on Lembersky’s early writing, just as the American postmodernists, Donald Barthelme and Robert Coover, or—at the opposite end of the spectrum—John Cheever and Richard Yates, in one way or another, have affected Pavel’s more recent output. But then so did Kierkegaard, Musil, Kafka, Sylvia Plath.
This book was prepared for publication in cooperation with Bagriy & Company, Chicago.
M_Graphics
Pavel Lembersky’s verbal art is nothing short of a wonder. Once a Soviet teenager quickly outfitted to write original American prose, Lembersky has steadfastly followed the example of the leading lights of early Russian émigré literature—Aldanov, Berberova, Gazdanov—by refusing to trade in his Russian quill pen even after decades of living in America. The Death of Samusis generously showcases Lembersky’s achievement as a writer of shorter
fiction—a fearless chronicler of exile, a loving absurdist of desire, a paradoxist of life’s endless bifurcation.
— Maxim D. Shrayer, Boston College professor and author of “A Russian Immigrant”
Funny, unique and completely unpredictable, The Death of Samusis, takes you on a wild journey through transitional states of mind, inspired by all kinds of binaries: Russian vs American, Male vs Female, Old vs New.
— Lara Vapnyar, author of “Divide Me by Zero”
Pavel Lembersky lives between two languages. His short stories, originally written in Russian and brought into English through the deft work of translators such as Jane Miller, Sergey Levchin, Alex Cigale, Ross Ufberg, Kerry Philben, Lydia Bryans, and the author himself, appeared last year in a collection titled The Death of Samusis, and Other Stories. Like Lembersky himself, almost all of the characters in Samusis are Soviet immigrants, many of whom pepper their English with Russian words or their Russian with English. Theirs is a hybrid experience, double-sided, and, as a result, Samusis is rife with innuendo.
The first story is a paragraph-long short-short. The title, “Humble Beginnings,” is unpacked in the line: “Humble beginnings, you might call my formative years. I call it child abuse.” This punch line invokes the severity of the author’s native Soviet culture, but with a curious twist. What “you” would use “humble beginnings” as a euphemism for child abuse? Perhaps a reader who takes a sentimental view of Soviet life…
Full text of review could be read here
— Ian Ross Singleton, writer, translator, professor of Writing at Baruch College.