The Cutting Edge of the Pen: Martin Amis and Olga Slavonika

The Cutting Edge of the Pen: Martin Amis and Olga Slavonika

Part of the Festival of Russian Arts 2012

Come witness a meeting of literary luminaries from starkly different worlds – West and East, the English-speaking world and the Russian-speaking. Those worlds, so recently opposed and alien to one another, now appear to be converging – but at what point do they meet?

Martin Amis and Olga Slavnikova are known for their instantly recognizable language and inventive literary structures. They wield the magical and the grotesque to bring out crucial truths, often dark truths, concerning the post-modern and consumerist condition. Each has a lively interest in the history and culture of the other.

WNYC and NPR radio personality Leonard Lopate, the voice of culture in New York, moderates a reading and discussion with Amis and Slavnikova. Lopate takes us into the writers' inspirations and motivations, their conception of art and literature, and what exactly they have to say to us.

Martin Louis Amis is one of the most important writers of our time. He is the author of twelve novels, the memoir Experience, two collections of stories and six of nonfiction, most recently The Second Plane. Mr. Amis has penned a number of Britain's best-known novels, including Money (1984) and London Fields (1989). His books have been included in such lists as “100 All-Time Novels” and Time's “100 best English-language novels of 1923 to 2005,” and Mr. Amis himself was named “one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945” by the London Times in 2008.

Amis' raw material is a personal vision of the absurdity of the postmodern condition and the grotesque excesses of late-capitalist Western society. In this, he is the undisputed master of what The New York Times called "the new unpleasantness." Influenced by Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Joyce, as well as by his father Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis has inspired a generation of writers with his distinctive style, including Will Self and Zadie Smith. The Guardian writes that Amis' critics have noted what Kingsley Amis called a "terrible compulsive vividness in his style ... that constant demonstrating of his command of English," and that the "Amis-ness of Amis will be recognizable in any piece before he reaches his first full stop." To accusations that his style is excessively literary, Amis has responded: "No one wants to read a difficult literary novel or deal with a prose style which reminds them how thick they are. There's a push towards egalitarianism, making writing more chummy and interactive, instead of a higher voice, and that's what I go to literature for."

Amis's 1991 Time's Arrow features a unique, backwards narrative, including dialogue in reverse. The novel is the autobiography of a Nazi concentration camp doctor. The unique reversal of time in the novel seemingly transforms Auschwitz – and the entire theatre of war – into a place of joy, healing, and resurrection. His 1997 Night Train is narrated by the mannish American detective Mike Hoolihan. The story revolves around the suicide of her boss's teenage daughter. Like most of Amis's work, Night Train is dark, bleak, and foreboding, arguably a reflection of the author's views on America. 

In 2002, Amis published Koba the Dread, a devastating history of the crimes of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, and also of their denial by many writers and academics in the West. The book precipitated a literary controversy, both for its approach to its subject and for blasting the views on that subject of Amis' long-time friend, Christopher Hitchens (they remained the very closest of friends until Mr. Hitchens' death late last year). In September 2006, upon his return from Uruguay, Amis published House of Meetings. This short novel (his eleventh) continued the author's crusade against the crimes of Stalinism and also saw some consideration of the state of contemporary post-Soviet Russia.

Also relevant is Amis's 1993 collection of non-fiction writing, Visiting Mrs. Nabokov. The title essay details a day spent with Vera Nabokov, wife of one of Amis's literary heroes Vladimir Nabokov.

Martin Amis has taught creative writing as a professor at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester. In recent years he has divided his time between homes in London, Uruguay, and Brooklyn, NY.

Olga Alexandrovna Slavnikova is one of the most important voices in Russian literature today and an internationally known novelist. She characterizes the approach she takes in her six novels and numerous short stories as the inverse of “magical realism”: she introduces a fantastical element into an everyday context to create a kind of grotesque of the latter that Mr. Amis, one imagines, might appreciate.

Slavnikova's first novel, A Dragonfly Enlarged to the Size of a Dog, was short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize in 1997 and immediately vaulted her to the top ranks of Russian literature. Dragonfly is considered her most philosophical novel, and she herself says that, having written several “difficult books,” she is now interested in focusing more upon gripping storylines. “I want to reclaim for [high] literature territory that has been lost to trash lit, bearing in mind that it was territory familiar to Melville and Shakespeare.” Even in the works that emerged from this quest, her style remains instantly recognizable - rich in metaphor and markedly “created.” About her style, Slavnikova says: “I am primarily a language writer. For me, ever plot twist is a set of possibilities for the linguistic plot, too. I understand that, for the most part, no one is going to see this. And this is why my books don't fall into the category of “comfortable reading.”

The first fruit of Slavnikova's new, plot-centric approach became her best-known work, the novel 2017, in which the current social turmoil in Russia erupts into a second Russian Revolution on the 100th anniversary of the original Revolution. It won its author the Russian Booker Prize in 2006 and has been translated into many languages. In particular, the Overlook Press issued the English translation of 2017 in 2010. The novel has been called “an ambitious, postmodern contribution to a revered literary tradition» and it weaves together numerous plotlines, partaking simultaneously of such dissimilar literary lineages as the romantic adventure tale, science-fiction dystopias, and the Tolstoyan epic novel.

Her latest novel is Light Head. The bluntly fantastical aspect of this work – weightlessness of the central character's head - is typically quirky, bereft of emotionally charged associations, be they comforting or fearful, romantic or exalting. But as unexpected connections and significances accrete to the odd idea, the light head ultimately throws the essence of Russia's new and ruthless brand of consumer society into sharp relief. Indeed, the fate of nations is eventually made to depend upon this physiological anomaly, as is, of course, the fate of the main character himself. Light Head will be coming out in English translation in early 2013.

Olga Slavnikova is also a popular literary critic and her critical essays won her the Polonsky Prize.

In 2001, in addition to her rising literary career, Slavnikova became the Director of the Debut Prize, a position she continues to hold. The Debut Prize, which has been seeking out new, young literary talent throughout the world's Russian speaking population since 2000, has been called Russia's premiere literary award.

Olga Slavnikova grew up in Ekaterinburg, near the Ural mountains, where she graduated from the Ural University with a degree in journalism. In 2003, she moved to Moscow, where she lives now with her husband, the poet Vitaly Pukhanov.

Today's moderator, Leonard Lopate, is the foremost voice of “cultural New York” via his immensely popular radio show on WNYC and satellite radio. For years, he has given us the privilege of listening in on the best conversations with writers, actors, ex-presidents, dancers, scientists, comedians, historians, grammarians, curators and filmmakers. Mr. Lopate is a fascinating personality in his own right – his WNYC bio begins: “Leonard Lopate studied painting with Mark Rothko and hosted a gospel music show in the 70's and early 80's. He also marketed records for Slim Whitman and Boxcar Willie, and knows enough Cantonese to order the best dim sum in Chinatown.”

This event is brought to you by CAUSA ARTIUM, a NYC-based arts non-profit, in cooperation with the New York Public Library's World Languages Collection and the Debut Prize Foundation.