Croatian

Responses include:
1. Croatian nights: A festival of alternative literature (selections)
2. Dubravka Ugresic's The ministry of Pain

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Croatian nights: A festival of alternative literature [ed. by Borivoj Radaković, Matt Thorne, and Tony White]. (2005). Intro. by Tibor Fischer. Trans. by Celia Hawkesworth. London: Serpent's Tail.

Comprised of 18 short story writers (19 tales altogether, one author repeat), I was interested in only seven of them, all by Croatian writers[1]: Vladimir Ansenijević's "Hawaii" (pp. 12-23); Borivoj Radaković's "Relief (pp. 54-64); Zorica Radaković's "Yogurt for Nina" (pp. 94-105); Goran Nuhanovic's "The last stretch of the way" (pp. 106-118); Goran Tribuson's "Ultimate fighting" (pp. 129-146); Jelena Čarija's "Junk food kills, doesn't it?" (pp. 165-180); Zoran Ferić's "Theological proof" (pp. 181-192). Thematically, these seven writers (five male, two female; four stories with women's POV, three with men's) focus on the darker, grittier aspects of life, four with oblique mentions to the Yugoslav war (Ansenijević [see pp. 19-20]; B. Radaković [see pp. 54-55, 57, 63-74], Z. Radaković [see p. 95]; Tribuson [see p. 131]), two with LGBT references (Z. Radakovićć [see pp. 100, 103-105]; Nuhanović [see p. 113]), and one experimental piece (Čarija) that starts with a play format (see pp. 165-165).

Of them, the weakest is Ansenijević due to the use of inflated language and didacticism (see pp. 12-15) and the inclusion of extraneous material with no relevance to the main narrative (see pp. 18-19, 22-23), suggesting a less experienced writer. In general, the others except for Čarija show great command with their story structures and writing; Čarija, while promising, overdoes it on pp. 176-177. Ferić, however, includes six subsections that center on an escort's experiences with weird men which finds resonance with the actual violence and threats against the women in Čarija whose result invites examination with Ansenijević (see pp. 176-178, 180). For me, though, the best and most intense piece is B. Radaković which actually deals with the effects of war as a situation between two men escalates, leaving a question of whether the narrator also kills himself or is simply carried away from shock (see pp. 66-67).

Altogether, I found these particular stories disturbing and uncomfortable. I'd have to read more Croatian writers, though, to know if this is a general pattern (see my comments on Ugresic below). But if you can stomach the underbelly of reality, you might give Croatian nights: A festival of alternative literature[2] a try - and maybe, unlike me, read everything!


[1] I used the "About the contributors" (see pp. 207-210) to identify them. The woman in the store misattributed one of them, and didn't recognize several others.

[2] Both Tibor Fisher's "Introduction" and the editors' "Afterward" fail to explain what was meant by "alternative literature." Even were it included, I think one would need to have a good foundation in Croatian literature to be able to recognize any differences - is it, for example, simply due to the short story format (then you'd have to show that no prior Croatian writers worked with it or, if they did, where the current examples depart from their predecessors)?

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Ugresic, Dubravka. (2008/2005/2004). Ministry of pain, The (Ministarstvo boli). Rev. ed. Trans. from Croatian by Michael Henry Heim. London, San Francisco, and Hamra, Beirut: Telegram (London: Saqi)(Fabrika Knjiga).

 

The problem with writing in the first person is that the experience of something personal is often seen at a distance. And not having ever been directly affected by a war, I can't say for sure that Dubravka Ugresic hasn't; but, from reading The Ministry of Pain (2008/2005/2004), which is divided into five parts and an epilogue, my guess is that she, too, hasn't experienced a war firsthand because her character Tanja Lucić (first name first mention p. 112; last name first mention p. 14 ) is too distant and, ultimately, unsympathetic. So the impression I have is that Dubravka Ugresic heard about war from other people, or read about it; in her attempt to distill those second-hand accounts, her writing at times comes across as turgid, other times too academically situated (that is, where theory takes the place of story).

Also, Ugresic (2008/2005/2004) misleads the reader by suggesting something more about the title than there is; specifically, "there was an S/M porno club in The Hague called The Ministry of Pain" (p. 19). Yet the closest to S/M is chapter 26 (pp. 209-223), toward the end of the novel. By this point, it's a revenge fantasy being played out without sex or sexual foreplay, but never actualized beyond that space as Tanja Lucić's lie about her student Igor (first mention p. 19) - "I accused him of rape" (p. 226) - never concretizes (pp. 267); more, the violence Tanja Lucić experiences is deadened when she and Igor later end up together (pp. 268-269) with no explanation about how or why, a failure on Ugresic (2008/2005/2004)'s part.

Ugresic (2008/2005/2004), too, fails to develop the concepts she introduces (her idea or someone else's I couldn't answer), of Yugosnostalgia (pp. 26, 167, 219) and its variants: Yugosnostalgic (pp. 57, 204), Yugosnostalgiacs (pp. 60), and Yugonostalgitis (p. 88). There was potential there, but these ideas simply fade. Chapter 9 (pp. 65-80), for example, could've shown how the war changed things but was, instead, mostly inanity except for the section "Mario: Trains with No Timetables" (pp. 74-76). So that would be another reason I think Dubravka Ugresic was unlikely to have experienced war firsthand: The absence of the impact of war. Even in the inarticulation of war (see, e.g., pp. 10, 42-49, 59-61, 179-180) there is the possibility of situationism, but this requires knowing something of the person before. What we get in place of that is Tanja Lucić's selfish disinterest (see Igor's description of her p. 222), standing for nothing because she never had anything to hold on to (see, e.g., chapters 12-14, 17; see pp. 122, 162-164).

Where Ugrsic (2008/2005/2004) excels, however, is Chapter 29 (pp. 235-239). This is just an example of the richness of her language:

We are barbarians. We have no writing; we leave our signatures on the wind: we utter sounds, we signal with our calls, our shouts, our screams. That is how we mark our territory. Our fingers drum on everything they touch: dustbins, windowpanes, pipes. We drum, therefore we are. We make rackets, rackets as painful as toothaches. We bawl at weddings and wail at funerals, our women's convulsive voices battering the concrete façades like tempests. We break glasses and go bang: firecrackers are our favourite toys. Sound is our alphabet, the noise we produce is the only proof that we exist, the only trace we leave behind. We are like dogs: we bark. We bark at the lowering grey sky weighing down on our heads. (pp. 238-239)

I would've liked to have seen more of the above in The Ministry of Pain (2008/2005/2004), as well as more depth, more layering, more relevance to the experiences of war (not just its dissociation), etc. That is, I wanted STORY, not just pieces strung together that, in the end, were unraveled, especially with Tanja Lucić and Igor's sudden, inexplicable relationship (pp. 269-269). Or maybe that was the point: War is nothing.