I really like pretty much everything about it, particularly the cover:
I am probably the most happy that this marks nearly the end of my six-month sojourn in Russian literature, though it certainly has considerable charms on its own. I do appreciate the fact that they rounded out the NYRB volume with a few other related pieces (Happy Moscow comes in at 117 pages, so it is really more of a novella than a novel). I even find it a bit amusing that an (unfinished) play is included in this volume. While the price hasn't quite dropped enough for me to run out and buy a copy, I am keeping my eye on it, and will grab it if one ever turns up at any of the bookshops I occasionally frequent.
Now, first off, I should say this book is not for everyone. It is kind of bleak. The NY Times review was a bit dismissive, saying that the translators hadn't really made the case for Platonov to be considered in the top tier of writers (and indeed Chandler's claims are generally over the top).
I think there is no question that this novel starts out kind of upbeat and ends somewhat oddly and darkly (in fact, the title character, Moscow Chestnova, kind of disappears from the narrative at the end). Soul, on the other hand, starts very bleakly but has an upbeat ending (sort of). However, I really found Soul to drag, and I admired it more than I really liked it.
There really is not much plot to Happy Moscow. However, I will be discussing some of the events (though more frequently showing how I link to other works), so I am warning you now there will be SPOILERS ahead...
(And maybe very minor SPOILERS to some of the works I link to Happy Moscow through association.)
Ok, so the basic plot is that Moscow Chestnova runs away from an unfortunate early marriage and runs into Viktor Bozhko, a mid-level Soviet bureaucrat, who then enrolls her in aeronautics school. She becomes well versed in sky-diving and even does some wing-walking. (This was a bit of a big deal back in the 1930s when there weren't so many other forms of entertainment.) She becomes an instructor in this institute. However, she is too cool for school and lights up a cigarette during a jump and sets her experimental parachute on fire. She goes flaming through the Moscow sky, but actually has a backup parachute that she deploys at the last minute and manages to survive the fall.
This is a pretty stunning image, and I thought there would be more like it, but after this episode, Moscow is terminated from her job as an instructor and is grounded for the rest of the novel. Indeed, she ends up going underground for a short stint working to build the Moscow Metro, though that doesn't go particularly well for her either (and she ultimately loses a leg in an accident).
Now given the brief description of her as a flying wonder, I decided I ought to read Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus, which I have been meaning to read practically forever. This is a book about a female circus performer who claims to have wings and be part swan. Interestingly, part of the novel takes place in St. Petersburg and even Siberia (where some of Platonov's short stories take place) but not in Moscow as far as I can tell.
So even though the linkage is a bit weaker than I imagined, I am going forward with Nights at the Circus and find it interesting so far. Incidentally, one of the reviewers linked Carter's novel back to Djuna Barnes' Nightwood for some reason. Nightwood has been coming back to me in so many different contexts that I have decided to go ahead and reread it soon -- probably mid-Feb. at my current pace, which should be close enough in time to see how it might link up with Carter.
One of the first things to note about Happy Moscow is that it is technically an unfinished novel, which can certainly be off-putting to some readers. However, the translator Robert Chandler argues that Platonov always intended this to be a very open-ended work, and that it is in fact fairly close to being considered a finished novel (unlike Dicken's Edwin Drood or Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon where had the author lived another month or two we would (probably) have had the complete work). Still, this is definitely an unstable novel where the main character, Moscow, kind of drops out of sight and we follow two of her main companions, Bozhko and Semyon Sartorius, whom I discussed a bit in the so-called transitional post. It's not quite as formal as Ophuls' La Ronde or Bresson's L'Argent, where one follows the action from one person to another in sequence, but is somewhat closer to Tolstoy's The Forged Coupon (by which L'Argent was indeed itself inspired) where the action somewhat randomly returns to some of the principle characters.
She already knew Bozhko, but meets Sartorius at a jazz-themed party for promising young Soviets. I certainly see the parallels with Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, including the half-hidden scorn over the fact that the select few chosen by the State lived in luxury while most in Moscow were on a subsistence diet. Unfortunately, there was some other parallel or reference that hit me when reading the book, but it has slipped my mind for now.
There are actually two other characters who fall in love with Moscow to some degree and appear to have intimate relations with her (the young doctor Sambikin and the reservist Komyagin). She seems somewhat indifferent to these men chasing after her, but sometimes just gives in to their desire, since they want it so much. This is something that was seen, though not quite to such an extreme in his Soul, but also in Robertson Davies' Fifth Business where the Reverend's wife ends up somewhat addled by being hit in the head with a stone and sleeps with a tramp. The idea that Moscow is sort of a Helen-figure who doesn't really seem to know what she wants is pretty apparent. She wishes she could love Sartorius deeply, but is honest enough to tell him that her feelings are pretty thin and somewhat changeable. She certainly turns on Komyagin, who is certainly the most pathetic of all her lovers.
In a somewhat surprising series of twists, Sartorius tries to forget about Moscow after she leaves him, and he even marries Liza, a secretary where he works. Liza is so jealous of other women, she hopes to subtly disfigure Sartorius, though this doesn't occur. For quite some time Sartorius manages to forget about Moscow, or only think of her as a fading heartache, but then he decides he must track her down to the pathetic room where she lives with Komyagin. Komyagin gives up the struggle and seemingly dies, so Sartorius enters their room and enjoys another night of passion with Moscow.
It is unclear what sets him off the next day (perhaps her general indifference?) but he then decides he must become more like the city he loves, i.e. Moscow the city, and to stop being a work-shirker, as apparently he has stopped reporting to his job and for quite some time before that he stopped working to his full capacities. In the meantime, Liza has married Bozhko (time is awfully elastic in many of Platonov's stories and novels, much as in folk tales). Sartorius goes to an unregulated market where he buys a ratio card and someone else's passport, and he starts a new life. This last detail reminded me a fair bit of the start of Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum where forged papers lead the way to a new life. Finally, Sartorius (now Grunyakhin) takes over for another man who has left his wife and tries to step into the role of husband & father with only partial success.
It's certainly possible that Platonov could have returned yet again to the doctor Sambikin or to see what was happening with Moscow after her abandonment or even to provide one last view of the old fiddler, who crossed nearly everyone's path (and indeed who turns up in the other stories in the NYRB edition). But, as already noted, it is quite an open-ended novel, so this is as good as any other ending.
Certainly much of the interest and even power of Happy Moscow comes from the various ways that Platonov is criticizing Stalin fairly openly, so do make sure to read the copious footnotes! Chandler says that one of the most curious aspects of the whole affair is that Platonov actually thought the novel was publishable under Stalin's regime. (Given the fact that Stalin personally took a dislike to Platonov it is extremely odd that he survived at all, but he did, even though he largely was prevented from publishing his work.) Fortunately for us it was preserved and Happy Moscow published in 1991, during the period of Gorbachev's glasnost. There are a few other things I could go into, including the fact that Platonov was trained as an engineer (take that, C.P. Snow) and wrote more than a few stories that did fit into Soviet realist triumphalism. But I think I have gone on long enough. If any of this seems curious and perhaps appealing, then you should seek out Happy Moscow for yourself.
Enjoy.
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