In between the time I purchased Victor Pelevin's Omon Ra and the time I started reading it, I skimmed an article somewhere that claimed Pelevin was inspired by and indebted to Mikhail Bulgakov. This was not good news. The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov is one of my most hated novels of all time. If I can't easily articulate what it is I hate about it so passionately, I feel that if anyone were to ask me, 'What kinds of novels don't you like to read?' I could point to a ready-to-hand copy of The Master and Margarita and say, 'That kind.' Whether it was the overbaked symbolism, the dull narrative, the Jesus crap, or just the talking cat (or all of the above) that set me off, I will leave for you to decide.But this review is about Pelevin, not Bulgakov. I can in fact confirm there is a kinship between the two authors, but more as uncle-and-nephew than as brothers. Pelevin is less obviously pining for Goethe than Bulgakov was; his short novel is rooted very much in the modern world, in all its particular and peculiar manifestations. How can it not be? After all, the title character Omon is a Soviet youth who dreams of being a cosmonaut. The first third of the novel is set up as pretty much a standard coming-of-age yarn with few eccentricities to speak of. I kept glancing at the cover blurbs: 'Unsettling' (The New York Times), 'comedy as black as outer space itself' (Tibor Fischer—whoever that is), and 'propulsively absurd' (The New Yorker). Huh? Really? I better keep reading...Well, it's true. The novel eventually—I want to say suddenly—becomes an unsettling, absurd black comedy, but I just don't know how I feel about it. Sections of it, particularly the end in which Omon embarks upon his 'mission' with all its existential implications, might very well be brilliant. But some other parts are dull, unintelligible, or completely unsatisfying. In fact, there is a twelve page section (pp. 79 to 91 in the New Directions edition) that I skimmed because I just didn't really get it; it's a bewildering, ellipsis-filled monologue delivered by Omon's friend Mitiok that I am either too dense or too insensitive to appreciate. You might think that twelve pages isn't all that much, but it's actually 8% of this little book. Omon's dream of being a cosmonaut becomes a nightmare! That's my cheesy, film-trailer voiceover for the novel. He enters a training academy where the bizarre truths of the Soviet space program are gradually revealed. I can't tell you much because it would ruin the only real reason there is to read this book—and that is to be startled by grim (and, yes, absurd) revelations. I'm not sure all of the satirical implications of life in the Soviet Union are apparent to me, but the novel's still serviceable to laymen (and women) anyway. I can't exactly celebrate Omon Ra by shouting from the rooftops, like a Booknerd Gone Wild!, but I won't dissuade you either. (Also, the cover is attractive and waxy-feeling.)
بخش هایی از کتاب:وقتی بیدار شدم زمین دیگر معلوم نبود. تنها چیزی که از طریق لنزها می‌دیدم سوسوی محو ستاره‌های دوردست بود. وجود معلق و بی‌تکیه‌گاه یک کره‌ی عظیم و سوزان را تصور کردم در ظلمات سرد، میلیون‌ها کیلومتر دورتر از نزدیک‌ترین ستاره‌ها، آن نقاط کوچک درخشانی که نورشان برای ما تنها گواه وجودشان است چون یک ستاره می‌تواند بمیرد و با این حال نورش میلیون‌ها سال در تمامی جهات حرکت کند. پس ما در حقیقت هیچ چیز راجع به ستارگان نمی‌دانیم جز این که زندگی‌شان وحشتناک و بی‌معناست چراکه تمامی حرکات‌شان در فضا از پیش تعیین شده و این قوانین مکانیک و جاذبه‌اند که احتمال هرگونه برخورد تصادفی را از بین می‌برند. ولی بعد فکر کردم که هرچند به نظر می‌رسد ما انسان‌ها به یکدیگر برخورد می‌کنیم و می‌خندیم و بر شانه‌ی هم می‌زنیم و بعد به راه خود می‌رویم ولی همزمان در بُعدی مستقل که آگاهی‌مان جرئت نگاه کردن به آن را ندارد، ما بی هیچ حرکتی در محاصره‌ی خلاء معلقیم، بی سر و ته، بی دیروز و فردا، بی این امید که به هم نزدیک‌تر شویم یا حتا ذره‌ای سرنوشت خود را تغییر دهیم. قضاوت‌مان از آن‌چه برای دیگران اتفاق می‌افتد نور پرنیرنگی ست که به ما می‌رسد و تمام طول زندگی‌مان به سوی آن چه تصور می‌کنیم نور است پیشروی می‌کنیم در حالی که احتمالا منبع نور مدت‌هاست که از بین رفته. فکر کردم تمام زندگی‌ام به سمت لحظه‌ای سفر کردم که برفراز آن چه شعارها کارگران و دهقانان و سربازان وطبقه‌ی روشنفکر می‌خواندند پرواز کنم و حالا من این‌جا در این سیاهی براق آویزانم از نخ‌های نامرئی سرنوشت و مسیر حرکت. و حالا می‌فهمم که تبدیل شدن به یک جرم سماوی هیچ تفاوتی ندارد با سپری کردن دوره‌ی زندان ابد در سلولی سیار که در یک مسیر دایره شکل بی هیچ توقفی دور خود می‌چرخد و می‌چرخد.
What do You think about Omon Ra (1998)?
It is possible I will read too much Pelevin and his resolute stance - which for now turns me on with its playful but surprisingly earnest blend of satire, wild imagination, individual freedom, practical application of meditative practices and exploration of mind – will morph into clownish posturing and I will feel a watery neon sickness rising in my throat, but for now… I will keep reading him until I vomit.Omon Ra is essentially a dystopian coming of age novel in which the hero's childhood dream of space travel makes him manipulable to the powers that be as he is digested by their space program and enlisted into a one man expedition to the moon where he is to set up a microphone and then shoot himself. It turns out that the entire space program is an elaborate hoax, with space travel and moon landings faked on earth; the hoax being a way to create heroes and martyrs for the motherland while creating a national soul: an empty perverse soul filled with the youthful dead.Pelevin appears to have ramped up the craziness in later books, this being his first novel, so this was imaginatively tame compared to The Hall of the Singing Caryatids; and was also surprisingly moving as the youthful dreams in the novel seem rooted in Pelevin's own hijacked dreams, and his radical turn inward to a meditative realm - as mirrored by his experience of near death isolation on the moon - is given supportive substance and validation.
—Eddie Watkins
Surreal and more than a bit spooky, and the scene in which Omon wakes from a drug-induced slumber to find himself at the controls of a moonbound rocket as the launch countdown begins is a comic tour-de-force. But I found this short novel difficult to navigate and difficult to appreciate -- too many changes in tone for me to stay involved.
—Daniel Simmons
Omon Ra is dark. How dark? Think Kafka shooting krokodil in a Siberian prison camp imagined by J.G. Ballard and then Iain Banks devours the whole thing with a black hole. Sub-infra-black doesn't even begin to describe how dark it is. That said, this is the wonderful and magical story of young man who dreams of flight and joins the cosmonaut program, only to learn that the Soviet space program is less than it seems. It's a mediation on the theater of Soviet heroism, Stakhanovite exceptionalism, and the sacrifice of young dreamers on the alter of Party prestige.
—Michael Burnam-fink
