Natasha and Other Stories

by David Bezmozgis

  Well, I would be curious to know how you do take it. I can tell you that it was intended as a compliment. I concede that the word reverence has, in recent years, taken on a pejorative patina. I can only speculate as to why. Perhaps the explanation is simply that the word irreverence has indeed taken on a decidedly salutatory connotation and, one assumes, that consequently its antonym has been degraded. Certainly, anyone would be hard pressed to deny that irreverence—as a word and as an idea(l)—is quite widely celebrated. Now as to why irreverence is being celebrated I cannot claim to know, though I would not be surprised if this state of affairs exists because today’s writers—let’s say Western writers—are enjoying, on the whole, an unprecedented degree of freedom from war, famine, pestilence, and repression. Thus, in the absence of real threat or peril, irreverence becomes the dominant mode.

  So how do you account for contemporary Western writers who do not write in that mode? Me, for example, since you’ve lodged me in that camp. Are those who exhibit reverence in their work necessarily products of the kinds of suffering you just itemized? How much suffering must a writer experience in order to write legitimately and sympathetically about suffering? Is this not quite an individual response? Does it not relate to an individual capacity?

  What you are implying, if I understand you correctly, is that the handsome, coddled, erudite child of billionaires, who has been able to afford everyone and everything, but who has, for one moment, been reprimanded by his father for dropping and cracking one of the family’s several dozen Fabergé eggs, could go ahead—were he also artistically inclined—and utilize that one traumatic incident to write a convincing novel of a peasant family, the descendants of generations upon generations of serfs, at the time of the Russian Revolution? Which is to say that he would be able to distill from one painful moment an understanding and intimate appreciation of the broad multiplicity of human distress.

  Something like that. You don’t believe it is possible? Are there no precedents?

  If by precedents you mean exceptions, then perhaps some exist. But I don’t think you can sustain a literature on exceptions.

  So if the world was inhabited solely by handsome, coddled, erudite billionaires, you believe there would be no writing?

  Probably not. And if there was, I strongly doubt that it would be a literature that would appeal to me.

  Not even if you too were a handsome, coddled, erudite billionaire?

  That’s difficult to say. But my instinct compels me to believe that even if I were such a person I would not necessarily be satisfied by a literature produced by people like me. I would thirst, as I do now, for representations of other people, often those who find themselves in situations far more dire than my own. I contend that even without first-hand experience with their particular problems I would be able to become invested in their plights. Why? Perhaps because even as a handsome, coddled, erudite billionaire my life would still be touched by conflict and disappointment. And so I would be able to sympathize.

  But not so much as to be able to invent such stories yourself?

  I see where you are going with this. What we’re talking about here is a question of magnitudes. It reminds me of one of the theories used to prove the existence of God. The argument goes that one can only create something less complex than one’s self. Which is to say that man could not have created man. For this, a superior force was necessary—namely, God. The same can be extended—though perhaps not perfectly—to the concept of writing. Though one can appreciate the suffering of another even if one has not experienced it—just as we can contemplate the superior idea of God—one could no more hope to write such a story in the absence of a personal acquaintance with suffering than one could hope to create God.

  And what if I were to tell you that, contrary to what you have read about me, I am not in fact a Jewish, Latvian emigrant. What if I were to tell you that I have never been to either Latvia or Toronto?

  I would consider that very suspect.

  Because of what you have read about me?

  Yes. But, on an even more superficial level, because I composed the prefix 416 before dialing the seven digits of your telephone number and I know that this prefix corresponds to the area code for Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

  What if I have entered into an arrangement with the phone company? Could I not have paid them a fee to grant me this area code for the express purpose of perpetrating this very deception?

  Possible, of course. But not likely.

  What is “likely?” “Likely” is a state of mind. What is unlikely for multitudes may be very likely for me. You have no way of determining that.

  Fair enough.

  What if I am actually a black man, born to Catholic parents in Togo, and a convert to Islam? What if you have reached me at my hut in Madagascar, where I have made my living tending goats and wild birds for the past fifteen years? What if I have never actually met either a Russian, a Latvian, or a Jew? Would you still believe that I was capable of having written the book you have described?

  In a word: no.

  But what if I insist that this is true?

  Why would you do that?

  Because I feel like it. Because it amuses me.

  Because I am not entirely right in the head.

  Because I hate being interviewed.

  Is that true?

  Ask my goats.

  About the book

  Natasha and Other Stories: a history

  Natasha and Other Stories, David’s first book, has been translated into twelve languages. Stories from Natasha have been nominated for The National Magazine Awards in Canada, as well as the National Magazine Awards in the US. The title story is included in Best American Short Stories 2005.

  Award Distinctions for Natasha

  2005 Winner, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for First Book (Caribbean and Canada region)

  2005 Winner, Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize for Fiction (UK)

  2005 Winner, Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction (The Martin and Beatrice Fischer Award)

  2005 Finalist, National Magazine Awards, for “Natasha”—Fiction (US)

  2005 Finalist, LA Times Arthur Seidenbaum First Fiction Award

  2005 Finalist, Canadian Booksellers Libris Award for Fiction

  2005 Finalist, Danuta Gleed Literary Award

  2004 Winner, Reform Judaism Prize for Jewish Fiction

  2004 Winner, National Magazine Awards Silver Prize for “Minyan”—Fiction (Canada)

  2004 Finalist, Governor General’s Award for Fiction

  2004 Finalist, Guardian First Book Award (UK)

  2004 Finalist, Borders Original Voices Award

  Other Distinctions for Natasha

  Best American Short Stories 2005 (“Natasha”)

  A New York Times Notable Book of 2004

  The New York Public Library “25 Books to

  Remember,” 2004

  LA Times 25 Best Books of the Year

  The Globe and Mail 100 Best Books of 2004

  The Economist Best Books of 2004

  Amazon.com Top 10 Books of 2004

  The Independent Best of 2004

  Chicago Tribune Best of 2004

  Publishers Weekly Best of 2004

  Read on

  Recommended by David Bezmozgis

  Leonard Michaels

  If I have a literary mentor, someone whom I admire above all other writers, it is Leonard Michaels. I see his influence throughout Natasha and in most things I write. Michaels was known primarily as a short story writer. His first two books, Going Places and I Would Have Saved Them If I Could, were both collections of stories. He later wrote a fine novel, The Men’s Club, which attracted a lot of attention and was made into a (disappointing) movie. His books are written with a combination of intelligence, humor, and a fascination with the cruelty and absurdity that underlies people’s relationships with each other. Of course, this can be said of any number of writers, but what sets Michaels apart is his attention to language and h
is ability to engage a reader and keep him engaged. Michaels’s stories are never boring. Neither are they sensationalist or trendy. He is capable of advancing plot and delving into his characters’ thoughts without ever bogging down. Not a word is wasted. His work has a tremendous energy and this energy does not come at the expense of real emotion. I have read all of his work, and I return to his collection I Would Have Saved Them If I Could often. I employ it as my textbook and bible.

  Isaac Babel

  Babel needs no introduction from me. Anyone familiar with his work should also be able to see the way in which Natasha is indebted to his Odessa Stories. That Babel is widely regarded as one of the great short story writers is, to my mind, entirely deserved. His stories are intricately crafted. They are brief and powerful. They, like Michaels’, demonstrate a supreme attentiveness to language. You will never find a cliché in a Babel story. The language he uses is simple—never convoluted—and his imagery is earthy, striking, and immediately accessible. Also, his stories manage to create a feeling that is remarkably lifelike. Often the plots are not linear; rather things happen in response to a curious, idiosyncratic logic which nevertheless makes perfect emotional sense. They feel like an imitation of life—how life feels—without feeling imitative. The cycle he wrote about his childhood and maturation in and around Odessa very much influenced Natasha in both mood and form.

  Sergei Dovlatov

  Dovlatov began his career in the Soviet Union and ended it in New York in the 1990s. He came of age in the 1960s and wrote about the Soviet Union in its decline. More than Michaels and Babel, Dovlatov was a humorist if not an outright satirist. But his humor and satire were leavened with a deep sympathy for his characters and an identification with the strange forces that guided people’s lives and fates. As far as I know—and I have read all of his books available in English translation—Dovlatov wrote about Dovlatov. Or, to put in another way, he wrote about a character based upon himself. Other characters in his stories are based upon his friends and family. Some would mistake this for autobiography, but it seems to me that he was simply satisfied with the material immediately at hand. His book Ours: A Russian Family Album (which I was introduced to after Natasha was published) is a moving but very funny examination of one man’s family. The book opens with “Dovlatov’s” grandparents and takes as the subjects for its stories different members of his family. The narrator features in most, though not all, of the stories. In the end, a vibrant picture emerges of this family and the place and time that formed them. Also worth reading is The Compromise—billed as a novel but really a very clever cycle of stories about Dovlatov’s journalistic career in Soviet Estonia.

  PRAISE FOR NATASHA AND OTHER STORIES

  “What sets [Bezmozgis] apart … is his quiet command of unadorned language, his wry humour and his keen understanding of the human heart.”

  —Winnipeg Free Press

  “Extraordinary…. [Recalls] the work of Babel, Roth, Saul Bellow, and so many others. Yet Bezmozgis makes these characters, and the state of marginality itself, uniquely his. This hysterical, merciless, yet open-hearted excavation of a Jewish family in the process of assimilating gives his literary predecessors a run for their money.”

  —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “An authority one usually finds only in more seasoned writers.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “An effervescent debut…. A familiar tale of dislocation and assimilation with enough humor, honesty, and courage to make it new again…. If the last page of ‘Tapka’ doesn’t stop your heart, maybe it was never really beating.”

  —O Magazine

  “Exquisitely crafted stories. A first collection that reads like the work of a past master.”

  —T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE, author of Drop City

  “[Bezmozgis] is expert at prodding forward his stories with unexpected exoticisms…. Passionately full of life … ebullient and warmly comic.”

  —London Review of Books

  “The hype is well-deserved…. All of these spare, expertly crafted, memorably moving tales about Jewish immigrant life in contemporary Toronto contain truths of which it is exhilarating to be reminded—about striving, living, and dying in a new free world that is as harsh and bewildering as it is beautiful and exciting.”

  —Elle Magazine

  “Here in Europe the talk this year has been all about the new writing coming out of Russia. David Bezmozgis shows that this energy extends to the Russian Diaspora as well. In Natasha and Other Stories Bezmozgis renders something of the clear-sighted melancholy associated with Chekov or Babel into English prose and a North American context. With a maturity and control far beyond his years, Mr. Bezmozgis has produced a captivating and impressive debut. The title story itself is one I will never forget.”

  —JEFFREY EUGENIDES, author of Middlesex

  “Scary good…. Not a line or note in the book rings false.”

  —Esquire

  “A latter-day Bernard Malamud…. It’s astonishing how Bezmozgis can summon up the émigré community with such clarity and economy. David Bezmozgis isn’t almost there. He has arrived, fully mature and wise. These stories aren’t just superbly crafted investigations of a particular people and place, but profound illuminations of what it means to grow up in an uncertain, ever-changing world.”

  —Newsday

  “A stunning first collection, characterized by a painful honesty and clarity of vision…. Like Gogol, Bezmozgis is acutely aware of his characters’ shortcomings; as Gogol does, Bezmozgis writes with compassion, quietly reminding us of the hidden beauty within human imperfection.”

  —The Believer

  “Dazzling, hilarious and hugely compassionate narratives [written with] freshness and precision…. Readers will find themselves laughing out loud, then gasping as Bezmozgis brings these fictions to the searing, startling and perfectly pitched conclusions that remind us that, as Babel said, ‘no iron can stab the heart so powerfully as a period put in exactly the right place.’”

  —People

  Copyright

  Natasha and Other Stories

  © 2004 by Nada Films, Inc.

  P.S. section © David Bezmozgis 2005

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

  EPub Edition © MARCH 2011 ISBN: 978-1-443-40858-5

  Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following magazines, in whose pages these stories originally appeared in slightly different form: Grain, Harper’s, paperplates, Prairie Fire, The New Yorker, The Walrus, and Zoetrope.

  The author wishes to thank his agent, Ira Silverberg, for his faith and wise counsel, and his editor, Lorin Stein, for the clarity and consistency of his editorial vision.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  First Harper Flamingo Canada hardcover edition: 2004

  This Harper Perennial trade paperback edition: 2005

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Bezmozgis, David, 1973—

  Natasha and other stories / David Bezmozgis. —

  2nd ed.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-00-63
9322-1

  ISBN-10: 0-00-639322-5

  1. Latvians — Ontario — Toronto — Fiction.

  2. Jews — Ontario — Toronto — Fiction. I. Title.

  PS8603.E95N38 2005 C813’.6 C2005-901839-9

  HC 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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