Supplement Contemporary Croatian Literature, pp. 15 - 34 - Zarez

22 II/40, 12. listopada 2,,,.Roman Simiæoman Simiæ (b. 1972, Zadar)is the editor of the literarymagazine Quorum.He writes poetry and fiction, andhas recently published his firstcollection of stories called ThePlace Where We’ll Spend the Night.Could you describe the genesisof the fictional world in your stories:how much do they owe toyour life experience, and how muchto your reading experience, i.e.to literature?– The symmetric proportion betweenlife experience and readingexperience is always the prerequisiteof its balance; it is this proportionthat reshapes the life experience intopatterns of reading experienceand what anchors the literature intothe experience we have already had.It is true that my stories (in relationto plot, time and place) lack referencesto my present life in Croatia.Perhaps it doesn’t make the readingeasier, but it certainly helped me. Ido understand that the stumblingblock in terms of reception of ThePlace Where We’ll Spend the Night isits refusal of what we recognize as"familiar reality", and I do realizewhy this is so hard to accept. I dohowever think that expectations tomake the text too familiar are ratherrigid and exclusive, and they showpossible limitations of readers. Whichdoesn’t mean that I’m trying topass the hot issue of the "guilt in thetext" from the writer to the reader.It only means that I hope for a receptionof the book which won’ttreat it as a failure just because theauthor rejects some self-implyingmodel of literary expectation. Betweenthe covers of the book I wantedto create a text that shall be judgedby its own likeability and persuasiveness,maybe even its faithfulnessto itself (if faith is the appropriateword). We might say that I aspiredto be understood as if I havewritten a fantasy or an SF book.Is there a specific cartographyof your pataphysical world? Onthe North we find Conn, on theSouth – Yopa. But where does yourmap put places like Puertomarinand Panamatta? Is there any spaceleft for some new cities?– The wasteland where all the storiestake place is imagined as a huge,limitless territory, the space with rarelost cities that function as oases;the space where everything standsstill. The only ones who do changeare the eccentric "highwaynauts",creatures foreign to this world becausethey are both founders of itand strangers to it. Cities like Conn,Yopa or Panamatta are most oftenjust a random pile of many houses,and the center of the town spreadsnot around the squares, but aroundthe exceptional people. But thereare also much weirder cities, emptyshells of the former cities that "stink"of Europeness; the places thatjealously cherish their impotent citypride. Like Pouertomarin, which remembersthe sea only in its title (itis actually situated in the heart ofthe desert. It was ripped off the seacoastby some tough old womanwho wanted to beach the big fishthat has been destroying the dreamsof her family for centuries). It’s difficultto draw a map of this world,because it is hard to calibrate themeasuring tools. Distance is all andall is distance. In any case, there isalways a reason for staying and standingstill. That is why these citiesdon’t really know about each other;they merely suspect they are notalone. American circle and Hispaniccircle, protestants and Catholics,they all make some kind of a Pan-Americanpreapocalyptic or postapocalypticdesert.Why do you withold the informationfrom the reader to such adegree? Tell us more about thisstylistic reduction, which you oftenuse in your dialogues?– I do not think that I withold theinformation from the reader thatmuch (at least not in all the stories).The stories you are talking about,the ones based on dialogue and veryspare descriptions, the ones wherethe desert has inhabited both thestory style and the language, are notthe dominant ones (at least I don’tthink so). It’s true that for a while Iwas fascinated with the dialoguetechniques, but only because I wasn'treally sure that the dialogue ispossible. The world of The PlaceWhere We’ll Spend the Night is createdas a world were all conversationsare already spent, in which the speechis a useless tool that people keepout of laziness or sentiment. It isreally a world that suffers from thelack of syllogistic logic, which furthercomplicates the communication(or makes it easier, dependingon your habits). Reduction that youmention could also be explained withthe fact that the author is not familiarwith the world he writesabout, or it could be explained bymy laziness and literary influences...but the problem of any explanationis that it could justly be used as anexplanation for other, more informativestories in my book; and Iwrote quite a few of those.Rade JarakJosip MlakiæWhenthe Fog Liftspublished by "Nomad", Zagreb: 2000hen the Fog Lifts describes Croatian-Bosniacwar from the innerCroatian perspective, from theviewpoint of the man who finds himselfin the trenches, a target and a shooterat the same time. It shows profoundpolitical sensibility, level-headednessand honesty. It is a sensitive retelling ofa story that happened so many times indifferent places in Bosnia, Lika and Slavonia;the story about people who untilrecently lived togetheras godfathers,schoolmates or sportrivals, only to see itend in a bloody war.Mlakiæ's heroes areCroats and Muslimswho curse Allahwhen they’re angry,who speak the sameancient dialect, whosupport the samefootball club (notZagreb’s “Dinamo”,not “Sarajevo”, butSplit’s “Hajduk”).Whether they hatedeach other beforethe war is utterly irrelevant:they had nochoice in the matter.So now they are aimingguns at each other, armed withdeadly intentions and deadly ammunition.And they’re waiting. They’re waiting,Mlakiæ writes with typical Bosnianfatalism, for the war to end, the sameway they would wait for a suddendownpour to stop. Even if this bookdidn’t fulfill our literary expectations, itwould still be great, thanks to Mlakiæ’sfair, fresh and innocent view of the timesthat were anything but innocent.Even if this book didn’t meet our literaryexpectations, it would be a greatone, because of Mlakiæ's fair, fresh andinnocent view on the times that wereanything but fair and innocent. (...)The case of Josip Mlakiæ is often rightlycompared with the case of RatkoCvetniæ and his novel A Brief Outing.Both writers entered Croatian literatureunexpectedly, and both wrote theirfirst novels in late thirties... When theFog Lifts, just like Cvetniæ's A Brief Outing,is on its way to becoming a fashionablesuccess with Croatian readers.However, I would not overdo the comparisonsbetween Mlakiæ and Cvetniæ.Cvetniæ wrote faction, Mlakiæ writesfiction. Cvetniæ wrote an autobiographicalessay, Mlakiæ wrote a short novelor a (longer) novella. The most importantdifference is Cvetniæ's insistenceon gloomy deromanticisation of theWar for Croatian Independence, as opposedto Mlakiæ's testimony about theimperialistic warthat puts every decentcitizen ofCroatia to shame.What's more, Mlakiæwrites about thewar with amazingsincerity, as if talkingabout his "natural"condition orthe clothes that hewears. He is nottrying to makethings appear betterthan they are.Mlakiæ's bookhinges on its centralgimmick. Themain character isJakov Serdar, a warveteran from centralBosnia. Wemeet him in Zagreb, where he has beenhospitalized on a psychiatric ward withthe diagnosis of PTSP. He ended up inthe hospital after killing a fellow soldier,hijacking a military police vehicleand generally making a huge mess. Atthe request of his psychiatrist, Jakovwrites down his memories of the eventsthat transpired. We learn that Jakov hadkilled his best friend before the war,Mirsad, a Moslem. He killed him whenMirsad was taken prisoner, after findinga fake letter claiming that Mirsadhad an affair with Jakov’s wife. Ofcourse, Othello from Central Bosniahad to have his local Iago, here calledKeške. Keške is a cynical misanthropewho prefers cruel humor, and the realauthor of the incriminating letter aboutMirsad and Jakov's wife. What startedas an ugly joke, inexorably leads to tragedy...In contrast to numerous second-handaccounts of the war, Mlakiæ’s workis steeped in authenticity. The characters,the psychology and technology ofwar, the unique trench mentality, humorand sentimentality - all of this revealsa man who was there and who wasa sensitive observer. That doesn’t automaticallyguarantee a good book aboutthe war, but war experience is essentialfor such an endeavor, and it can be neitherborrowed nor bought.(...) Mlakiæ avoids the fiction of"quaint folk customs". He is an urbanthirty-five year old man whose language,culture and affinities correspond tothose of his generation. His referencesare Bulgakov and Led Zeppelin, RollingStones and Siegried Lenz, comic heroCommander Mark and One Fly Overthe Cuckoo's Nest. Sounds a bit oldfashioned?But of course. We are talkingabout the generation that had beenrobbed by that biggest pyrotechnicspectacle of them all, the war, remainingculturally stuck in the era of highschool romances. (...)When the Fog Lifts is not a largebook; it is rather small, in terms of volumeand ambition. It does, however,possess astonishing honesty, sensitivityand poignancy. It also provides spacefor “little” things: local rogues, sparrows,looking through a window. Theyshare that space with enormous crimes,mud and alcohol. The more terrible thetimes become, the more important thelittle things get. In his small, unassuming,imperfect and rough way, Mlakiæoffers a fresh view on things that are almostimpossible to express, and hedoes so with understanding, intelligenceand compassion/empathy.Jurica PavièiæIrena VrkljanThe Last Journeyto Viennapublished by Znanje, Zagreb, 2000entral to the novel The Last Journeyto Vienna is the concept of“family secret”. The secret is thedomain of crime investigations, whilethe subject of family stands as a consistentpreoccupation of Irena Vrkljan'spoetics. Moreover, “family secret” is alocus communis of crime fiction, especiallythe old-fashioned, British schoolof mystery writing. You will find no forensicpathologists here, no serial killerprofiling units, or car plate experts. (...)In place of "perfect crime" planned withintellectual precision, the reader encountersjust a plain family secret. Soplain in fact, that you will find somethinglike it in almost every (normal!) family:illegitimate children, lost lovers,adoptions, unsuccessful search for lovethat never comes. Nothing asocial orpsychopathological; simply the pathologyof our daily lives and disturbed relationships.The only thing that The LastJourney to Vienna does has in commonwith modern crime fiction is the factthat it begins with a corpse...Irena Vrkljan's narration in The LastJourney to Vienna is consistently modernist,with the narration from the characters’point of view overshadowing theauthor’s narration in third person… IrenaVrkljan tells a typical family story,one of those that usually remain underlock and key, behind closed doors ofbourgeois homes. The crime (be it legalor ethical) becomes a part of family inventory,to be put away into trunks andboxes, up in the attic or down in the basement,until something unexpectedhappens and “some hand accidentallyrattles the skeleton in the closet...”Andrea Zlatar