Impossible Stories I by Serbian author Zoran Živković includes five of his short novels: Time Gifts, Impossible Encounters, Seven Touches of Music, The Library, Steps through the Mist. To share a sampling, here are my reviews of two of the five:
IMPOSSIBLE ENCOUNTERS
Zoran Živković recounts how a number of his novels, including Impossible Encounters, share a similar internal architecture in that they consist of seemingly stand-alone stories, however, upon reaching the end, a reader discovers an underlying unity forming an organic whole.
The author acknowledges he himself didn't invent what he terms a "mosaic novel" nor did he apply this form intentionally as a narrative strategy; rather, the mosaic architectural form came to him spontaneously as the optimal way to accomplish what he was attempting to convey in his prose. Beyond a doubt, such spontaneity fits in with his description of his creative process ever since his first novel written back at age forty-five: the non-rational part of his mind dictates his stories as he sits at his computer and types out what he is being told.
In retrospect, Zoran Živković could see this mosaic novel form possessed a most appealing quality: it represents a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Bull's eye, Zoran! That's precisely the feeling I came away with upon reading the concluding paragraphs of Impossible Encounters: this short novel contains an underlying cohesion and unity that's greater than the sum of its six individual chapters.
In pursuit of the novel's underlying unity, the author urges us to take on the role of detective in hunting for clues beginning from the first chapter. I wouldn't want to give away too much but I will share two obvious threads running through each of the six chapters: 1) a book entitled Impossible Encounters appears at some point in the story, 2) the main character, always a quiet, sedate, orderly type of individual, meets a mysterious older man who injects an element of Middle-European "fantastika" which might be translated as "fantasy" if the term wasn't immediately associated with Tolkienesque fiction. Perhaps a better translation would be "fantastic" in somewhat similar spirit a Jorge Luis Borges tale is fantastic.
So as to share a modest sip, here's a direct quote from each of the chapters along with my reflections:
1. The Window
"I was not overly surprised when I finally saw my own portrait next to one of the doors. I hadn't expected it, but it didn't seem out of place. After all, if so many others had their portraits hanging there, why shouldn't I? Where else can one hope for a privileged position if not in one's own dream?" The narrator tells us he died in his sleep. But what he finds so strange about his current after death state is its lack of strangeness; quite the contrary, all of what he sees and experiences appears entirely normal, even finding his own portrait among a series of portraits hanging in a long, narrow hallway. One can only wonder if such a prim and proper fellow could have predicted in what life form he would have chosen to make his return trip.
2. The Cone
"I stopped, still in cloud from the waist down, and waited for my eyes to adjust. Above me stretched the immeasurable, bright blue firmament, and as far as I could see below me was a motionless sea, its uniformity disturbed here and there by the islands of mountain peaks similar to the one I had just reached, forming a scattered archipelago in the sky." What is it about a mountain top that brings out the philosopher in even the most lackluster bookkeeper type? Zoran Živković is the first to admit his tales touch on our ultimate questions of life and death, identity and freedom.
3. The Bookshop
"The work I'm looking for is in this bookshop," he said. His tone had lost its previous uncertainty and become self-confident. Even more than that: he said it in a voice that would brook no objection. "And it's not old at all. Quite the contrary, it's just been written."" The narrator runs a bookshop specializing in science fiction. Not only does an inquisitive visitor to his bookstore one foggy evening claim to have traveled from a distant star but speaks of a strange fifth force and insists he be given the book he needs to resolve a problem of cosmic proportion. Can you guess the title of that book? Nope! Sorry - you will have to read to find out.
4. The Train
"Mr. Pohotny, Senior Vice President of a bank prominent in the capital city, met God on a train. In a First Class compartment, of course." So begins this quizzical chapter. Turns out, God will answer Mr. Pohotny's questions. Oh, good, I thought, we will find out if this God has limited or unlimited powers. Not at all. As Vice President of a prominent bank, Mr. Pohotny has a more profound question to ask of God.
5. The Confessional
"The deep, harsh coughing that came from the other compartment of the confessional sounded almost like a distant growl." The church is empty; guess who our priest has occasion to speak with in the confessional? Again, Zoran Živković enjoys playing with ultimate questions, this time with memory, identity and the nature of good and evil.
6. The Atelier
"Holding his hat in his hand, the old man bowed again. "I cannot tell you my name, unfortunately, since you did not give me one. I am a character from one of your stories who remained nameless. But so it is with many of your characters, is it not?" Oh, my. Not only does a character want to discuss his own life with his author, he would dearly enjoy discussing a number of other lives as well. If you give it some thought, I suspect you will be able to guess which ones.
THE LIBRARY
Zoran Živković's short novel is a tour de force of imagination, a delight most especially for readers, like myself, for whom libraries hold a special place in the heart.
Zoran Živkovic is no stranger to libraries. The Serbian man of letters has spent a lifetime sifting through stacks of books in his capacity as academic, philologist, essayist, researcher, publisher, translator and connoisseur of science fiction. His experience served him well when it came time to write these highly original tales.
The Library - a series of six encounters with libraries, all told in intimate first person by an unnamed narrator. As to the ways in which these six captivating, whimsical, occasionally beguiling yarns interlink is left entirely up to you, the reader.
Here they are. In the spirit of sharing my enthusiasm for the magic of The Library, I'll offer a quick snip on five and say a bit more on the one library that most tickled my fancy:
Virtual Library - Sitting at his computer, reading through his junk email, the narrator is intrigued by one email that announced: VIRTUAL LIBRARY with the slogan "We have everything!" Rather than his usual practice of instantly deleting, he opens it up. He decides to test the veracity of such a bold claim by searching for his own three published books. To both his astonishment and consternation, he discovers this online library has posted a photo of his younger self, the years of his deaths (nine different years) and not only his three books are listed but a grand total of twenty-one, eighteen of which display a publication date in the future. Ahhhh! He shoots off a pointed email to the VIRTUAL LIBRARY and to his stupefaction receives an instant personalized response. From here, the email exchanges spin out into even more bizarre dimensions. If Jorge Luis Borges was alive today, I can imagine his wry smile reading Virtual Library.
Home Library - "Common sense is all very well and good, but you can't always rely on it. Sometimes it is far more advisable and useful to accept wonder." So reflects the narrator as he has come to accept the wonder of climbing forty-four steps up to his second-story apartment but only forty-one steps on the way down (he counted and recounted numerous times). And then when he mysteriously receives a series of large books from an unknown sender in his mailbox his capacity for wonder over common sense is tested to the limit. In one interview Zoran Živković stated "Home Library is exemplary of my idiosyncratic approach to the art of the fantastic. All the essential keys of my poetics are contained in it."
Night Library - Similar to The Encyclopedia of the Dead authored by his fellow Serbian Danilo Kiš, Zoran Živkovic's narrator is in a library at night, after hours. In the Kiš tale, the narrator reads about his father's life, a life too ordinary to be documented in history books; in Živkovic's tale, the narrator chooses to read about his own life, a life he resents documented in any book. Humor mixed with horror - echoes of Nikolai Gogol, one of the grand literary masters Zoran Živkovic most admired.
Infernal Library - For artists in the medieval world, hell is burning in flames surrounded by devils with pitchforks. For Jean-Paul Sartre, hell is other people. For the narrator in this Zoran Živkovic tale, a man who avoided reading books his entire life, hell is - I can't bring myself to write it. You fill in the blank.
Noble Library - A tale that's too much magical mystery tour for me to say anything other than I urge you to read for yourself.
Smallest Library - The unnamed narrator pays a visit to the booksellers where they always set out their wares, used books, every Saturday year round, rain or shine, under the Great Bridge. At the very end of the row, peddling his books in an old ice cream vendor’s cart, there’s a new seller - small, wrinkled, gray bearded, hoarse voice - who tells the narrator he has what he is looking for. When the narrator asks how he knows, the old bookseller simply says, “It’s not hard to tell. It shows on your face.” The narrator is taken aback since he can now see the old man is blind.
Following a further exchange, the narrator is handed a bag of books to which he asks how much money is owed. Between hacking coughs, the vendor says, “You owe me a lot. But not for the books. They are free.” When the narrator asks why, the blind one tells him, “Because that is the only way for you to get them. I don’t sell books.”
Back in his apartment, he empties out the bag of books and to his amazement there are not only the three books the old man spoke of but a fourth book, an old edition in obvious excellent condition. No writing appears on the chestnut-colored cover but when he opens the book, after a chestnut-colored flyleaf, “the words The Smallest Library were written at the top of the first page in tiny, slanted letters.” Although there is one word on the next page which he assumes is the book’s title, he is a bit perplexed to find neither copyright information nor author. No matter, when he flips through the pages he can see the book is a novel with numbered chapters.
But he hankers to know more details about this seemingly anonymous edition by an anonymous writer. The computer to the rescue. He looks up the website for The National Library that has absolutely everything about every book ever published. He plugs in the one word title. Nothing. Perhaps, he ruminates, he has the spelling wrong. He opens the book once again to check the title page. Holy thunderbolts! “What I saw on the third page simply could not have been true. A lump formed in my throat. The difference was much more than one letter. A completely different title, consisting not of one word but three, greeted me.” And then, after his hands stop trembling enough to take a gander at the pages of the novel itself, he’s in store for an even bigger jolt: it is a completely different novel with not numbered chapters but chapter titles.
At this point our writer-narrator swings into high gear in an attempt to solve the puzzle. Reading this Zoran Živković tale, I was right there with him step by step, each revelation as much a surprise for me as it was for him. The suspense mounts and we do not discover where all this mystification is leading until the very final sentence. Then, as if watching a time-lapse film of a flower coming into full bloom, miraculously, the underlying meaning of the entire sixteen-page story bursts forth.
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