With witty, brilliant Vladimir Sorokin, novelist and playwright from the land of Gogol, Bulgakov and Kharms, the spirit of great Russian literature lives on.
Post-Soviet bad boy? Many of his countryman would undoubtedly shout “yes!” since his novel Blue Lard contains explicit anal sex between Stalin and Khrushchev and The Norm, another novel, takes place in the Brezhnev-era where Soviet citizens are required to eat packages of shit. Added to this, many of his works feature slaughter, sadism and even cannibalism mixed in with elements of crime thriller, science fiction, fantasy and the absurd.
However, the book under review here precedes all of the above. Indeed, The Queue is a first novel published in 1985 when the author was a mere lad of thirty.
Back In 1985 the Soviet Union still existed and Socialist Realism was the authorized, acceptable way of writing fiction, since, according to the state, such writing is a faithful mirroring of life and expresses essential truths.
Vladimir Sorokin’s novel is realism but a variety unwelcomed by the authorities – he blows state sanctioned realism to smithereens by actually giving it back to the people on the street. In this way I'm reminded of what Raymond Chandler said about crime writer Dashiell Hammett, that he "gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it."
Reading The Queue I had the impression Vladimir Sorokin simply joined his Comrades on line (a very long, twisting line) with a hidden microphone to record their conversations, their shouting, their jokes, their complaining and cursing, their conniving and conjectures, their grunting and groaning. The dialogue is that natural. Nothing is forced. Here’s an author, even at a relatively young age, that had a superb ear for how people speak.
To underscore the novel’s form: it’s 100% dialogue - atmosphere, mood, setting, character development all emerge from dialogue and the dialogue has no character attributions, that is, there are no he said, she said, Ivan said, Natasha said. Rather, the left side of each page is filled with dashes (-) to indicate a change in speaker. In this way, flipping through The Queue looks very much like Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman or Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages. Well, actually, with The Queue there are a number of blank pages noting a break in the waiting to take time out for things like sleep. These blank pages give the novel a decidedly Postmodern look and feel.
And what do these men and women standing in the queue have to say? Although it’s never entirely clear what everyone is so eager to buy, they sure have lots to talk about: Did he cut in line up there? What do you do for a living? How would you like to join me for coffee? Shut up! Don’t be so rude.
Talking and more talking about superior foreign products, asking for assistance on a crossword puzzle, old people yammering about the good old Stalin days, exchanging insults, telling jokes, arguing politics, making witty and not so witty remarks, comparisons with American workers (they have to work their assess off over there), offering opinions on food, making plans to step out of line for a drink. And on it goes.
Then there is the roll call conducted by the organizers which goes on for pages. Thirty-three pages of roll call! In this way, a reader is given an actual taste of the queue experience. Now that’s Socialist Realism, Vladimir Sorokin-style.
But I must say there is one queue hell several women in the novel had to endure that strikes me as the worst: standing in line for hours and hours with kids. I don’t know how they could take it. The organizers should have awarded metals to those courageous souls along with the blue jeans from America or suede jacket from Turkey or spike shoes from Sweden or whatever else they waited in queue days on end to receive.
Not nearly as bad, but bad enough is having an emotionally charged negative exchange with the next person on line: pushing, shoving, accusing (you stepped out of line!) and various other forms of crudeness and rudeness.
Conversely, affectionate physical contact is occasionally made, and, who knows, such connection might lead to a date or coffee, a relationship and even, heart of hearts, romance. It's the luck of the queue.
From what I've written so far you might be surprised to know The Queue does have a main character and hero, a handsome, single young man, an editor for a magazine by the name of Vadim.
And perhaps not so obvious from the beginning pages, The Queue turns out to be a sweet, charming love story. Quite different than Vladimir Soroken’s later work. To say anything more regarding Vadim's ups and downs in and out of the queue would be to say too much, so let me shift focus and mention this New York Review Books edition is 250-pages but with the short clips of dialogue (rarely will a person say more than a sentence or two or three), The Queue is a quick, delightful day’s read.
The NYRB edition includes translator Sally Laird’s informative Preface providing cultural context for the novel. She writes: “If part of the pleasure in reading The Queue lies in picking out the “melody” (and the numerous sub-melodies along the way), a related satisfaction comes simply from the novel’s perfect – sometimes pitiless – realism.”
Also included is an Afterward written in 2008 by Vladimir Sorokin himself, wherein he speaks of the rise and fall of Russian and Soviet queues. One part of the history is a tragedy where more than two thousand people were crushed waiting to receive a bag of gifts from the Tsar. Also, how according to statistics, Soviet citizens would spend a third of each day standing in lines. This to say, the queue played a vital role in his country’s history.
Not only does The Queue document a particular historic phenomenon but Vladimir Sorokin has written a love story of great beauty – I almost couldn’t believe such a happy ending.
"And the queue? That fantastic, many headed monster, the hallmark of socialism? Where has it gone, the monstrous Leviathan that wound entire cities in its motely coils? Where are the long hours of standing, the stirring shouts, the dramatic confrontations, the joyous trembling of the person at the head of the line?" - Vladimir Sorokin, from his new Afterward to the New York Review Books publication of The Queue
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