JONAH AND SARAH: Jewish Stories of Russia and America, by David
Shrayer-Petrov, edited by Maxim D. Shrayer. Syracuse University Press.
184 pages. $24.95.
Almost half of the 13 stories in David Shrayer-Petrov's new collection
-- his 17th book -- reflect life in the Soviet Union before his
long-awaited departure in June 1987. The remainder were composed after
he came to America.
This is an intriguing, diverse set of stories that reflect a brilliant
Jewish writer's irrevocable estrangement from his Russian homeland, and
an émigré's initial sense of alienation in America. But there is more.
Shrayer-Petrov is an irrepressible, powerful voice and a link to a
tragic, intensely lived life in 20th-century Russia.
The writer's psychological alienation began nine years before he
departed his homeland, when he was expelled from the Union of Soviet
Writers (and thus couldn't publish anything in the Soviet Union) "for
having transgressed the unspoken taboo on open treatment of Jewish
subjects."
Accused of "infecting" Soviet Jews with a hostile ideology, he was
subsequently denied permission to emigrate and fired from his academic
position at the Gamaleya Institute of Microbiology. Virtually overnight,
Shrayer-Petrov had become a "refusenik" -- the term for one who has been
denied permission to emigrate by Soviet authorities.
In spite of, and possibly because of KGB persecution and threats against
the writer and his family, his last Soviet decade was strikingly
prolific. A pervasive sense of estrangement is the underlying theme in
many of the stories written during this period -- clearly a reflection
of his isolation from Soviet society, coupled with being a Jewish writer
who is both silenced by, and shackled to, Russia. There is an almost
predatory undercurrent to his protagonists' searching, wandering and
human relationships.
In "Jonah and Sarah," a musician is stripped of everything -- "no
concerts, no editions of his music, no musicians, no instruments" --
except those instruments that emerge as elements of fantasy, juxtaposed
against a nightmarish, existential reality.
Elements of fantasy resurface in "Dismemberers," in which a writer's
beloved typewriter continues to type subversive stories even after its
owner has left Russia. In "In the Reeds," political exile and
lovelessness are the price paid for freedom.
All of these tales echo the testing and struggle of a nonconformist
Jewish writer clashing with the regime. The chilling irony portrayed in
"Hande Hoch!" -- a German phrase that means "hands up" -- about
Jewish-Russian émigrés now living in Shrayer-Petrov's adopted country,
is bitter-sweet in tone and perhaps his best and most haunting story in
this collection.
He is masterful when contrasting the past and present, which may make
his forthcoming English translation of his panoramic novel Herbert and
Nelly, in which he explores the massive exodus of Soviet Jews, an
interesting future release in light of the recent Frankfurt book fair's
showcasing of Russian thrillers, which inspired one critic to depict the
new Russian literature as "crime and pulp."
Shrayer-Petrov reminds us of the rich tradition of Russian literature. A
brilliant writer now among us, he is worthy of continued attention.
Jeanne Nicholson is a columnist and freelance reviewer in Newport.
