If David Bezmozgis‘s novel, The Free World, were a drink, it would be a scotch, not peaty or smoky, but smooth and well-aged. It would have none of the surprising roughness of Laphroaig, tending more to the clean finish of Highland Park. As a drink, it would be safe, conventional, respectable. Nevertheless, this scotch would be sufficiently complex that those who liked it would become defensive in the presence of those who did not, arguing that the debate about its merits resolved to matters of taste; those with a more adventurous nose could find satisfaction somewhere else. Meanwhile, scotch aficionados would drive through suburban streets and note a spate of billboards for this new Free World scotch – lifestyle ads which feature a James Bond look-alike who quaffs the amber stuff when he isn’t swilling martinis and hawking Omega watches.
In loose terms, The Free World is a prequel to Bezmozgis’s Natasha and Other Stories. Where Natasha offered glimpses of Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants who settled near the intersection of Finch and Wilmington in north Toronto, The Free World traces their path before they arrived here. Set in 1978, we watch three generations of the Krasnansky family board a train from Riga to Vienna, and from there, a bus to Rome where they settle into a limbo, waiting to hear first from the American consulate, then from the Canadian consulate. Through recursive segments, Bezmozgis gives the reader artful glimpses of the past. With the father, Samuil, we flee into Russia before the advancing Germans. Following the war, we see the death of Stalin and the rise of Samuil’s fortunes within the Party. With the daughter-in-law, Polina, we meet her first lover and accompany her on a visit to the abortion clinic. However, we find ourselves traveling far less in this way with Alec, who is Samuil’s younger son and married to Polina. Alec is more present-centred and unafraid to move forward. When they arrive in Rome, he refuses to move to one of the refugee ghettos in either Ladispoli or Ostia on the outskirts of the city and, instead, takes an apartment in Rome, leaving the rest of the family behind. Marital fidelity has never been his long suit and he soon has a lover. However, unlike his hard-edged brother, Karl, Alec is more vulnerable and more likable, too.
For the balance of this review, I offer disjointed thoughts. There’s no point in offering a slick review since the novel has already been done to death in all the big mainstream media outlets. See The Guardian, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail. It’s had enviable coverage. What else is there to say?
1. Intersections
One of the things I noted in reference to Natasha is the delight a reader can find in reading fiction which intersects with his own life. There, I had fun tracking the stories through neighbourhoods I know. I would not have thought that Bezmozgis could do the same for me a second time around with a novel about a family traveling from Riga to Rome. And yet here it is. When I was fifteen, my parents took my brother and me to Europe for the summer holidays. It was our one big trip, a chance to expand our minds, a last-ditch effort to keep Canadian hickness in check. We entered Italy just as Pope Paul VI died and so made it to Rome in time to file past the Pope’s body, laid out in state and turning green. Imagine my surprise to find such a detail – filing past the Papal corpse in St. Peter’s Basilica — as part of the backdrop to a novel about Jewish refugees.
2. Commercial Realism
Bezmozgis writes with a crisp prose in a style that James Wood might describe as commercial realism. It’s good. It’s marketable. It adopts the visual literalism of film and applies it to words. The detail is great. It evokes the era. However, as I noted above, this is a safe path. Are we getting tired of this yet?
3. Narrative of Arrival
There is the narrative of the story, but there is also the James Freyish narrative about the story. Readers assume that both Natasha and The Free World are vaguely autobiographical. We feel compelled to celebrate something or other. You know. Triumph of the human spirit or something that will give Oprah a hook. We can’t find a triumph of the human spirit in this story, but neither can we find a tragic tale of immigrants lost in the West. Instead, Bezmozgis takes a third way, using humour to dodge the usual weightiness. But we still want our triumph, so we look to Bezmozgis himself and say: “There, look at how he’s arrived. He’s stormed the world of Western publishing. Good for him.”
And it is good. But it’s an old story. It’s the story of the Maharajah who rises to take high tea with peers of the realm. It’s the story of native chiefs who become special environmental envoys to the United Nations. It’s the story of people who become accomplished at something, but on someone else’s terms. The immigrant makes good because he masters the tools that the established use for validation – in this case, the publishing industry with its veins that bleed right into the heart of the Western middle classes.
4. Reading it as an ebook
The problem with the narrative of arrival is always that it comes with a slap in the face. Just as you arrive, the people you sought to emulate are pulling away from the station. In this case, it’s the novel as icon of middle class literary culture. Just as Bezmozgis is showing the world how he’s mastered the form, it’s being unseated by something called the ebook, and traditional publishers, like HarperCollins, are scrambling to adapt.
I’ll save for another post my thoughts on what I think the novel can become at this media crossroads. Let’s look, instead, at the simple exercise of converting an ebook from a print edition. I purchased The Free World in epub format via Kobo. Presumably it had been prepared by its publisher, HarperCollins. This book has errors in it. Not many. But enough that if I had purchased it in print format, I would have asked for a refund. I’m not sure how to get a refund for an ebook. I feel rooked, and I feel a bit sorry for Bezmozgis too, because there’s no excuse for such sloppiness.
I wouldn’t make such a big deal of it if it weren’t for all the histrionics from publishers about how threatened they are and how much value they add to texts even when the texts appear only on an ereader. Make us believe it. Screwing up doesn’t help. $15.09 on Kobo is not worth the price. Again, this has nothing to do with Bezmozgis’s writing. It’s the digital equivalent of buying a book that has water stains on a few of the pages.
5. What next?
This is a first novel. Even with a first novel, we see that Bezmozgis has arrived. What next? More commercial realism? No doubt there’s a strong temptation, bolstered perhaps by a hefty advance, to continue in this style. But it would be interesting to see if he tries to push the form. Interesting to see if he feels free enough. How about something with flying monkeys?