Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire

Ink Soup: NIGHT GOGGLES AND DAY BUGS by Clarence Brown American Reporter Correspondent (Prieto, José Manuel: Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire. New York: Grove Press, 2000. $24 (hardback). SEATTLE, Wash -- If ever there was a writer destined by his strange life and high talent to write fiction of unclassifiable oddity, it is José Manuel Prieto. Born in Havana in 1962, Prieto spent 12 years of his life in the moribund Soviet Union, where he acquired what must be near-native proficiency in Russian. He has translated into Spanish works by Joseph Brodsky and Anna Akhmatova - sufficient evidence of his taste and discernment. His second novel, "Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire" (Grove Press, $24) came out in December of last year. So far as I can tell, it has gone almost unnoticed. There was one review in the New York Times, but I have seen no other. It is not in my view a wholly successful novel, but no serious work of fiction with high literary ambitions should be simply passed over in silence. The title in Spanish was "Livadia," which is the name of a small town on the coast of the Crimea where much of the action takes place. The publisher, bent on promoting it as "combining the intellectual sophistication and luminous prose of Nabokov with the world-view of a scion of Castro's Cuba," probably hoped that the reference to lepidoptera in the new name would enhance the Nabokovian aura. Prieto himself, I should add, does what he can to summon up remembrance of the author of "Lolita" and "Pale Fire." Little hints that would be picked up only by adepts of the Russian master litter his pages. But all this turns out to have been a bad idea. Whatever Prieto's prose is like in Spanish, the English of this pedestrian, vulgar and clumsy translation would never remind anyone of Nabokov's elegance and wit. (Example: "The water came right up to it, like in a house on stilts.") The oxymoron of the title - butterflies are doggedly diurnal - is justified by the story but is still slightly off-putting to those whose study of Nabokov has obliged them to be minimally familiar with these insects. In form the book is an epistolary novel, but in form only, for the "letters" never seem to be from or to anyone in particular. Prieto demonstrates his erudition (á la Nabokov) by copious allusions to the European epistolary tradition from classical times to the present. The picture of Soviet people, customs, and institutions is dead accurate, and sadly hilarious, and provides a plausible, realistic background for a foreground story of miasmic vagueness and weirdness. The first-person narrator, J, is in love with a young Russian woman, V, who works as a "nocturnal butterfly" (prostitute) in the U.S.S.R. and adjacent realms. He wants to smuggle her (sans passport) back into her own country. His day job is in fact smuggling and fencing the non-human detritus, especially th

Nocturnal Butterfiles of the Russian Empire is a very complex and convoluted book. Written by a Cuban writer, the story nominally revolves around a Cuban smuggler in Russia who is attracted to, and decides to rescue, a Russian expatriate in Istanbul from a life of sexual enslavement. The real subject of the book is the ways in which social upheaval can color one's life and philosophy in ways that one cannot originally imagine. The essentials of this story are laid out quickly and succinctly at the beginning--virtually the only quick and succinct aspects of this novel. For this is a very densly wriiten and convoluted text. Prieto imbues the protagonist's--identified only as J--voice with endless layers of descriptive detail that run on in ever longer extended sentences that often encompass four or five complete sub-subjects within it's bounds. This does not make for light reading. On the other hand, Prieto is blessed with a truly wonderful ability to render the visual into the verbal, leaving a seemingly endless series of complex visual mental images in one's head with every turned page. Although superficially the two main characters are on every level unlikable, Prieto infuses them with such introspective flair and bravado that one comes to sympathize with them and, therefore, take the threats to their enterprise very much to heart, making this the most unlikely of suspense novels. The only other book I can remotely compare it to id Smilla'Sense of Snow, another dense and multi layered story involving somewhat repulsive protagonists one nevertheless gets to care about deeply. While this one takes some effort to get through, the effort is well worth while. This is a very compelling and engrossing read.

The narrator of "Nocturnal Butterflies," simply named J., is a smuggler crisscrossing the borders of post-Soviet Europe and dealing in contraband such as night-vision goggles. Stockis, a wealthy and shadowy butterfly collector from Sweden, engages J. to find the yazikus, a nocturnal specimen that is extremely rare and difficult to catch. While in Istanbul, however, J. falls in love with an equally elusive "nocturnal butterfly" of a different sort: a prostitute named V. Trapped in Turkey by an Armenian thug who lured her there under false pretenses, V. enlists J. to help her escape her bondage and return to Russia, only to vanish when they both arrive. All this is made known to the reader in the first few pages, and the bulk of the novel details seven letters he unexpectedly receives from V. while at a pension in Livadia, recounts the events that led to J.'s abandonment and despair, and describes his attempt to construct an appropriate response, a letter that will make his feelings known to V. and bring her back to him. He assembles their story in bits and pieces, much "like the mental process I am using here in Livadia, reconstructing her from the fragmented image in her letters." While planning his own letter, J. enlists the help of epistles by famous literary and historical figures, from Saul of Tarsus and Abelard to Oscar Wilde and the Russian double agent Evno Azef. And, of course, the butterflies, the letters, the narrative technique, the Russian themes, the immigrant experience (both the author and J. are Cubans who immigrated to Russia)--all rather deliberately recall Nabokov, who was a famous lepidopterist himself. Prieto skillfully weaves these literary, historical, and biographical details into his own rich narrative, and the result is a collage of compellingly topical yet hauntingly resonant passages. Breaking the density of these musings, which are best appreciated slowly and piecemeal, are the description of J. and V.'s evolving (if one-sided) love affair in Istanbul and a plot drawn from an international thriller, which reaches an unexpected crescendo in a terrific chase scene. Cuban cubism is the facetious label one could use for the novel's structure. A drawback with cubism as a technique in prose, though, is that no matter how solid and invigorating the individual pieces, stepping back from the work reveals both its thematic richness and a narrative jumble. Such bipolarity can certainly work in a painting, but whether it succeeds in fiction will depend entirely on the assiduousness of the individual reader.

I liked this book well enough reading it, even though it is a bit slow for my style. Actually, in the present, not a whole lot happens other than the main character has made his way to the Crimea on the pretense of trying to find a specimen of butterfly that is said to be extinct, but if he finds, he will be paid a pretty penny for. However, there's more to the book than a butterfly place. J. (the main character) is a player.. He makes his money buying things, selling things, transporting things across borders, etc. "Professional smuggler", if you will. He thinks he's the master of his game. And maybe he is one of the masters of the goods-running, but he wasn't expecting V., a beautiful Russian woman, who played on his feelings, then used him to escape Turkey and return to her native Russia. J. is convinced that somehow, since she has managed to contact him through the post, that he can study the art of letter writing to somehow find favour with her once again.With such a scenerio, the 'more classic' writing style fits well. Reading this, one can almost imagine that one is back in the late 1800's, despite the fact that the map of Europe has changed drastically, and one of J.'s wares that comes up many times are night-vision-goggles. At the same time though, had I not a lot of "down time" to actually sit and read, I'm not sure that I would have had the patience needed to enjoy the 'atmosphere' of the book.

Imagine the precocious offspring of Borges and Nabakov. Then imagine said progeny in front of a typewriter, living off the sum total of his parental royalties. The result would be something like this. Read it slowly, savor its many smile-inducing similes, like comparing the accumulation of traffic at a red light, and then it's release at a green light to that of a drop of water approaching its maximum weight before falling off the tip of a leaf. Something like that. I'm not the author. Obviously. Just a reader who enjoyed the author's work. Like the wings of a butterfly -- delicate, intricate. You'll want to chase after it again and again.