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A review by sisteray
Homo Zapiens by Victor Pelevin
3.0
Clearly Victor Pelevin wrote the bulk of this book sitting on the toilet or standing in the shower. He collected all his stray thoughts and tried to make them anecdotes in the life of a cipher of a character. This book suffers from the same problems that Tom Robbins continually stumbles over, which is that he wants to convey some grand idea and then he has one character ask a couple questions to fake a dialog, while the other character expounds endlessly with the writer's voice. Whereas Robbins' books only make you sit through one or two chapters of it, the whole book is rife with exposition.
That said, some of it is really intriguing. I would even go so far as to say that you can skip the whole book and read nothing but the Homo Zapiens chapter and come out well ahead, missing virtually nothing. That chapter is truly incredible, and was clearly a stand alone essay that was the thesis from which the rest of the book loosely hangs on. BTW, this is the Che Guevara element that the cover copy talks about and this moment has no bearing or relevance at all to the rest of the plot and is there in namesake only. In fact the character later asks questions about things that were directly answered for him in that chapter.
About the rest of the book, well it gives an intriguing look into Post-soviet Russia. Most of it is fantasy, but the tone and timber are there. There were certainly some entertaining moments. Meanwhile, you have to put up with the flaccid ad copy. The reason why the Monty Python "Funniest Joke in the World" sketch worked is because you never heard the joke. Here you are shown time and again that his ad copy sucks, yet he's taken as being brilliant (and I'm pretty sure that it isn't supposed to be ironic).
As a straight read, I found it to be difficult, the book was dense, meandering and unclear. I can only assume that most of the problem was with the translation. The verbiage was awkward. There were tons of spelling errors. There were a number of sentences that use English words that would never be used that way by a native speaker. The clunky writing must come from the fact that no editor ever set eyes on this translation.
That said, some of it is really intriguing. I would even go so far as to say that you can skip the whole book and read nothing but the Homo Zapiens chapter and come out well ahead, missing virtually nothing. That chapter is truly incredible, and was clearly a stand alone essay that was the thesis from which the rest of the book loosely hangs on. BTW, this is the Che Guevara element that the cover copy talks about and this moment has no bearing or relevance at all to the rest of the plot and is there in namesake only. In fact the character later asks questions about things that were directly answered for him in that chapter.
About the rest of the book, well it gives an intriguing look into Post-soviet Russia. Most of it is fantasy, but the tone and timber are there. There were certainly some entertaining moments. Meanwhile, you have to put up with the flaccid ad copy. The reason why the Monty Python "Funniest Joke in the World" sketch worked is because you never heard the joke. Here you are shown time and again that his ad copy sucks, yet he's taken as being brilliant (and I'm pretty sure that it isn't supposed to be ironic).
As a straight read, I found it to be difficult, the book was dense, meandering and unclear. I can only assume that most of the problem was with the translation. The verbiage was awkward. There were tons of spelling errors. There were a number of sentences that use English words that would never be used that way by a native speaker. The clunky writing must come from the fact that no editor ever set eyes on this translation.