Piatigorsky’s collection of short stories about dictators in their teenage years inevitably gives rise to both concern and curiosity. How might the author treat his subjects? Will he be empathetic, sympathetic, or disdainful? Each of these emotions becomes potentially problematic when paired with this subject matter. There is a potential minefield facing the author when dealing with a raft of loathsome characters. Perhaps the perplexing nature of the project is also what feeds curiosity about it.
Accompanying these initial reservations about the subject, it should be noted that several of the characters in the book are still attached to very real political issues. In The Iron Bridge, Piatigorsky is careful not to stray from the accepted western historical ideas of each man. Mao is magnanimous in his denial of his filial duties though ultimately naïve, while Idi Amin is jolly and personable but dim-witted and wildly violent. This approach allows Piatigorsky to hurdle some of the issues that writers such as Günter Grass have dealt with in books like Crabwalk (where the goal is to reclaim history). The danger here is that The Iron Bridge may only achieve a re-hashing of already accepted notions. Indeed it feels like this is the case through much of the first four stories or chapters.
As we follow a young Pol Pot after his first sexual encounter we are given some details of his emotional state:
The change of location doesn’t clear his thoughts. The royal monastery continues to irk him, fuelling his shame, funnelling Sar [Pol Pot] into a state of limb-weakening emptiness that can only be described as despair.
Unfortunately, these details are quickly overtaken by biographical information that is conspicuously functional, coming between reader and character:
Although he hated his long year as a novice in Wat Botum Vaddei – but what nine-year-old boy would enjoy the rigid prescriptions and denials of monastic life?— that time now stands in stark contrast to his present, decadent existence. The bitter memory of the monastery’s privations and restrictions has faded with time, leaving Sar with a distilled recollection of that period in his life: the pride warming him each evening as he lay on his thin pallet, staring at the ceilings wooden slats, weary from hours of prayer and study, from washing and sifting rice, from sweeping courtyards covered in banyan leaves, from countless mundane but purifying tasks that were executed in an air of enforced silence…
The departure from Pol Pot’s emotional state is subtle and the writing is still well constructed, but the author doesn’t stay in the moment long enough to make it feel alive. The descriptions of past experience build one on top of each other, and the present feels overlooked. Passages like this one rely, perhaps too heavily, on the reader’s interest in the contextual facts.
Though the ambition and thematic approach are laudable, the first four stories rarely manage to penetrate the inner lives of the subjects. History over-determines many of the scenes and there is rarely any sense of anticipation. The way that Idi Amin acts as a teenage dishwasher seems consistent with what one might imagine him to be like as a teenage dishwasher. As a result, the stories are correct, but do not necessarily offer the desired complexities that character studies can provide.
Perhaps there isn’t room for Piatigorsky to actually like the people that he is writing about, but there ought to be room to imagine them with greater intimacy (even if he isn’t interested in re-addressing history). In his renderings he continually focuses on physical strangeness and bodily function, (Idi Amin’s large hands, Mao farting, Pol Pot’s skinny legs, Stalin’s withered arm and leg, etc.). Though this helps to specify and individualize, it begins to feel like caricature. It seems too easy to focus on ineptitudes, awkward bodily functions, and the unusual physical traits of some of the most universally disliked individuals in history. As a result, the first four stories offer very limited satisfaction and feel like missed opportunities.
Where the fictional versions of Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse-tung, and Stalin fail to sate a curiosity for an as yet unknown and unthinkable inner world, the final third of the book offers a welcome shift. Piatigorsky hits his stride in “Bottle Cap” (whose subject is long-time Dominican dictator Trujillo) and begins to realize some of the potential of the project. The author manages a finer balance in presentation, allowing the reader greater agency in interpreting the character.
Trujillo’s intense belief in superstitions and their relation to organization is presented in a beautifully matter of fact way. Here he obsesses over his bottle cap collection:
He knows his family is waiting for him at the dinner table. He doesn’t have time to stack the bottle caps in their correct groups, but he wonders if he can’t separate them from the single, unholy clash of types, origins, and colours. Yes, there’s time enough for that. He wipes his brow with his sleeve and focuses on his task.
In Bottle Cap Piatigorsky is finally in the present with the character. Here his choice to write the book in the present tense feels less like directions from a script or treatment and more like the most natural way to explore the character’s thoughts. The focus is on the details of eccentricity and presenting them in an imaginative way. Oddly this approach feels more objective than in the previous stories, where history too specifically marks the characters.
The final story, “Incensed” (about Hitler), unfolds in a way that isn’t surprising, but the dynamics of its escalation and thematic imagery carry it past the pitfalls that claim several of the other stories. After tiptoeing around the idea of bridges and iron in the first five chapters, Piatigorsky presents the title of the book and what might also be considered its central theme. In Hitler’s chapter, an iron bridge standing over the Danube is architecturally unappealing to him and he energetically (in true Adolf fashion) discusses the need for a new bridge.
The bridge symbolizes the undesirable joining that each of the six characters in the book struggle with as they seek to disassociate themselves from humble roots. Though each man is ambitious and a kind of visionary, they are desperately at odds with their surroundings and upbringing. Their struggle with connection is linked to each character’s inability to deal with trauma and shame. They each develop a fantasy of what their relationship with the world ought to be, a fantasy bridge to replace the one that is offered to them in reality. Like the young Hitler’s desire to tear down the old iron bridge, there is a desire to change reality, to erect a new structure that they will totally control. History shows us, with varying degrees of carnage, what each of them eventually did construct as their bridge to the world.
The Iron Bridge is the first collection of fiction from Anton Piatigorsky and there is perhaps some evidence here of an overlap between genres. As mentioned previously, the decision to write in the present tense sometimes offers a hint of a theatrical writing style (where the text has the feel of a hypothetical scene). However, when the stories are working Piatigorsky’s experience as a playwright contributes a deft understanding of the significance of motion, timing, and physical organization (for example the scene where Hitler passes the object of his affection on the street but fails to draw her gaze). In these instances the artistic vision of Piatigorsky, widely recognized in theatrical circles, contributes beneficially to what he’s achieved as a short story writer.
The image on the cover of the book, a photograph with scratched-out eyes, offers a complicated blend of evil and childish mischief. In contrast, the quoted phrases on the back have the ‘A’ in each word circled like the anarchy symbol. The problem is that the book has nothing to do with anarchy. The back cover seems like a clumsy attempt to capture a target market rather than tie the phrases to the content. Like its cover, the book sits somewhere between well-crafted intrigue and disappointing generalization. Though the ultimate and penultimate stories beautifully unfold the concept of the title, the preceding stories never seem to reach the same level of involvement and contemplation of character. Consequently, The Iron Bridge is a curiously divided collection of stories.
Goose Lane | 272 pages | $19.95 | paper | ISBN # 978-0864926746
‘The Iron Bridge’ by Anton Piatigorsky
Book Reviews
Piatigorsky’s collection of short stories about dictators in their teenage years inevitably gives rise to both concern and curiosity. How might the author treat his subjects? Will he be empathetic, sympathetic, or disdainful? Each of these emotions becomes potentially problematic when paired with this subject matter. There is a potential minefield facing the author when dealing with a raft of loathsome characters. Perhaps the perplexing nature of the project is also what feeds curiosity about it.
Accompanying these initial reservations about the subject, it should be noted that several of the characters in the book are still attached to very real political issues. In The Iron Bridge, Piatigorsky is careful not to stray from the accepted western historical ideas of each man. Mao is magnanimous in his denial of his filial duties though ultimately naïve, while Idi Amin is jolly and personable but dim-witted and wildly violent. This approach allows Piatigorsky to hurdle some of the issues that writers such as Günter Grass have dealt with in books like Crabwalk (where the goal is to reclaim history). The danger here is that The Iron Bridge may only achieve a re-hashing of already accepted notions. Indeed it feels like this is the case through much of the first four stories or chapters.
As we follow a young Pol Pot after his first sexual encounter we are given some details of his emotional state:
The change of location doesn’t clear his thoughts. The royal monastery continues to irk him, fuelling his shame, funnelling Sar [Pol Pot] into a state of limb-weakening emptiness that can only be described as despair.
Unfortunately, these details are quickly overtaken by biographical information that is conspicuously functional, coming between reader and character:
Although he hated his long year as a novice in Wat Botum Vaddei – but what nine-year-old boy would enjoy the rigid prescriptions and denials of monastic life?— that time now stands in stark contrast to his present, decadent existence. The bitter memory of the monastery’s privations and restrictions has faded with time, leaving Sar with a distilled recollection of that period in his life: the pride warming him each evening as he lay on his thin pallet, staring at the ceilings wooden slats, weary from hours of prayer and study, from washing and sifting rice, from sweeping courtyards covered in banyan leaves, from countless mundane but purifying tasks that were executed in an air of enforced silence…
The departure from Pol Pot’s emotional state is subtle and the writing is still well constructed, but the author doesn’t stay in the moment long enough to make it feel alive. The descriptions of past experience build one on top of each other, and the present feels overlooked. Passages like this one rely, perhaps too heavily, on the reader’s interest in the contextual facts.
Though the ambition and thematic approach are laudable, the first four stories rarely manage to penetrate the inner lives of the subjects. History over-determines many of the scenes and there is rarely any sense of anticipation. The way that Idi Amin acts as a teenage dishwasher seems consistent with what one might imagine him to be like as a teenage dishwasher. As a result, the stories are correct, but do not necessarily offer the desired complexities that character studies can provide.
Perhaps there isn’t room for Piatigorsky to actually like the people that he is writing about, but there ought to be room to imagine them with greater intimacy (even if he isn’t interested in re-addressing history). In his renderings he continually focuses on physical strangeness and bodily function, (Idi Amin’s large hands, Mao farting, Pol Pot’s skinny legs, Stalin’s withered arm and leg, etc.). Though this helps to specify and individualize, it begins to feel like caricature. It seems too easy to focus on ineptitudes, awkward bodily functions, and the unusual physical traits of some of the most universally disliked individuals in history. As a result, the first four stories offer very limited satisfaction and feel like missed opportunities.
Where the fictional versions of Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse-tung, and Stalin fail to sate a curiosity for an as yet unknown and unthinkable inner world, the final third of the book offers a welcome shift. Piatigorsky hits his stride in “Bottle Cap” (whose subject is long-time Dominican dictator Trujillo) and begins to realize some of the potential of the project. The author manages a finer balance in presentation, allowing the reader greater agency in interpreting the character.
Trujillo’s intense belief in superstitions and their relation to organization is presented in a beautifully matter of fact way. Here he obsesses over his bottle cap collection:
He knows his family is waiting for him at the dinner table. He doesn’t have time to stack the bottle caps in their correct groups, but he wonders if he can’t separate them from the single, unholy clash of types, origins, and colours. Yes, there’s time enough for that. He wipes his brow with his sleeve and focuses on his task.
In Bottle Cap Piatigorsky is finally in the present with the character. Here his choice to write the book in the present tense feels less like directions from a script or treatment and more like the most natural way to explore the character’s thoughts. The focus is on the details of eccentricity and presenting them in an imaginative way. Oddly this approach feels more objective than in the previous stories, where history too specifically marks the characters.
The final story, “Incensed” (about Hitler), unfolds in a way that isn’t surprising, but the dynamics of its escalation and thematic imagery carry it past the pitfalls that claim several of the other stories. After tiptoeing around the idea of bridges and iron in the first five chapters, Piatigorsky presents the title of the book and what might also be considered its central theme. In Hitler’s chapter, an iron bridge standing over the Danube is architecturally unappealing to him and he energetically (in true Adolf fashion) discusses the need for a new bridge.
The bridge symbolizes the undesirable joining that each of the six characters in the book struggle with as they seek to disassociate themselves from humble roots. Though each man is ambitious and a kind of visionary, they are desperately at odds with their surroundings and upbringing. Their struggle with connection is linked to each character’s inability to deal with trauma and shame. They each develop a fantasy of what their relationship with the world ought to be, a fantasy bridge to replace the one that is offered to them in reality. Like the young Hitler’s desire to tear down the old iron bridge, there is a desire to change reality, to erect a new structure that they will totally control. History shows us, with varying degrees of carnage, what each of them eventually did construct as their bridge to the world.
The Iron Bridge is the first collection of fiction from Anton Piatigorsky and there is perhaps some evidence here of an overlap between genres. As mentioned previously, the decision to write in the present tense sometimes offers a hint of a theatrical writing style (where the text has the feel of a hypothetical scene). However, when the stories are working Piatigorsky’s experience as a playwright contributes a deft understanding of the significance of motion, timing, and physical organization (for example the scene where Hitler passes the object of his affection on the street but fails to draw her gaze). In these instances the artistic vision of Piatigorsky, widely recognized in theatrical circles, contributes beneficially to what he’s achieved as a short story writer.
The image on the cover of the book, a photograph with scratched-out eyes, offers a complicated blend of evil and childish mischief. In contrast, the quoted phrases on the back have the ‘A’ in each word circled like the anarchy symbol. The problem is that the book has nothing to do with anarchy. The back cover seems like a clumsy attempt to capture a target market rather than tie the phrases to the content. Like its cover, the book sits somewhere between well-crafted intrigue and disappointing generalization. Though the ultimate and penultimate stories beautifully unfold the concept of the title, the preceding stories never seem to reach the same level of involvement and contemplation of character. Consequently, The Iron Bridge is a curiously divided collection of stories.
Goose Lane | 272 pages | $19.95 | paper | ISBN # 978-0864926746