Creative Leave. A Knight's Romance

The American postmodernist John Barth (b. 1930) is luckier than many in the Russian-speaking space, but that's not entirely accurate. Translations of three of his early novels and one late one have been published, although two of his classic masterpieces of storytelling – "The Floating Opera" and "Giles Goat-Boy" – are still waiting for their translators and publishers. Barth himself has long been deservedly legendary: he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has received about a dozen American and European awards and honors (three of which are for cumulative merit and contributions to contemporary literature).

With the publication of the translation of his novel "Creative Leave: A Knight's Romance" (Sabbatical: A Romance, 1982), "Dodo Press" and "Phantom Press" hope to fill this gaping void in the Russian reader's familiarity with the works of this pillar of American literature. The so-called "middle period" of Barth's work can be considered somewhat less ironic than his earlier literary path, although parody remains his key literary device, and wordplay is still a favorite focus. Drawing from literary tradition, Barth continues to weave his "meta-narratives" literally from everything that comes to hand (for example, the story "Click" grew out of a single click of a computer mouse), yet his fantasies are extremely credible, and the characters are full-blooded and recognizable. Furthermore, as a true storyteller, Barth has always placed immense importance on the swiftness, fluidity, and captivating nature of the plot.

Such is the case with "Leave." His novel is, in broad terms, based on the real death of former CIA agent John Paisley in 1978. Paisley served in the Agency for eleven years and retired as Deputy Director of the Strategic Research Division; he was deeply involved in operations against the USSR. After retirement, his life went awry: he separated from his wife, and Paisley himself began participating in "personal awareness" seminars and group therapy sessions. In September 1978, while out on his sloop in the Chesapeake Bay, the former agent disappeared. His body was only discovered a week later – with a weighted diving belt and a gunshot wound to the head. There has yet to be a definitive answer to questions about the cause of his death. CIA agents, as is well known, are never "former." In Barth's novel, of course, things are a bit different. The former CIA officer Fenwick Scotch Key Turner – possibly a direct descendant of the author of the U.S. national anthem, who has written an exposé on his former employers – and his young wife – a professor of American classic literature, Susan Rachel Allan Seckler, half-Jewish, half-Roma, and possibly a descendant of Edgar Allan Poe – return to Chesapeake Bay from a romantic voyage to the Caribbean. Along the way, they essentially compose a novel (there is a version that it became the next novel by John Barth himself), encounter a variety of maritime adventures, and extricate themselves from various predicaments. They face storms, sea monsters, ominous islands – and looming over all of it is the dark shadow of those same employers of Fenwick…

Woven from all the characteristic and beloved details of John Barth's creative style, the novel certainly does not let the reader get bored. It is remarkable in that, essentially, it is far from the "smart" or "intellectual" novel that one might expect from authors of such caliber and generation, like Pynchon, Hawkes, and Barthelme, with whom Russian-speaking readers traditionally find it "difficult." It is more of a simple genre family saga plus, of course, a love story, but it is written using postmodern tools and everything that typically lies around the workshop floor. And since our workshop is, after all, a literary one, the novel turned out to be quite philological. It is also intimate – in general, it is the perfect play with special effects: the duet of the main characters and a small supporting troupe live before our eyes for about two weeks, never once making the reader (the voyeuristic spectator) doubt their reality… And, to continue avoiding spoilers, I must mention one more feature of the novel – the integration of the text into the territory (rather, the water area; not a map, mind you, although having an idea of the contours of the terrain wouldn’t hurt). Here, the Chesapeake Bay itself is one of those places that can, of course, be read like a book. The sailing through these waters will be quite smooth, but winding.

Contains profanity