KOIRA JUPCZEK– Death Charts

    Regular readers may be surprised to find me writing this review. Aren’t my overly large sequined boots stomping over ground that rightfully belongs to my respected editor, Monsignor Georgy Riecke? After all, death has always been his ‘thing’. You only need to see the fellow’s face when a new study of suicide rituals appears on his desk at the publishing house. He salivates, he shakes, he sweats. He can barely wait to get his grubby paws on it. It is not for nothing that his list of greatest novels is liberally sprinkled with suicides, genocides and elephanticides (see Roc Quarrét’s Hewn). Had he not had the humility to allow other members of his critical fraternity to submit their own ideas, then one suspects that every novel there would have involved some strange sort of murderous activity. For this is undoubtedly Riecke’s pride and joy: fatality – in all its curious forms. Murder most foul, as in the best it is, but this both foul and (apparently) funny. I am reminded of what Riecke calls the ‘crushingly tender and disarmingly droll’ book by French writer Emile Gofrank (A Sentence or Two about You) where the reader is rather tediously (in my opinion) expected to follow the actions of a man determined to be killed by a falling watermelon. One of the editor’s favourites, I’m sure, alongside Nate Laami’s Flaws in the Plan (an infamous collection of suicide notes by the same man) and, more recently, Olav Blomquist’s macabre fantasy Groaning Pixies – both of them notoriously deathly tomes.

    It says something about how busy Riecke must be, therefore, that he has permitted me to review this book. For as novels about death go, this would seem to be the pick of the bunch. What is more, I know that Riecke personally selected it for his Greatest Novels List. And why not? It has all the attributes of his most favoured literature. The world which it creates is a world in which one imagines he would live if given half the chance. One ponders: how much would Riecke give to be a pupil of Podakolina; the only school in Slovakia that gives lessons in how to die, overseen by the great master of death himself, fictional creation par excellencé, the wondrous Jaroslav Begerev? One doubts that he was ever an enthusiastic pupil (I have a vision of him sitting by a window, dreamily sucking on a pencil) but in these conditions there would have been stopping him. Assignments on the relative merits of famous last words would have been completed in record time. Essays on the notions of ethnicity within Eastern European suicide customs would be fifty pages long, or more. Allowed to indulge in his obsession with grisly death, he would be transported to the habitual seventh heaven.

    The question lingers on: why? What is it about a novel which is barely more than a compendium of historical facts and gags about death that can get a man so excited? Is it simply, as Peggy Grounter has written in her ground-breaking study Men: A Bunch of Brave Old Wimps?, the mentality of the ‘boy-man’: a perverse offshoot of the unrestrained desire to be ‘more adult than others’? Is there perhaps some sense in which he believes that women are attracted to men who appear to laugh in the face of death? Or is it merely the result of the desire to be different; the bookish reply to the ubiquitous ‘goths’, whose own corpse-like impressions reveal a similar fixation for the trappings of man’s mortality?

    Whatever it is, there’s a twist to it. And the twist is this: the love of ‘death’ is, invariably, an escape from Death. By taking a subject of this magnitude and exaggerating it beyond its natural forms, Riecke’s beloved writers are playing not to his craving to learn more about the cause and effects of the great demise, but to his unexpressed desire to avoid the subject altogether. Which is to say, we’re in typical wrap-a-tough-subject-in-humour-and-watch-it-dissolve territory. As Leo Barnard has written: ‘The best way to ignore something is not to put it out of your mind entirely, but keep it in mind constantly, in a significantly tinkered form’.

    Jupczek’s Death Charts provides more than the perfect example. To all intents and purposes, it is a book about death. Death stalks its pages like a giant heron on stilts. Death is the main subject, literally. Pupils at the fictional Podakolina school receive daily lessons in it (or in components of it). Bergerev, the anti-hero, both teaches it and researches it in his spare time. ‘Expert’ as he is, however, he does not waste any of his precious time on its common forms. Not for him cancer, car accidents or heart attacks. Unless an obese woman has been crushed by a humongous cake, or a zoologist devoured by a species of seemingly placid plant-eating lizards, Bergerev isn’t interested. The death with which he is involved is, thus, a form of death quite different to that to which we are used. It is death abstracted; death stretched in variously scary shapes; shapes that are, in fact, much less threatening than first they seem. In short, it is death tamed. It is, as we have seen, ‘death’.

    Riecke is not foolish enough to have overlooked this argument. In his review of Nate Laami’s Flaws in the Plan, he writes: ‘whilst I am careful not to suggest that the inventiveness of the suicide method is directly proportional to the profundity of the authorial response to the given situation, it is worth noting that those authors who have strayed from the path have on the whole contributed the most satisfactory theses on this debatably sombre subject’. By writing this, he hopes to prove that he isn’t attracted by the aesthetic charms of death abstracted; that there is more intellectual content in novels like Death Charts than meets the eye. I would contend, yet, that he is deluding himself. The real truth here is that Riecke, like so many male critics, compensates for the lack of drama in his life by supporting writers compensating for the lack of their drama in their lives by inventing it, in fantastical form, there upon the page. And when I say ‘fantastical form’, I mean it. Death Charts is pure fantasy. Though Jupczek takes care to ensure that every type of death is feasible, they all continue to be highly unlikely. That there is such a thing as a ‘good death’ is a complex question – that there could be a school dedicated to teaching the merits of a ‘good death’ need not be questioned. Situating such a serious subject within an unmistakably fantastical setting says a lot about the sincerity with which that subject is treated.

    Black humour? Perhaps. Certainly, it might take a sturdy stomach to take in some of the details of Death Charts (or a cold heart to chuckle at them). However, in so far as forming a stringent commentary on human existence, this is as cosy as literature comes. Riecke may think, like others, that herein lies its charm: the juxtaposition of old school clichés and cutting edge black humour. But he’d either be overemphasising or else misunderstanding the way the novel operates. Charming it is, but it packs a punch as light as a pigeon’s neck feather. Reduced to its basic elements, it reveals itself to be little more than a simple spy story, propped up by a series of boyish jokes and pseudo-histories culled from encyclopaedias and re-mixed in the backrooms of a vaguely imaginative mind. Were it not for the magnetism of the central mystery – will Bergerev, the great professor of death, organise a suicide worthy of his knowledge? – then these foundations would never hold the weight of all those words.

    When I said it was a spy story, I didn’t mean to suggest that it wasn’t a good one. Indeed, so long as one stops thinking of it as some sort of ‘dark masterpiece’, it becomes difficult not to fall in love with Death Charts. Take away the fact that Bergerev is trying to kill himself, and it’s a familiar story beautifully re-imagined: a man desperately trying to end his career on the high that everyone expects of him, cheered on by his disciples - many of which are threatening to go out with a greater band than their respected teacher.

    As for the scorn I have poured over the attitude of those who hold this novel close to their hearts, I won’t argue that it isn’t funny in parts. Some of the fictive famous last words are brilliantly devised - as is, of course, Bergerev’s final exit, which I won’t give away here. Both of these, yet, bring me back to my original point. The best of the famous last words are not necessarily profound. Rather than shedding new light on the subject of death, they are full of the life lacking in the bodies from which they spring. They are perfect endings, in that they pretend to be unaware of what it is they are preceding. Likewise the ‘funny ways of dying’ with which Death Charts is littered, whether it be escaping Houdini-like from a chained coffin underwater only to slip up on the harbour steps; being tickled to death by someone with no comic timing; a writer squashed under a heavy bookshelf containing his own novels; a woman kicking the bucket after, well, kicking a bucket; a disease deriving from obsessive carrot consumption (pastinacuss grossus) which manifests itself in chronically swollen eyeballs (which eventually burst) or suicide attempts ending in the death of almost everyone except the originator. These are deliberately diverting deaths, whose interest lies in the precise details of the demise: the dramatic ending: the ‘death’, divorced from its implications, distracting us, in turn, from the enduring repercussions of Death (freed from the inverted commas). This is death in cartoon form; sanitised through the process of exaggeration; nullified by humour, however black it may be.

    In context: the pupils of Podakolina learn many things about death; principally, how best to die dramatically. They are taught about the ‘creation’ of death; how they can ‘use’ it, as if it were a tool. They approach death as if climbing a mountain. It does not approach them. Now, this is important. For whilst Death Charts supports the notion that death is nothing to be afraid of (a worthy notion in many ways) it also commits itself to the concept that death is something a man or woman can approach on their own terms. It does not deal with death as an uncontrollable force, capable of destroying lives that are not as prepared to welcome it as those fortunate pupils of Podakolina. Nor does it deal with death in its un-dramatic forms. Those who meet their end in Death Charts may do so painfully, but they also do so with uncommon speed. As a result, there is very little serious suffering on show. Lastly, there is barely a reference to the effects of death on those that are living (save those that also want to die). Bereavement is simply not a feature. Suicides are treated almost as if someone has left the country for a while, or won an award; rather than having shattered the lives of their remaining loved ones. The profound effect of death is, therefore, roundly ignored; wimpishly set aside to satisfy the needs of paradoxically squeamish blood-lusting male readers (e.g. Mr G Riecke).

    Which brings us to the rather peculiar coup de grâce. Koira Jupczek, the author of Death Charts, is a woman. Her narrator is male, the mentality of her novel is - I would argue - male and her readership is, in the main, male. So what’s going on? Is she a boy trapped in a middle-aged Slovakian woman’s body? Or should we be looking at her novel from a slightly different perspective: i.e, as a sneaky satire on the aforementioned cowardly male mentality? I will happily side with the second option. It’s satire, plain and straight, that’s how I see it. Jupczek has correctly identified that there is a big market for tough-guy/cosy-gentleman literature and exploited it superbly. She has come so close to understanding the outlook of Riecke et al to be able to create the perfect bait for him and his ilk. And tasty bait it is. Artfully manufactured to assuage a specific appetite, it remains edible for all; those who are victims of the satire and those who want to understand the victims of the satire (or, to put it more crudely, men and women).

    Satire, yes. Devastating satire, I couldn’t say. Which brings me to the question – is Georgy Riecke aware that Koira Jupczek is having a giggle or two at his expense? Is he brave enough to realise that his voracious appetite for death-inspired fiction is ultimately an act of cowardice; a hop, skip and a jump away from the harsh realities of, well, reality? Much as I would like to pull even more straw from the stomach of this rag-doll editor of mine, I must admit that he  probably is well aware of Jupczek’s otherwise hidden intentions. He isn’t all idiot. He will have understood long ago that his obsession with obscure forms of suicide is no more than a manly affectation, disguising palpable anxieties. I believe that he will be well aware of this.

    Ah, but will the lily-livered froglet ever put down his collection of fantastically morbid fiction and accept the ordinary horrors of death? I doubt it. And I can't say I blame him. After all, without something to satirise, there’d be no satire. And without satire, life would be a little bit duller than it already is. All of which might explain why it is that Riecke asked me to review this book. Too busy? Highly unlikely. Too scared to face up to his flaws in public? Well, what can I say?

Heidi Kohlenberg