This stark account of an ordinary Russian citizen subjected to
ongoing bureaucratic interrogation begs, but does not earn,
comparison with Kafka's The Trial. Its nameless narrator speculates
on the motives and personalities of his accusers (The One Who Asks
the Questions, The Pretty Woman, The Proletarian Firebrand),
dazedly assesses his own political correctness or incorrectness (he
knows he's failed to "make the leap out of the myths and structures
of Soviet life"), and fantasizes forthcoming tortures in the Cellar
below the room dominated by that Table with Decanter (to which he
is summoned again and again). Glancing references to his brother's
schizophrenia, an intemperate remark he once made while waiting in
a long line, a fracas caused when he angrily kicked a car that
nearly ran him down . . . these and similar trivia persuade him
that he's being tried for the crime of simple human imperfections.
That's all that happens, in what's really little more than a very
attenuated short story. Nevertheless, Makanin's "novel" won
"Russia's Booker Prize" (whatever that is). One wonders why.
(Kirkus Reviews)
The hero of Baize-Covered Table undergoes a searching bureaucratic
investigation, that staple of the old Soviet and even older Russian
police state. With the naked intensity of personal nightmare, the
hero visits and returns to the stark scene of his inquisition: the
bare room, the table, the ever-present decanter, and behind the
table those recurring phantoms, 'The Party Man, ' 'The Young Wolf,
' 'The Almost Pretty Woman, ' 'The One Who Asks the Questions.'.
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