The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Solibo Magnificent and Texaco by Patrick ChamoiseauMarc Lowenthal
Ingo Schulze. Thirty-Three Moments of Happiness: St. Petersburg Stories. Trans. John E. Woods. Knopf, 1998. 306 pp. $23.00.
This subtle, uncanny collection must be read closely. It is as mysterious, grotesque, and beautiful as a Gogol narrative. The title introduces us to the “madness” of the text. What do the “thirty-three moments of happiness” have to do with St. Petersburg? Is a happy person aware of time? Why are there thirty-three moments? Is the number referring obliquely to Christian epiphany, to Jesus’s resurrection? Is it also referring to the thirty-three stories in this collection? To complicate matters, two letters of correspondence preface the book. One explains that a German passenger named Hoffmann has written stories of his adventures in Russia (E. T. A. Hoffmann?), but he has vanished. In the preface it is intimated that Hoffmann insisted Schulze publish the stories under his own name, that he “represent” Hoffmann. Schulze takes responsibility, hoping that the narratives—as eccentric as they are—will be starting points for “an ongoing discussion concerning the value of happiness.”
“Happiness” is a strange word for most of the events described in these stories of loss, madness, and violence. In one, three “devils”— whose names keep changing—eat flesh. They are surely enjoying cannibalism, but their victim is not (or is she?): “Fricassee was applied to the feet, cheese omelets to the knees.” But the “craziness” of the narrator may create the story. Reality is open to question. In another story the German Müller-Fritsch is calm as he awaits his death: “And now he was done with life as well. It all went too fast. Maybe that was why he was so composed.” Müller-Fritsch “oozes” away, leaving a “sweetish, sweaty odor.” The juxtaposition of “sweet” and “sweat” is interesting. This play reminds us that all the stories are told in a mixed way. German, English, and Russian are perversely joined.