Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

3.5/5

It didn't me long (about twenty pages I think) to discover that Russian renegade Eduard Limonov was a bit of a dickhead. No sooner had I thought 'OK, maybe he isn't that bad afterall' I wanted to kick him where it hurts moments later. That's not to say I didn't relish in reading of his exhilarating escapades, because I did. And that really is all down to Carrère's verve and passion for his subject. There were times when even he had a distaste for him, and he sits on the fence for the most part. Even though they are friends, he still finds Eduard alluring and repellent in equal measure, never treating him like a hero, but just simply telling of this most unbelievable of real life characters.

By subtitling his book a novel rather than a straightforward biography, Carrère instantly makes this much more fun to read. And I have to say, I personally don't believe every single thing that was written. But so what. It kept my head buried in its pages, that's what counts at the end of the day.

Sheer force of will as much as talent catapulted Limonov from his dingy upstart in Soviet Kharkov, to the hip artistic underground of late-Sixties Moscow, before heading on to New York and then Paris, where his notorious first novel 'It’s Me, Eddie' was first published in 1980, under the deliberately sensational title - 'The Russian Poet Prefers Big Blacks'. After a scandalous interlude fighting in the Balkans with the Serbs in the early Nineties (the part that really got under my skin, as Limonov blasts a machine gun down on Sarajevo from the surrounding hills, never sure if anyone got killed), and perhaps disappointment at the subsequent failure of his literary career, Limonov switched to politics and headed back to Moscow, where his foundation of the ultra-Right wing, and now banned, National Bolshevik party eventually landed him a spell in prison.

The ambiguity of the book’s genre is also appropriate, since Carrère’s main sources of information on his subject are Limonov’s own writings. Each one is devoted to illustrating another chapter in his unruly, transgressive, and eventful life, and ultimately there is no knowing how much they can be relied upon. Nevertheless, Carrère’s first-person narration, in which he draws on his own experience and skill as a film-maker, journalist, and novelist, lends his endeavour an air of reassuring credibility. However, like I said before, there were parts that seemed a little too unconvincing.

Admiration for Limonov’s courage and odd integrity is balanced by repudiation of his often unsavoury politics, and apart from the political figures he brings into the mixture, from Trotsky to Putin, whom the supremely well-read Limonov either emulates or mirrors, the path of Limonov’s career suggests numerous literary prototypes, both real and invented. They range from the deeply ambivalent hero Pechorin in Lermontov’s 'A Hero of Our Time' to the internationally feted and envied Joseph Brodsky, a Nobel laureate. But perhaps the strongest parallels are to be drawn with the megalomaniac poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, the eternal revolutionary, who eventually shot himself in 1930 rather than compromise with a contaminated regime.

Although I do admire the fact that Limonov had the balls to grab life by the scruff of the neck and make a name for himself, living a life most of us could only dream of, he was never really portrayed as a likeable person in the book. He certainly did things I despised him for, but at least at no point was I ever bored when reading this. Carrère tries hard to present Limonov as someone to brighten up the dull and the grey, and if that was him aim, then he pulled it off. Just don't go and expect a character to fall in love with, as you would most likely, at some point, want to jab him in the guts.