A Larger Sense of Harvey

Rating:
Summary: A Large Sense of Language
Review: 'A Larger sense of Harvey,' Dimitri Anastasopoulos's first book, is not the coming-of-age struggle nor the self-therapy worked out on the page that too many first novels tend to be. No dysfunctional family saga here, no alcoholic husband, no broken home. This book is more an acrobatic dive head-first into the intricacies of language itself. Even the locales in which the book is primarily set ... Belarus, Finland and the Arctic ... warn the reader that this is not the stuff of most debut fiction.

The main character, Harvey Roketsch, is a Belarussian grew up outside of Minsk. His 'colossal obsession' consists of minutely detailing his life in a series of journals. The idea seems to be 'to generate a world en masse ... a view into life that synthesized emotions and translated the volatility of experience into something he could decipher.' The novel is basically a selection of these journals sandwiched together. The fun starts, however, when we realize that many of the diaries have been translated into langoo-adj, a language secretly concocted at a research center in the Artic, and that the translations are not exactly accurate. While the truth tends to be distorted in the process, the careful reader will find it more clearly reflected in the discrepancies between the originals and the langoo-adj facsimiles.

The translator of the journals, Martin Ambrose, bears a passing resemblance to the bumbling scholar in Nabakov's 'Pale Fire', deleting and elaborating as he sees fit. 'I'm in charge of cutting the imprecision, overabstraction and profligacy of words that engender unclean reasoning, words that distort the psychology of tongue-flappers,' he explains. His inflated sense of self-importance and off-the-mark observations account for most of the hilarity in the book.

Bete, who is in charge of the langoo-adj project, schemes to replace the organically grown mother tongues of nations with her laboratory-designed uber-language. Through langoo-adj, Bete believes that language becomes 'simple, disciplined. No extraneous letters, therefore no extraneous thought. Spartan humor develops: laziness resisted. Words are precise: hence, life is clarified and streamlined.' And yes, here we have echoes of Orwell and the various speaks of '1984.' 'A Larger Sense,' however, is too comical to make a genuine comparison.

While Anastasopolous is a deft sentence smith with a sure sense of rhythm, some of the sections get away from him and he slips into rambling. The other problem is that the mostly self-contained journals are often dislocated, spatially as well as chronologically, and give the book a disjointed feel. At times, following the narrative line is a little confusing.

In spite of its flaws, 'A Larger Sense of Harvey' will reward the reader who is as interested in a metaphysics of language as in what happens next. In one of the finest passages in the book, Ambrose comments on a church procession. 'Once you realize that rituals can, at most, only honor ancient events, that they can't present biblical memories exactly as they happened, then you'll realize that rituals, written down, poetically recited or repeated, lack the event's original luster, the semblance of richness. In effect, they become empty.' Replacing 'rituals' with 'words' and adding 'experience' to 'events' (ancient or otherwise) we have a thought-provoking statement on the shortcomings of language.

Rating:
Summary: A Classical Labyrinth With No Exits
Review: A Larger Sense of Harvey is one of the most delicate and probing novels I have encountered in recent years. This work, which belongs to the type of writing we associate with Emerson, is elegant, cheerful and--to resurrect a somewhat exhausted term--utterly revolutionary.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Book to Read!!!
Review: I loved the way the writer takes you the reader into the lives and the minds of so many different people. Because you never know quite who the narrator is at any one moment, you are never sure if you are being lied to or told the truth. "Harvey" is like a map through and into langugage itself, and the writer is your tour guide for this region of fear and laughter--with some even spicy and sexy scenes along the way too!

Rating:
Summary: A surprise, a delight
Review: This first novel is a remarkable achievement. An attempt not just to experiment, but to write something wholly different. The incredible events are only one aspect of the exploration that the book itself presents. An interest in language and translation underscores and gives shape to the ornery plot that takes the reader all over Eastern Europe. It's a complex book but in the right ways: a kind of language feast. By the end, the central figure Harvey emerges larger, as we do, for the exploration. "A word can liberate a man," he says. I'm a believer.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Book to Read!!!
Review: `A Larger sense of Harvey,' Dimitri Anastasopoulos's first book, is not the coming-of-age struggle nor the self-therapy worked out on the page that too many first novels tend to be. No dysfunctional family saga here, no alcoholic husband, no broken home. This book is more an acrobatic dive head-first into the intricacies of language itself. Even the locales in which the book is primarily set ... Belarus, Finland and the Arctic ... warn the reader that this is not the stuff of most debut fiction.

The main character, Harvey Roketsch, is a Belarussian grew up outside of Minsk. His 'colossal obsession' consists of minutely detailing his life in a series of journals. The idea seems to be 'to generate a world en masse ... a view into life that synthesized emotions and translated the volatility of experience into something he could decipher.' The novel is basically a selection of these journals sandwiched together. The fun starts, however, when we realize that many of the diaries have been translated into langoo-adj, a language secretly concocted at a research center in the Artic, and that the translations are not exactly accurate. While the truth tends to be distorted in the process, the careful reader will find it more clearly reflected in the discrepancies between the originals and the langoo-adj facsimiles.

The translator of the journals, Martin Ambrose, bears a passing resemblance to the bumbling scholar in Nabakov's `Pale Fire', deleting and elaborating as he sees fit. 'I'm in charge of cutting the imprecision, overabstraction and profligacy of words that engender unclean reasoning, words that distort the psychology of tongue-flappers,' he explains. His inflated sense of self-importance and off-the-mark observations account for most of the hilarity in the book.

Bete, who is in charge of the langoo-adj project, schemes to replace the organically grown mother tongues of nations with her laboratory-designed uber-language. Through langoo-adj, Bete believes that language becomes 'simple, disciplined. No extraneous letters, therefore no extraneous thought. Spartan humor develops: laziness resisted. Words are precise: hence, life is clarified and streamlined.' And yes, here we have echoes of Orwell and the various speaks of `1984.' 'A Larger Sense,' however, is too comical to make a genuine comparison.

While Anastasopolous is a deft sentence smith with a sure sense of rhythm, some of the sections get away from him and he slips into rambling. The other problem is that the mostly self-contained journals are often dislocated, spatially as well as chronologically, and give the book a disjointed feel. At times, following the narrative line is a little confusing.

In spite of its flaws, `A Larger Sense of Harvey' will reward the reader who is as interested in a metaphysics of language as in what happens next. In one of the finest passages in the book, Ambrose comments on a church procession. 'Once you realize that rituals can, at most, only honor ancient events, that they can't present biblical memories exactly as they happened, then you'll realize that rituals, written down, poetically recited or repeated, lack the event's original luster, the semblance of richness. In effect, they become empty.' Replacing 'rituals' with 'words' and adding 'experience' to 'events' (ancient or otherwise) we have a thought-provoking statement on the shortcomings of language.