A Whirly Man Loses His Turn, by Mosby Woods
A Substacker Review on the Art of Dissidence
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Might throw in another little post too, time permitting.
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“I pushed her away again. Aubrey! Aubrey still crept in her mind. Aubrey! Prowling, Aubrey was ever waiting, ever crouching in her Aubreyness. Who cared about a higher revelation? I lived. I flexed my muscles for Alyssa. I bid her feel my iron biceps.”
“This cheap vitality obscured the disturbing part of the moment. I was happy.” - Mosby Woods, A Whirly Man Loses His Turn
Introduction: Tradition & Sinyavsky
It is a funny thing about literature. While it has its traditions like any other art form - realism, gothic, not to mention the different genres we now refer to with the banal yet useful term ‘genre fiction’ - it is rare for writers to follow the snowy footsteps of any one particular author. And in the rare situation where it does happen, seldom is it more than a one-off tribute.
This is largely due to the inherent individuality of the art of literature.1 While we authors are influenced, sometimes deeply, by great and sometimes less-than-great authors of the past, we still need to reckon with them in our own way. In literature, imitators are seldom more than just imitators: even those who don’t cover their tracks discreetly enough - like John Steinbeck, whose delightful Pastures of Heaven didn’t sufficiently hide its debt to Winesburg, Ohio in the eyes of the critics - invite a potential onslaught of critique.
To follow in the footsteps of an authorial tradition, therefore, invites great risk. Leaving many authors to choose a lukewarm, pseudo-original or pedestrian style over a potentially stronger novel rooted in authorial tradition. (In other words: half the authors pretending to be original today would likely be a lot better at novel writing as tradition enrichers, assuming they learn how to swallow their pride.)
And yet those who have followed singular authors as a tradition are not always lacking in originality. Salman Rushdie fans will know that the author of Midnight’s Children has been writing novels in homage to both Don Quixote and the Thousand and One Arabian Nights. Another famous authorial traditionalist of recent times is J.M. Coetzee, whose earlier novels were direct contributions to authorial literary traditions. Those authors include Franz Kafka (The Life & Times of Michael K.), C.P. Cavafy (Waiting For The Barbarians), James Joyce (Elizabeth Costello, though that is debatable), Fyodor Dostoyevsky (The Master of Petersburg) and Daniel Defoe (Foe). But Coetzee was no imitator: he had his own manner of contributing. I’d call it “original unoriginality” if the term wasn’t lacking in flattery.
While some of these - like Michael K. - are among Coetzee’s best, the South African author also wrote original novels unrelated to the others. But arguably - and I would argue this, having read Michael K. and Foe - his homages increased the potency of his overall artistry. Though I am not a fan of the socio-philosophical angle Coetzee took with his 1999 novel Disgrace, it is without question one of the best novels of the 1990s and would belong on a list of the best 50 novels written in my lifetime. Coetzee’s homages weren’t booby traps of unoriginality: they expanded his literary powers. And the Nobel Committee no doubt understood that when they gave him the Nobel Prize in 2003.
The most outstanding novel to come from the school of a great author - Vasily Grossman’s Life & Fate, a devoted follower of Tolstoyan tradition - stands for itself not only as its own work but as a masterpiece. Life & Fate also expands the breadth of the Tolstoyan formula by enabling it to stay relevant to an era very different from Tolstoy’s own. Authorial traditionalism, far from being something closed and restrictive, has its way of being liberational. Polish-American author W.S. Kuniczak does something similar with his Invasion of Poland trilogy2 albeit in the tradition of Henryk Sienkiewicz.
For my part, I like to think that - like Coetzee - I have some adherence to the tradition of Franz Kafka even if my first novel, Calm Before an Earthquake, was written before I had that realization. (An unpublished satire of mine is, however, an homage to Mikhail Bulgakov)
Speaking of which: if the review offer interests you, check out my novel here.
Both Tolstoy and Sienkiewicz were great authors and are titans, even if Sienkiewicz’s titan status is not fully acknowledged in the Anglosphere thanks to Russophile Jeremiah Curtin’s sabotaging and the hubris of some Polish-to-English academics and translators. But it is even more unusual to found a tradition around an author less well-known, less titanic but artistically curious.
Enter
, a West Coast author who I am pleased to call a friend. Woods has taken the very radical path of formulating a tradition derived from the novels of Soviet literary dissident Andrei Sinyavsky, sometimes known by his pseudonym Abram Tertz.3 I say radical in terms of the unusual daring of that decision in today’s incestuous literary environment: like Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, Woods’ decision is not only rational. It is even brilliant. And something the Keatings’ of the world are unlikely to comprehend.Those who know their history might remember Sinyavsky as the author who, alongside poet Yuli Daniel, was sent to the gulag in an infamous trial in the 1960s for criticizing the regime. A decision that was unprecedented even under Stalin: the mustache man, for his part, had contented himself with letting authors go into exile (like Yevgeny Zamyatin) or playing a game of cat and mouse with authors after liquidating their memory from society. (like Mikhail Bulgakov) Others, like Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, found it completely impossible to publish anything. While they did suffer terribly for their ‘thought crimes’ and obscurity, neither Zamyatin nor Bulgakov (or even Alexander Solzhenitsyn) went to the Gulag for the crime of writing against the regime. Other authors, however, did end up as victims of the purges; these authors were often shot in NKVD basements. (Like Isaac Babel, and Polish Communist writer Bruno Jasieński; both, incidentally, were Jewish) Ukrainian authors also found themselves on the wrong (for them) end of a gun during the Holodomor, when the show trial around the Union for the Freedom of Ukraine saw the execution and/or persecution of numerous Ukrainian writers.
As Marx himself had said: “poets are very strange fish.” Stalin certainly agreed, at least to an extent.
While the differences can in some respects be credited to changes in Soviet leadership, Sinyavsky was also different from the aforementioned names. Though not Jewish, the Jewish “doctor plot” of the later days of the Stalin era turned him against Communism. (This influenced his decision to use a Jewish-sounding pseudonym to express his solidarity) Unlike Pasternak, Sinyavsky was not of an older generation that remembered a better time before the October Revolution. Unlike Bulgakov, Sinyavsky didn’t have a pure connection to pre-Revolutionary literature that enabled him to write something akin to The Master & Margarita. And unlike Grossman, Sinyavsky didn’t go through the euphoria of Communism in the days of the original revolutionaries. Sinyavsky had only known the miseries of life under Communism.
The Party no doubt understood that it had to allow for a bit of leeway with authors who predated the Revolution, authors whose minds were prone to “counter-revolutionary thinking.” This would be especially true for an author like Pasternak, whose literary aspirations were radically different from anything “revolutionary.” But Sinyavsky was supposed to be an “engineered human soul.” Even if Sinyavsky made a smaller impression in the West than Pasternak, his reaction to Soviet tyranny was a greater offense than anything the other authors could do.4 Pasternak’s dissidence was a “bourgeois” shenanigan; Sinyavsky’s was a direct refutation of the entire Soviet experiment. There are comparisons one could make to America today, but they are partisan so I’ll ignore them for now.
It also helped that Sinyavsky had a better sense of where to aim than some of the aforementioned writers. (Though Bulgakov, Solzhenitsyn and Grossman also had good aim) Alter-ego Abram Tertz emerged into the world in 1959 with On Socialist Realism, a critique that took the piss out of the state-mandated soc-realism style. His novel The Trial Begins followed a year later, examining the reactions of certain characters living under totalitarianism at the time of the “doctor’s plot.” The shock of a scene featuring the betrayal of a little boy to the KGB by a little girl was a heart-wrenching takeaway; perhaps because it reminded me of American public school and the social engineering/indoctrinating directives of that dystopian system.
(Real quick, on that topic: my thanks to
for recommending the book Snitch Culture in his post the other day; I very much look forward to reading it!)The stories comprising Fantastic Stories were written around this time but compiled in 1963. This includes The Icicle, the story of a man who has the power to see into the future. He is particularly affected by being able to predict that a large icicle hanging from a house will fall and kill his girlfriend, whom he loves deeply despite her continuing to sleep with her ex-boyfriend.
It is this story to which Woods, familiar with the legacy of anti-Communist dissidents, pays homage. (Another novel of his, Fragility, pays homage to The Trial Begins)
A Whirly Man Loses His Turn
To understand the justification for the existence of A Whirly Man Loses His Turn, it is necessary to understand the conditions of the West.
As the years have gone by, the United States has seen a hard, pernicious and almost vertical decline when it comes to the freedoms we once took for granted. In the past, this was the realm of conspiracy theory. And any sincere discussion of the West’s decline was severely complicated by partisan concerns that, beneath the surface, are a war between “the West is declining and we must do something about it” and “it can’t happen here, everything’s fine; except when you, the other side, do anything at all. Oh and the West is evil.” But as the joke goes: “What’s the difference between a conspiracy theory and reality?” “About two or three months.” Today, the term ‘conspiracy theory’ means nothing to those against whom “the slings and arrows” are flung. Kind of like “far-right,” which is now an umbrella term for everyone who disagrees with the left.
Explanations for this are numerous and vague, given the messy way American society shifts from one epoch to another. There might be clearcut moments - the fall of the Berlin Wall, for instance - but these serve as historical markers more than shifting historical fulcrums. To go further into this would be to digress, and I want to stay away from rabbit holes for these Substack reviews. But somehow or another, the United States began to bear a much closer resemblance to the country it thought it had overthrown in 1989. The very evil Sinyavsky opposed took root in the United States.
America also began going through ‘demoralization,’ as KGB-defector Yuri Bezmenov called it; ‘demoralization’ soon began turning people against each other not only through policy disagreements, but completely different understandings of reality.
Much as people nowadays love to express a ton of intellectual cowardice and refuse to engage in ideas they disagree with, it is always worth remembering that this is all underpinned by a culture of fear where agreeability is a matter of life or death, if not necessarily a biological death. The last time I was back - 2021 - the reverse culture shock that affected me the most was how everyone in the Bay kept saying “sorry” even if they hadn’t done anything wrong. The fear is palpable if often subconscious. The very same kind of fear Sinyavsky infuses in The Trial Begins; an invisible specter one has to taste rather than see.
Independently, I had already considered the idea of following in the footsteps of the anti-Communist dissident authors to formulate a new type of American literature suited for the dystopia we live in today. Something wholly lacking in the American tradition while standing apart from the nostalgic escapism of contemporary American lit.
To be sure, it’s not a contest or a one-man thing. But unless my unpublished Bulgakov satire counts, Mosby Woods has beaten me to it. And I tip my hat to him.
I could talk about how awesome that is all day long. But for all of you reading this, it is probably more worth your time to discuss two things: 1) does Woods succeed in creating an anti-Communist-style dissident literature for our times? And 2) is A Whirly Man Loses His Turn worth your time as readers? I will go in reverse order and answer number two first.
A Whirly Man Loses His Turn comes from an author who has learned that dissidence has made better use of the fantastical or phantasmagoric than anything under the category of “realism.” As Sinyavsky wrote, and as Woods quoted in his standalone, self-published essay: “…I put my hope in a phantasmagoric art, with hypotheses instead of a Purpose, …May the fantastic imagery of Hoffmann and Dostoevsky, of Goya, Chagall, and Mayakovsky. . . teach us how to be truthful with the aid of the absurd and the fantastic.”
A self-published affair, Whirly Man is one of my favorite novel titles of recent times. I look at the publishing scene nowadays and it is the same, generic titles. The Goat Farmer’s Daughter, The Adorable Girly Girl of Paris, and so on. (I made these ones up but you get what I mean) Incestuous titles meant to market the publishing industry’s kitsch. To be sure, some of these are genre fiction where that’s less important, like romances: fair enough. The romance genre has a long, kinky relationship with kitsch. But as Philip K. Dick showed all too well, even genre fiction doesn’t have to be beholden to generic titles. A Whirly Man Loses His Turn is the best title I’ve encountered since the posthumous publication of Dick’s “realism” novel The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike. As that is one of my all-time favorite titles in the history of literature, Woods is welcome to appreciate that compliment to its maximum potential. His imagination is his own, as it should be with literary artists. This is a huge reason why Mosby Woods warrants your attention.
For a self-published novel, Woods edited Whirly Man very well. None of the usual mistakes that slip by some. It is very readable. Though ordinarily I might be a stickler about the AI cover, the weirdness of the AI cover suits the story. The matching of the cover with Woods’ artistic vision reminds me (aesthetically, not stylistically) of early AFI album covers from their punk rock days. Why that is I don’t know. But it does.
Whirly Man almost feels like a sequel to Sinyavsky’s The Icicle in that it features a protagonist with the same gift as Sinyavsky’s protagonist: he can read people’s minds and futures. Sinyavsky evidently found his own way to channel the great gift of Russian fantasy given to the people of Rus by Nikolai Gogol. A tradition Woods brings discreetly yet cozily into the Washington DC setting of his story with the uncanniness of Johnny Cashs’ protagonist smuggling auto parts in “One Piece At A Time.”
Sinyavsky’s minimalistic style allows Woods to flesh his variants in ways that not only allow for greater cultural distinction, but greater cultural meaning. The Halloween Party is a great example of this. (Ergo, the Jack-O-Lantern on the cover) In The Icicle, it is just a party like anyone would hold. Bring some booze, chat with people, but otherwise nothing special. The Halloween Party brings color to a previously colorless scene.
The reaction of the Halloween Party participants to their future deaths reminded me a lot of a reaction I once got from an American. To summarize vaguely, a miserable thing had happened to me at a rather famous place in the world. A place that is glamorous for all the wrong reasons. This American was like “wow, cool!” I had to reply and say “no no no, that’s not cool! That sucks!” Woods’ recreation of this cultural disconnect Americans have from history, death and tragedy is manifested beautifully in the gung-ho reactions Americans have to their deaths.
The value of this observation by Woods transcends the entertainment value of hilarity. It has often been observed that many of the ideologues in the US of A today are, cerebrally at least, in a death cult. Again, to explain further would activate partisan laser beams. But it is a factor. In any case, Woods hasn’t written a political novel. This is for all readers. The only fact of life the reader must accept is that the West is in decline, and I don’t think a lot of American readers deny that anymore.
On the whole, I would say that Whirly Man has no significant flaws. Woods’ style takes a bit of getting used to at first, but that can be said of many authors. This is easily resolved by a bit of patience on the reader’s end. That, indeed, may even have more to do with Sinyavsky’s “minimalism” than Woods, whose adherence to the Sinyavskian tradition is as aesthetic as it is plot-inspired. And while, as I said, the AI cover suits the novel, I think Woods shouldn’t make it a habit of becoming too sentimentally attached to it should the opportunity for a new edition arise.
As far as ratings go, I give Whirly Man five stars. It has a sound structure. It has a distinct narrative voice with characters who are, at least, distinct enough for the novel’s purposes. (Halloween costumes certainly help with that) And best of all: it is artistically its own creature. Those who think artistic distinction is dead will be pleasantly surprised once they start tuning in to the novel. I would say originality, but I won’t in case a Sinyavsky scholar pops out of the woodwork and corrects me; suffice to say, Whirly Man stands apart in today’s literary scene for all the right reasons.
Conclusion: Dissident Literature of Today
So is Whirly Man a successful dissident novel? I suppose it depends on the metric: on one hand, I don’t think the police are coming after Woods. (At least not yet) On the other hand, it eschews all polite society ideology even as it floats comfortably, like a Chinese spy balloon, above the partisan troposphere. And comfortably it floats: as a work of art it behaves indomitably in the wake of tyrannical phenomena like cancel culture.
Whirly Man is a sacrilege for partisan thinkers no matter how much they claim otherwise. That’s not to say they aren’t sincere in their hopes for dialogue: perhaps they are. But sincere as they may be, their view on what constitutes a non-partisan perspective is as skewed as today’s Overton Window. To them, non-partisan = their own worldview. There is no middle ground anymore to serve as neutral turf, only the illusion of middle ground. I know from experience that the basic expression of non-partisan views inevitably results in touching upon sensitive spots, before leading to accusations of my “enabling” the other side’s “talking points.” (Because “the enemy” doesn’t have any sincere concerns, only “talking points”)
In other words: they are only as non-partisan as the senses-first epicureans were in the Roman Republic. Logically and objectively, there is a middle ground. Sensually, there is no ground except theirs.
If Whirly Man isn’t legally a dissident novel (if such a term can be used) philosophically it is as radical as Karel Čapek was to ideologues. His editor Peter Kussi summarized Čapek’s perspective as being of the “radical center:” comprised of patriotism and humanism, but immune to the extremes of fascism, communism and the worst excesses of the material and greed-driven side of capitalism. Čapek isn’t as far from the novel as it may seem: one of his good friends was Czechoslovak President T.G. Masaryk, whose statue in DC5 is also a character in Whirly Man and whose personal motto was “do not fear and do not steal.”
But like The Icicle, Whirly Man’s greatest dissidence lies in its message to the state: “you can’t control all the forces of the universe. And neither can you control fate, much as you claim to do.” The divinator’s power is human without the need for magic realism, magic without the need of scientific justification from the regime. Sinyavsky - and Woods in turn - give Orwell’s O’Brien and everything he stands for the finger.
The Soviet state in Sinyavsky’s story wants to utilize his power to assist the KGB. These “powers” are so focused on these exterior causes that saving a woman from something as incidental and preventable as an icicle proves impossible. It is a bizarre yet sound reference to the paper tiger nature of fallen societies: abroad, all this power is exerted. While behind the curtain, everything’s gone to shit and everyone’s with stupid. Including the source of the magic itself.
As has been observed, East Germany didn’t truly collapse in 1989 but in 1961: Ulbricht and Honecker merely delayed its collapse with the help of the Berlin Wall. The Icicle and Whirly Man are alike in that they are tales of the exact same society in this respect.
The only surefire way to find out if Whirly Man has it in itself to resist a totalitarian state would be for it to exist in one. And indeed, that time might come. But if it isn’t enough, then Whirly Man, at the least, has charted a path toward a new dissident literature that might, one day, save what’s left of the West.
Belief in the power, artistry and greatness of literature requires a belief in the individual. To belief in the greatness of literature AND deny the existence of individuality are irreconcilable positions.
This trilogy comprises the novels The Thousand Hour Day, The March and Valedictory in that order.
Recent translations tend to keep to his real name, so I will stick with Sinyavsky to avoid confusion. But to find earlier English translations, one must search for Abram Tertz. This includes the newest edition of Fantastic Stories.
The Czechoslovak Communists would react similarly to Ludvik Vaculik’s 2000 Words manifesto given that he was regarded beforehand as a “perfect proletariat.” A privilege that allowed him to become a nationally known writer beforehand.
I don’t know if it will translate into a lot of new readers, but it might be fun to add on the statue’s Wikipedia page that your novel features the statue a lot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Tom%C3%A1%C5%A1_Garrigue_Masaryk_(Washington,_D.C.)
Thanks so much, Felix! I think you are the perfect reviewer for framing the book in its dissident angle. Thank you for the honor, and for your time. It's a remarkable coincidence, but The Adorable Girly-Girl of Paris was my working title for this novel. I have more to say but I will put a clothespin on it for now. Merci, mon frère. https://www.amazon.com/Whirly-Man-Loses-His-Turn-ebook/dp/B0BH194HHX