Viewing a 3D movie without wearing the special glasses required yields a blurry, migraine inducing image. Razor-sharp focus of plot and theme in Victor Pelevin's genre-busting Omon Ra may not be entirely achievable, and it's a fair bet that the author's Buddhist background led him to deliberately include paradox (a literary koan) in the weaving of this kaleidoscopic tale. A bit of background does, though, sharpen the images that blast through this novel enough to allow the emergence of a rock-you-back-on-your-heels trip to a mental outer space that many readers (including myself) have not yet explored.
Pelevin, Russian-born in 1962, earned a degree in electro-mechanical engineering, then went on to study creative writing. A student of Buddhism, the right-living (reportedly he neither drinks nor smokes) Pelevin was witness in his 20's to the rise of glasnost and perestroika and the ascendance of hope in the emergence of a Russian national culture that would be based on openness and justice. By his early 30's, Pelevin was witnessing the disintegration of Russia into a culture that combined the worst elements of capitalism run amok and gangsterism as a form of government. Two pillars of Pelevin's life, science and Buddhism, are at their hearts a search for purity and truth. Juxtaposing them with the soul-destroying conformity of the receding USSR empire and the insurgent raw materialism of the new Russia didn't result in creative tension, one might guess, but rather a rupture of spiritual/psychological tectonic plates whose 9.0 Richter scale creative shock waves Pelevin (to the reader's benefit) captured in Oman Ra, his first novel.
Oman Ra is science fiction only in the sense that Brave New World is. Sci-fi fans addicted to space opera, technophilia, or alien encounters: stay away. Just as easily categorized as political satire, existential literature, surrealism, or historical fiction, Pelevin packs all these genres into a 154 page vehicle, where they sit cheek by jowl, sometimes uncomfortably. Cram your way into this rover, though, and you're in for a wild ride that rivals Hollywood's best chase scenes. Pelevin's imagery is nothing short of brilliant. From Oman's (the protagonist) father lying drunk on a couch under a reproduction of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam, to the use of an unsteerable, virtually blinded bicycle powered moon rover as a metaphor for existence, Pelevin draws sharp intakes of breath and scores mental TKO's from the first pages to the last. From the absurdity of preparing for walking into a lunar vacuum by stuffing lubricated tampons into ones ears and nostrils, to the haunting image of humans as stars that twinkle in empty space, seen by each other, but separated by unbridgeable interstellar distances, Pelevin never lets the reader quite recover equilibrium. The first page is intriguing. The last paragraph of Oman Ra may be the most precise literary expression of existentialism ever written.
Though immersed in the absurdity of life, Pelevin's role as editor of a magazine that deals with issues of science and religion indicates that he may still be looking for answers, still plumbing for meaning. Gertrude Stein once said "There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be any answer. There has never been an answer. THAT's the answer." I suspect that if Pelevin agreed with Stein, his tectonic plates would settle down, and the creative shockwaves would diminish. We, the readers, though, would suffer for it.
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Top reviews from other countries
Ham Books
Excellent modern Russian novel
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 20, 2016