Home » Serbia » Bora Ćosić » Uloga moje porodice u svetskoj revoluciji (My Family’s Role in the World Revolution and Other Prose)
Bora Ćosić: Uloga moje porodice u svetskoj revoluciji (My Family’s Role in the World Revolution and Other Prose)
If you noticed that the title of this book seems somewhat facetious, you would be right. Ćosić was not a loyal communist. However, as we shall see from this book, his family were also a problem. The title story is followed by several shorter pieces. I shall focus on the title story. The narrator,presumably.Ćosić himself, tells a story of his highly dysfunctional and highly chaotic family. We see this straight from the beginning. The mother has embroidered a bag to keep newspapers in. She has also embroidered an image on the bag. This is her husband, sitting on the toilet, his trousers around his ankles. She has even made him bald even though he is not bald in real life.
Mother is neurotic, and father is a drunk, cantankerous and seems to change job very frequently. In addition there is a complaining grandfather, two aunts whose life seems to revolve around American. film stars.Finally there is an uncle. They all live together and they will clash.
We get a series of disasters, both potential and actual. Mother is always complaining, often because some grave injustice was done to her which may be real or may be imaginary. She is also somewhat accident-prone, not helped by the fact that she is often trying complicated manoeuvres to clean things, move things and dry things. Things are always being dropped by the mother and others causing smells and the need to clean them up
They have relatives in United States who send them various useful items. For example they send them a laxative which mother bakes into a cake. As they all eat a cake at the same time you can imagine the chaos that follows. A serious infestation of insects which requires them to temporarily leave the house does not help matters.
As mentioned, the father takes up various jobs, from selling pots and pans door to door to counting nails. He appears to be a failure at pretty well everything he tries. The uncle meanwhile decides that he’s a transvestite.
It is only when we are well into the book that we realise all this is taking place during the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia. There are references to the Germans and to the use of the German languag, However the the family is so involved with its own issues thatthe Germans play a very small role in their life.
The people are waiting for the Russians to expel the Germans but, again, when they do. very little is made of it. We hear about the Russians in passing but no one seems to be too keen on Stalin. Except for 0ur narrator , who is impressed by his moustache. Though politics.is a factor in the book, we do not hear about the King of y Yugoslavia who was nominally in power till well after the war and nor do we hear at all of Marshal Tito, even though he took over power and ruled with a rod of iron till his death shortly before the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Things do change slightly under communism. The family is kicked out of their house which is given to a loyal communist. They are move to a much smaller place which makes life quite complicated given the size of the family. Everyone is instructed to pick seven people and spy on them and report if they misbehave. Our family does not seem to get involved in this. However they decide they will have their own communist family and, according to the grandfather, they will become the most famous family in the world. T.hey claim people envy them because they are a family that more or less sticks together. Though they do not seem to do very well at making a living they claim they do very well at being a family. wWe were participating in the very important work of building a new society in an indoor, at-home, kitchen sort of way.
As mentioned, there are several other pieces in this book, including stories which more or less continue the main story as well as a couple of essays. I will give a very brief outline of them below.
Russians by Trade continues the story of the family, but of course, as the title indicates focusses more on their dealings with the Russians. I think Russian women know how to take their clothes off better than anybody in the world!Dad claimed:and I’have heard that every Russian drinks like a pig and then cries like a baby!
Us and the Electricians is about the family complicated relationship with electricity.
Our Embroiderers is about women who embroider and carry on doing so even when there is no demand for it.
How They Fixed Our Hair is about Rosie Milivojevic whom they allow into their cellar during the bombing because she had done their hair for free previously. She looks eagerly round at all the people in the cellar who need their hair cut and need a shave but doesn’t get any extra business. There is one exception- a Slovenian woman has her hair shaved because she had been having sexual relations with Germans.
A Story about Dogcatchers
The unemployed are used to catch the manymany stray dogs in Belgrade and this is one of the jobs that the father takes on and get bitten for his pains.
In Praise of Young Pilots and Others
Down onto the beaming, freedom-loving city fell nervous captains’ too-tight shoes, whiskey bottles, bombs, and human excrement —American pilots’ shit
Diary of an Apatrid
This is the longest piece after the main story. It deals with exile, Proust, Magritte, war and above all, his self-imposed exile after the break up of Yugoslavia and the Balkan wars. This little book is meant to confirm the indifference, my own, about the fact that my mother country has abandoned me with no regrets, and that I in turn accept this departure of hers the same way, with no regrets.
Hamsun’s Baedeker is about Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun whom I have not read and who is famous for having collaborated with the Nazis during the war.
Final Conversation with Mr. Verdurin, of Rovin
Mr Verdurin who appeared in Diary of an Apatrid seems to be some sort of alter ego of our author. This account carries on from the previous one and talks about writing, and various other things and is a somewhat rambling piece.
The main story is very funny indeed, showing a complete chaotic family during a difficult period of war and political change with the other stories picking up on some aspect of this. I must say I found the other two pieces somewhat rambling. Cosic was very prolific and wrote lots of other works which, as mentioned at the beginning, have not been translated into English.
Publishing history
First published in 1969 by Nezavisno autorsko izdanje],
First English translationin 1997 by Northwestern University Press
Translated byAnn C. Bigelow