Review: “ ‘Deceive the heavens to cross the ocean’”
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 4, 2014
As this is my third review of D.Z.C.’s stuff (BRIGHT, STILL and PEOPLE LIKE US being the first two) — or fourth review (if one can count “Connie,” in theory written by Sarah Pliton, wink, wink!) — I feel as if D.Z.C.’s oeuvres are becoming a fixture in the home library.  And well they should, even if I’m still left mulling over the precise gender of D.Z.C. (alias Zichao Deng, alias Jennifer Dodgson)!In my current reading and reviewing, D.Z.C. keeps close company with the likes of P. G. Wodehouse and Vladimir Nabokov — two quite eminently able writers.  D.Z.C., in my opinion, is no less able a writer in his or her own right.As has already been said by other reviewers, XANADU is a continuation of the happy (or hapless?) shenanigans of Nicolas Keszthelyi and his partner (literally) in crime, Séraphin Estrade, albeit in a quite different corner of the planet from where we last met them (viz., in the French countryside).  Nicolas — as we learn only here in XANADU — has in the meantime acquired both a wife (Anastasia, by Christian name; ‘Nastia,’ by pet name) and three unlikely heirs:  Masha, Anya and Nadezhda.  At one point (location 2,527 on my Kindle), this same Anastasia writes her absent husband (now “doing business” in Afghanistan) a long e-mail in which she “describ(es) her antics with the university students brought in to replace (him), so (he) spent an afternoon putting together a cover and a blurb, and uploaded it to the erotic ebooks section on Amazon.”  I trust you get the picture:  Nicolas Keszthelyi (alias D.Z.C.) is quite the little prankster.One of the many things I like about D.Z.C.’s story-telling is that (s)he always includes little anecdotes of historical value that, in my currently circumscribed worldview, I might otherwise never learn.  One such anecdote is the following, at location 1,397 on my Kindle:  “According to Buddhist legend, the first tea bush sprang from the eyelids of the monk Bodhidarma, who had cut them off in a pious rage at his own tendency to fall asleep while meditating.”  D.Z.C. then delivers this little délice with an appropriate wallop: “This cup (of tea) certainly tasted like it.”A couple of paragraphs later, D.Z.C. once again reminds us that (s)he is a seasoned connoisseur/euse of the species homo sapiens: “‘You see, my friend…’ he continued quietly, and the alarm bells grew deafening.  I have never been addressed as ‘my friend’ by anyone who did not intend to insert a knife into my back at the first opportunity.”Or again at location 4,452, this quick exchange:“‘Drink.’  She considered the prospect. ‘It’s not as bad as it sounds.’‘Like Wagner.’‘?’‘Mark Twain: ‘Wagner’s music is not nearly as bad as it sounds.’”Even if the quip here is not D.Z.C.’s, (s)he knew of it.  Meanwhile, I did not — and for D.Z.C.’s introduction to it, I’m grateful.  This, at least to my way of thinking, is one of the many reasons we read books — not only for entertainment, but also for instruction.  A well-written story should be as much a teaching tool (without being overly didactic — no Bildingsroman, thank you very much!) as it is a source of entertainment.Further on (at location 1,531), D.Z.C. pays tribute to no less a “literary” luminary than E. L. James:  “These days, of course, it is even worse, now that E. L. James has made it entirely acceptable for women to announce that they are ‘submissives’ at some point during the first three sentences you exchange.  Of course, what they actually mean is ‘I expect you to know what I want before I want it and act accordingly; my role in the proceedings will be to lie there like a fresh corpse, graciously allowing you to get on with it.’  But I digress.”At location 2,199, D.Z.C. waxes positively poetic:  “I made myself a coffee and took it up to the roof to drink, where morning in the bowl of night was busy casting the stone that puts the stars to flight.”  Damned good, methinks, for someone who makes no claims to being a poet!But then at location 2754, D.Z.C. is back to basics:  “The girl jumped off my knee and grabbed her iPod from the dashboard.  Some of the small change vanished with it, I noticed wearily.  Chinese whores, even the expensive ones, always ruin their chances by adopting a Ryanair approach to customer relations.”And at location 3,208, D.Z.C. reminds us, with the following Google Earth update, that fiction is just a stone’s (or a grenade’s) throw away from present-day reality:  “The road from Kabul to Gardez is long and boring, unless you get waylaid by the Taliban, in which case it is short and exciting.”Can D.Z.C. describe settings?  I’ll readily confess that a little Afghan village I’d previously never heard of named ‘Dushanbe’ now has be almost drooling to jump on a plane in order to see it with my own eyes.  But true to form, D.Z.C. yanks the clover from under my feet, at location 3,822, when (s)he writes “(i)t is possible to walk up to the falls and peer respectfully at the impressive-but-somewhat-predictable sight of water descending from a high up spot to a slightly lower one.”And not to be outdone except by him- or herself, D.Z.C. signs off with typical D.Z.C. fetish and flourish in the last line in the novel, at location 4,307:  “The sun is going down now, so I will sit here as long as my computer battery lasts, trying to make the most of this hasty and amateurish work (the present manuscript, I mean, not my life).”I trust that these snippets will give a potential reader a fair idea of what he or she is in for with Xanadu.  While I won’t say any more about the plot than I’ve said here already (which is virtually nothing), I hope to have conveyed to you that D.Z.C. is a talented writer.  At the same time, I hope to have warned you — with my own sprinkling of non-English words onto this review-stew — that you’re in for a multi-cultural, polyglot ride with this novel.  If you find that challenge daunting, you might want to look elsewhere.  If you’re up for the challenge, however, full speed ahead!RRB04/04/14Brooklyn, NY