Fur Hat Book

"As for Chekhov, Yefim read him often and closely. And didn't understand a thing. Each time he read Chekhov, he...he would never confess this to anyone, of course, but ever...but each time he read Chekhov, he felt that there was really nothing special about the writing. He, Yefim Rakhlin, wrote just as well. Perhaps even a little better."


Anton Chekhov sighing heavily at such absurdity.

The basic concept of communism is that everyone is equal. Of course, we all know that has always been an illusion, fostered by powerful men in the party who enjoy a much better standard of living than the peasant in the field. Human nature demands that most of us aspire to move up the social ladder as high as we can climb. Equality feels like inequality. Redistribution of wealth feels unfair even to good communists.

Yefim Rakhlin has written eleven novels with one word titles about fearless and decent people. He is working on a twelfth when he learns that the Writer's Union has started giving out fur hats to writers as a token of appreciation for their work. He is excited because his friend, Kostya Baranov, received a hat made of rabbit, and the Union is giving out hats based on the importance of each writer to the state. Kostya has barely written anything, so Yefim knows he is due a hat made of something much more elaborate and beautiful fur than that. After all, he has written ELEVEN novels about fearless and decent people.

No censor problems, ever.

If everyone is equal, why doesn't everyone get the same hat?

Yefim's life is more a shambles than he would ever believe. His daughter abandoned Mother Russia to start a new life in Israel. I may have forgotten to mention that Yefim and his family are Jewish. That could have been a sticky situation, which could have landed Yefim in a gulag in some godforsaken part of the country where he would have slowly shivered to death. His wife resents his good nature. "You're always so polite, smiling at everyone, bowing, you don't need anything, you're so good, you bastard!" In fact, Yefim is so nice and accommodating that he turns a blind eye when she leaves to provide sexual gratification for her special friend, General Pobratimov.

What a nice guy!

His best friend, the afore mentioned Kostya, is one of the worst kind of friends. When Yefim asks him what he thinks of his new novel, he is truly showing what a brute for punishment he is.

"'I'd like to know your opinion of it.'

'My opinion is always extremely negative.'

'Did you read it?'

'Of course not.'

'Then how can you judge it?'

'Old man, if someone gives me a piece of rotten meat one bite is enough. I don't have to eat the whole thing.'"

Listening to Kostya, one would think that Yefim is the worst writer in the world. Recently, I find myself agitated over a series of interactions with a friend of mine in Missouri. We've been friends for about two years, and during that time, I can't count the number of times he has irritated me by his rudeness and his malicious teasing about things that are important to me. I'm a tolerant person, but bullying behavior starts to set off the wrong chain of thoughts in my head and makes me someone I don't want to be. It dawned on me suddenly one evening, after billowing steam is coming out of my ears yet again over a relentless series of texts from him, that I don't have to be friends with him. It hit me like a thunderbolt, and as I blocked him on every access point he had to me, I felt such wonderful relief to be free of him.

Yefim needs to reach the same conclusions about Kostya.

The point I'm making, by giving some of the lowlights of Yefim's life, is that he is really a time bomb waiting to go off. He has been accommodating to everyone around him. Whatever sand he once possessed has long trickled out of him. So when he goes to get his hat from the Writer's Union and discovers that he has been merited a hat made from a common house cat, not some exotic snow leopard or Bengal tiger or black panther, but the type of cat that can be found in any alleyway or any lonely woman's house, he goes batshit crazy.

It isn't that he needs a hat. He has a perfectly wonderful hat made of wolf. It is the principle of the thing. So now begins the comic/tragic journey of poor Yefim Rakhlin as he petitions every official he knows to receive the hat he feels he has earned. He slashes at the windmills with more quixotic fever than even Don Quixote himself. To the outside world, it is about the hat, but it is really about a man who has always let life push him around, and this is the point he decides he must push back. Like the great philosopher Popeye always said, "That's all I can stand, I can't stands no more."


Vladimir Voinovich looking saucily poetic and dangerously revolutionary.

Vladimir Voinovich, unlike our friend Yefim, was censored under the USSR regime. His novels were not allowed to be published for many years. He was also excluded from the Soviet Writer's Union because of his satirical novels, but also because of his work with the human rights movement. He was forced to emigrate to Munich, Germany, in 1980. In the movie Knight's Tale, the character playing Chaucer says this great line that I think about all the time: "I will eviscerate you in fiction. Every pimple, every character flaw. I was naked for a day; you will be naked for eternity." I do believe Voinovich may have done some eviscerating with this lovely comic novel. I want to thank Sir Glenn for recommending this book to me. Check out his review. Link to Glenn's review

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