"THAT's not how you tell a story"

Friday is book review day on La fabrique de l’histoire. Last Friday, the panel reviewed Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore and George Orwell by Bernard Crick (not new, but in a new edition), both translations into French of works originally published in English. I’ll confess that I brought Young Stalin home from the library but failed to read it. Too many other things to do, like listen to French radio.

Right from the start, the panelists objected to a number of things about the style of the book and its ideological assumptions. While they admired the depth of original research the author had done, including much travel to the Ukraine, Georgia and Russia, they did not like its “American” narrative style. What they meant by this was relating events in dramatic scenes, like those in a novel or film, including invented dialogue, and an emphasis on adventure. Apparently, after a classical education in the seminary, young Stalin was involved in bank robberies , gang activity, and generally led a pretty wild life. He is portrayed as dominating and cruel, prefiguring his later behavior as leader of the Soviet Union.

The panelists complained that the biographer’s “storytelling” approach lacks footnotes, making it unclear to readers where an anecdote comes from. Did the author take this piece from a previous biography or other published source or from an oral history or unpublished memoir he gathered during his travels? They also wanted him sometimes to explain his choices. Why did he include “this” and not “that?” They expected in the introduction or postface a statement of "these are my principles and procedures," like the ones you see artists post in an art show. In addition, several felt that the “boy’s adventure story” style, reminiscent of Dumas, comes from the fact that Montefiore’s research was funded by his publisher, who had the commercial appeal and movie rights in mind. (The film rights have been purchased, with Johnny Depp mentioned to play Stalin.) However, and this is a big however, one panelist had read the book in English and said the English version does have footnotes. If so, it’s an interesting question why the footnotes were left out of the French translation. I have seen the same in reverse in books translated from French to English.

The panelists were in no doubt that Stalin was a criminal, even a psychopath, in his youth and, on a much grander scale, as dictator. Several objected, however, to the book’s implied thesis: that the explanation of Stalin’s criminality was its origins in his youth, that the thing that set Stalin apart was his individual character. They saw this notion as a example of very Anglo-Saxon “liberalism.” The world ”liberalism,” as used in France and almost everywhere except the U.S., means a belief that the individual is the basis of all things, and that political and economic life is best governed by giving maximum freedom to individuals. Corollaries of this belief are unfettered free markets and a legal system that protects individual property and business rights over those of the community. Adam Smith was the ultimate liberal; advocates of government intervention in markets are not.

The author’s unquestioned assumption, the panelists said, was that Stalin rose to power on the strength of his disturbed personality. But the panel said, there are sick psychopaths everywhere in every time period. The proper question to address is, “What is it in a given society that allows a psychopath like Stalin to take control?” Therefore, in their view, the author misdirected his analysis of all that valuable research toward an individual question and failed to ask the societal question. And, as previously mentioned, he told a series of rip-roaring adventure tales, but is that really the important thing readers should know about a man who killed millions of people? Film in your local cinema in 2011.

In short, they read, and Montefiore's readers read, as his fans on amazon testify, according to a set of genre expectations. These may or may not be things the readers can state explicitly. They may also be culturally formed. You can certainly see unexpressed genre expectations in differences between French and U.S. films, for example.

Regarding the Orwell biography, I’ve blathered on too long already, so here’s the interesting part: The panelists were pretty baffled and agreed far less than about Young Stalin. They liked the author’s constant questioning of whether and to what extent he should take sources, including his own analyses, at face value. They found his style admirably reflective. They admitted , however, that Orwell was puzzling to them. As an upper class socialist in a society where a person can construct an identity of disparate parts, for example Disraeli as a Tory anarchist, Orwell did not fit into a type with which they were familiar. “Socialist” they know, but French Socialists are part of a whole package where the pieces all stick together.

Liberalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

La fabrique de l’histoire http://www.radiofrance.fr/chaines/france-culture2/emissions/fabriquenew/index.php?emission_id=45060149

Reviews of Young Stalin on amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Young-Stalin-Simon-Sebag-Montefiore/dp/1400044650

NYTimes review of Young Stalin http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/19/books/19book.html