It should have happened the other way round.
Last Saturday I saw Part Two of Dennis Villeneuve's adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune. I enjoyed myself, and think I shall do so if I rewatch it. Regarding adaptation, it goes deep in some places rather than shallow all over, to its credit. A decent enough picture.
However...
It goes quite hard on the minimalism. That works well for Arrakis, well for the acquisitive mania and pared-down souls of the Harkonnen, but not for everything. The first part had scenes that mystified and captivated more. The arrival of the herald (shown here) had me squinting up at the screen, examining the crowds of courtiers. What are they wearing? Why are they wearing it? What does it convey? Where did they find a carpet that long? Are those helmets functional or symbolic? See also the meme-spawning introduction of the Sarduakar.
Spoilers of a mild kind - but the Imperial Court, as shown in Part Two, should share twin elements of both those scenes and doesn't quite. It looks a little spa-like. Which is a proper comparison with Arrakis (created by God to test the faithful) but still a little disappointing. Though there would be something interesting in an Imperial Court which wasn't full of Rococo decadence or Feudal display but full of athletic, highly religious, pleasingly-natured types. Everyone in it a superb physical, social and mental specimen, for good or ill. We've not had a really good Shaddam IV yet, in any of the three Dune screen adaptations. Not that it's necessarily a plum role, mind you.
But before last Saturday, I had read Vladimir Sorokin's Telluria.
This was picked as part of an ongoing reading group I tie into, so I read this in tandem with other people and their thoughts online.
I will reproduce the back-cover summary of the above edition (New York Review Books). Written 2013, translated 2022.
Telluria is set in the future, when a devastating Holy War between Europe and Islam has succeeded in returning the world to the Middle Ages. Europe, China and Russia have all broken up. The people of the world now live in an array of little nations that are like puzzle pieces, each cultivating its own ideology or identity, a neo-feudal world of fads and feuds, in which no one power dominates. What does, however, is the appetite for the special substance tellurium. A spike of tellurium, driven into the brain by an expert hand, offers a transforming experience of death; incorrectly administered, it means death.
***
Well, what to say of this?
Telluria is deliberately lush. It colours feasts of a reborn Knights Templar, drugged indulgences by starving Bohemian artists, woodland rural scenes, entranced Russian peasants. Tailormade as a counter to Villeneuve's Dune? Not quite, but the contrast is stark.
There is no main character: barely any ongoing narrative. There are fifty chapters, and perhaps forty-four stories.
An early thought of mine was to compare it to Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. A book that hit me at just the right age, I think. There's an obvious comparison between the teaming phyles of The Diamond Age (Chinese, Japanese, Anglo-American Victorian, Boer, Zulu, Ashanti, Mormon, Maoist-Gonzoloist....) and the new feudal states of Telluria. Aside from a range of set dressing and interesting technologies bespoke crafted for the new states, a historical or geopolitical interpretation reveals itself: Stephenson writes 'after the end of history': The Diamond Age is a 1995 work, looking to the end of nation-states and the rise of distributed republics. But it sees the surpassing (in symbolic plot terms) of free-wheeling cyberpunk anarchist types and is a thematic (and possibly literal) sequel to Snow Crash. Telluria doesn't see the end of history, but does see the collapse of the great powers. There is the repeat of the Crusades, even as there is the repeat of the Boxer Rebellion. There are long stretches of Telluria discussing the fall of Russia, its post-imperial nature, its rapacity. Travel in The Diamond Age is rapid and frequent; in Telluria, rare, difficult and often reserved for the rich - cue reference to climate change, even if this is unmentioned in the text. The Diamond Age looks beyond (from the American zenith of the mid-90s) to the collapse of states in a world of slickly manoeuvring corporations to the rebirth of state-like entities. Telluria looks beyond the final collapse of Russia, after the Tsar and after the Soviet Union (in a Russian moment of buttressed decline) to a variety of new polities.
Enough of the ripped-from-the-headlines material. That's not quite adequate for our purposes, anyway. I should also say that neither The Diamond Age nor Telluria are meant to be viewed as Eutopia or Dystopia. But I suspect Sorokin experiences higher highs and lower lows in his vision of Telluria than Stephenson for The Diamond Age. Some bits of Telluria would definitely look preferable to the present day to Chesterton or Tolkien, but by no means all of it. A deified Stalin (among other things) sees to that.
Telluria is also thoroughly fleshly. I said lush above: there are some moments straight from Jonathan Swift, detailing the various horrors of human bodies and appetites. Orwell's essay on Gulliver's Travels is worth reading for detail and comparison. My mind also goes to Anthony Burgess - see his 'eschatological spy novel' Tremor of Intent or the lurid dystopia The Wanting Seed (that flips fascinatingly on its axis part way through). There are also some moments that seem as if they needs must come from a world that has had a time to saturate in widely available pornography, thanks to the internet. That's not that were Sorokin writing ten years earlier it would have been sexless, or even that I think Telluria too sexy for the Middle Ages! But the tone of variety, explicitness, repetition and niche appeal suggest a particular background influence. Gulliver is also worth mentioning because of the post-human appearances: Lilliputians, ogres, centaurs, cynocephaloi and more: engineered as toys or slaves. There is a thorough-going range of grotesques - all enjoying some of the same appetites and pleasures of baseline humanity. Which is as unmoored and adrift as the various polities of this new age.
Then there's Telluria itself. The shining nails. It's possible, tempting even, to see this as some sort of symbol for the Past's Inspiration (I resist the term nostalgia). Hazardous, intrusive, captivating, capable of inspiring love and courage and great deeds. That seems too simple - it is a way of accessing dreams, of achieving a fresh vision. It may be the fault of the age that so many of its dreams are so terrible. There's some portions that make it look redemptive, mind you, including some Ginsburg pastiche in the penultimate chapter than perhaps reframe earlier portions. Is the coward who 'bangs a nail into his head before battle' really an absolute coward, if his dreams of courage can be manifested? Of course, Telluria itself comes from a post-Russian republic in the Altai mountains. This is led by a remarkable caudillo, a former French soldier - and an 'Alpha Male' two short steps from being tongue-in-cheek (Cf. The Eiger Sanction?). It's difficult on to imagine that his policy with the nails is definitively good or redemptive (contra some interpretations), however red-blooded and life-affirming (a blasted slippery term) his chapter seems.
There is an awful lot of meditation and consideration - by foreigners and natives alike - of dead Russia, the scattered remnants of its culture, the appetites and drives and genius of the Slavic Soul. It doesn't actually conclude much about it, mind you. I'm almost certain missing one element or another of all this, thanks to reading this outside that cultural context.
That said, Sorokin feels willing to dart around Europe (with some exceptions - the British Isles, Italy, only a sideways look at the Balkans and Scandinavia). There a variety of languages used in such cases to offer the proper tone for that locale. This is something of a polyglot work. There is no common language or culture - even the looser culture of international liberalism.
Throughout there are smartphone like devices and AI assistants. It's unclear to what degree these are plugged in to something like our internet, but they certainly seem to be capable of an awful lot. Traditional literacy seems to have slipped out the window with their arrival - another link back to the Middle Ages. Or The Diamond Age. At any rate, they appear largely benign - and are unlinked to any one set of norms of cultures, which makes them a trifle more charming that the Alexas of this world.
In the end, though, a frustrating piece. Theoretically, Telluria should be like walking through a room at the museum: Room 43, Art of The Low Countries, 16-17th C. Some of the paintings are religious scenes, some still-lifes, some group portraits - maybe there's one or two busts or cabinets with painted panels. But it should all be of a kind, share a family resemblance. I'm not sure Telluria really does always. In any case, in a gallery I can keep half an eye on other paintings as I examine one particular pieces, have an awareness of things. No such luck with Telluria: no sooner than you take your eye off it, it vanishes.
For a contrast, I direct you to Patrick Stewart's review, to be found here.
