The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Mocking Desire by Drago Jancar
Gordon McAlpine

Drago Jancar. Mocking Desire. Trans. Michael Biggins. Northwestern Univ. Press, 1998. 267 pp. Paper: $14.95.

Mocking Desire, the first novel by Slovenian writer Drago Jancar to be translated into English, tells the darkly comic story of Gregor Gradnik, himself a Slovenian writer who comes to New Orleans to teach a creative writing class. There, Gradnik encounters a cast of seamy characters which includes his neighbor Gumbo, a small-time schemer; Louisa Dmitrievna Kordachova, a native of Kentucky who longs with the sentimentality of an expatriate for her ancestral Ukraine, even though she has never visited there; Peter Diamond, a best-selling author of a less-than-literary book called “Cycling New Orleans”; Irene Anderson, Diamond’s fiancé and the eventual object of Gradnik’s desperate affections; Professor Fred Blaumann, Gradnik’s colleague who is writing a book on melancholy; and a cockroach named Gregor Samsa, whose affinity with Gregor Gradnik seems to go deeper than merely the shared heritage of a famous first name.
Conventional as this “fish-out-of-water” setup may seem, wherein the characters’ colorful lives circle about and eventually involve the observant Gradnik, what keeps the novel fresh is the presence of what amounts to an additional central “character,” whose influence is more profound than any other’s; that character is Melancholy itself, which changes its appearance from time to time, but hovers nonetheless about every scene in Gradnik’s adventure. From disappointments in love to the raucous and dangerous exuberance of Mardi Gras, Gradnik cannot make a move without this shadowy companion (which may explain something of his at-times infuriating passivity). Eventually, after a lonely interval in New York, Gradnik returns to Slovenia. “All paths lead home,” he thinks. It is back in his native country that Gradnik recognizes the inescapable and profound source of his melancholy. By returning home, the novel—at once lyrical and sharp—finally resonates in the terrible manner that its shadowy tone has suggested from the start. [Gordon McAlpine]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Mocking Desire by Drago Jancar Gordon McAlpine Drago Jancar. Mocking Desire. Trans. Michael Biggins. Northwestern Univ. Press, 1998. 267 pp. Paper: $14.95. Mocking Desire, the first novel by Slovenian writer Drago Jancar to be translated into English, tells the darkly comic story of Gregor Gradnik, himself a Slovenian writer who comes to New Orleans to teach a creative writing class. There, Gradnik encounters a cast of seamy characters which includes his neighbor Gumbo, a small-time schemer; Louisa Dmitrievna Kordachova, a native of Kentucky who longs with the sentimentality of an expatriate for her ancestral Ukraine, even though she has never visited there; Peter Diamond, a best-selling author of a less-than-literary book called “Cycling New Orleans”; Irene Anderson, Diamond’s fiancé and the eventual object of Gradnik’s desperate affections; Professor Fred Blaumann, Gradnik’s colleague who is writing a book on melancholy; and a cockroach named Gregor Samsa, whose affinity with Gregor Gradnik seems to go deeper than merely the shared heritage of a famous first name. Conventional as this “fish-out-of-water” setup may seem, wherein the characters’ colorful lives circle about and eventually involve the observant Gradnik, what keeps the novel fresh is the presence of what amounts to an additional central “character,” whose influence is more profound than any other’s; that character is Melancholy itself, which changes its appearance from time to time, but hovers nonetheless about every scene in Gradnik’s adventure. From disappointments in love to the raucous and dangerous exuberance of Mardi Gras, Gradnik cannot make a move without this shadowy companion (which may explain something of his at-times infuriating passivity). Eventually, after a lonely interval in New York, Gradnik returns to Slovenia. “All paths lead home,” he thinks. It is back in his native country that Gradnik recognizes the inescapable and profound source of his melancholy. By returning home, the novel—at once lyrical and sharp—finally resonates in the terrible manner that its shadowy tone has suggested from the start. [Gordon McAlpine]

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