The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Words are Something Else, by David Albahari
reviewed by Thomas Lecky

Untitled document

Trans. Ellen Elias-Bursac. Ed. Tomislav Longinovic. Foreword by Charles Simic. Northwestern Univ. Press, 1996. 215 pp. Paper: $15.95.

In these twenty-seven stories David Albahari reveals his preoccupation with family, self, and the nature of writing. These are not uncommon concerns but are somewhat unusual in a contemporary Serbian writer. Eschewinga strict political agenda, Albahari instead treads on more local terrain, though not without building the Central European political and cultural worlds into the subtext.

This edition presents the stories chronologically, allowing us to see the changes in Albahari’s focus from family—and particularly paternal—relations to the self and the indeterminacy of language. All are terse, taut pieces; most are narratives and the early stories may even seem a bit old-fashioned to some. This might be a cultural matter. Nevertheless, the stories are carefully controlled and details are handled deftly, both by Albahari and his translator Ellen Elias-Bursac.

I prefer the later stories where Albahari explores language, often humorously, as at the opening to “My Wife Has Light Eyes:” ‘This will be a simple story,’ I think, ‘And it will have no compound sentences.’ ‘Don’t be silly,’ says my wife. ‘That sentence is already pretty compound.’ ” There is a seriousness, though, as in “An Attempt at Describing the Death of Ruben Rubenovic, Former Textiles Salesman,” in which the title alone betrays a writer’s anxieties: “The lines that follow, pages I cannot yet predict, events, sounds, things that happen, a place: all of this is just an attempt. The words I’ll use, the sentences I’ll string together, the questions, the statements: all of it is unreliable”

“Sometimes the legend comes before the person, other times after,” Albahari writes in “Mute Song,” the volume’s final story. The legend—and I interpret this as meaning both cultural lore we inherit and the cipher with which we attempt to interpret—is language. The lore and the cipher—Albahari’s language—probe mothers, fathers, wives, children, cultures—and the self at their center.


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Words are Something Else, by David Albahari reviewed by Thomas Lecky Untitled document Trans. Ellen Elias-Bursac. Ed. Tomislav Longinovic. Foreword by Charles Simic. Northwestern Univ. Press, 1996. 215 pp. Paper: $15.95. In these twenty-seven stories David Albahari reveals his preoccupation with family, self, and the nature of writing. These are not uncommon concerns but are somewhat unusual in a contemporary Serbian writer. Eschewinga strict political agenda, Albahari instead treads on more local terrain, though not without building the Central European political and cultural worlds into the subtext. This edition presents the stories chronologically, allowing us to see the changes in Albahari’s focus from family—and particularly paternal—relations to the self and the indeterminacy of language. All are terse, taut pieces; most are narratives and the early stories may even seem a bit old-fashioned to some. This might be a cultural matter. Nevertheless, the stories are carefully controlled and details are handled deftly, both by Albahari and his translator Ellen Elias-Bursac. I prefer the later stories where Albahari explores language, often humorously, as at the opening to “My Wife Has Light Eyes:” ‘This will be a simple story,’ I think, ‘And it will have no compound sentences.’ ‘Don’t be silly,’ says my wife. ‘That sentence is already pretty compound.’ ” There is a seriousness, though, as in “An Attempt at Describing the Death of Ruben Rubenovic, Former Textiles Salesman,” in which the title alone betrays a writer’s anxieties: “The lines that follow, pages I cannot yet predict, events, sounds, things that happen, a place: all of this is just an attempt. The words I’ll use, the sentences I’ll string together, the questions, the statements: all of it is unreliable” “Sometimes the legend comes before the person, other times after,” Albahari writes in “Mute Song,” the volume’s final story. The legend—and I interpret this as meaning both cultural lore we inherit and the cipher with which we attempt to interpret—is language. The lore and the cipher—Albahari’s language—probe mothers, fathers, wives, children, cultures—and the self at their center.

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