Word: sokolov
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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What Orthodox priests feel personally no doubt varies, but they clearly know the rules. Says Igor Sokolov, the Council for Religious Affairs spokesman on the tour: "The Orthodox Church is completely loyal to the state. It is good that its priests go to a seminary where they see the relationship clearly-the archbishops on one wall and the Soviet leaders on the other. Without this training, priests might be uneducated village people, perhaps fanatics. It is better this...
NATIVE INTELLIGENCE came out last year amid little fanfare, unheralded and unnoticed, which, while not a major tragedy, is still too bad, particularly around here. Raymond Sokolov's first novel is in large measure about Harvard and its mentality in the early days of the Kennedy meritocracy, as seen through various purported documents pertaining to the career of Alan Casper '63, linguistics genius and Peace Corps soldier of fortune. Casper is very clever and very witty and not very deep, and Sokolov presents his case accordingly; Native Intelligence, then, is of vast prurient interest to Harvard students and, like...
...THIS is not as straightforward and moralistic as it sounds, mostly because Sokolov spends so much energy--maybe too much energy--being witty, in increasingly abstruse ways. At first, the humor of Native Intelligence is a sharp and satirical joy. Sokolov, like his hero Harvard '63, summa cum laude, understands exactly the kind of mind he is writing about, and he portrays intelligence intelligently and with unerring accuracy. All of Alan's foibles--his detachment, his slight scorn for everyone else, his obsessive discovery of sex, in the way he dresses--ring absolutely true. His, and Sokolov's, mind...
...portray Alan Casper, Native Intelligence is fine; it is as a real novel that it is hampered by its own wit and restless eclecticism. The materials in the novel run a bizarre gamut from an incredibly difficult crossword puzzle (Sokolov offers to send readers the solution, for a dollar), to a lengthy glossary of the Xixi language, to purported New York Times clippings, to a threatening letter Alan writes President Kennedy. The feeling emerges from it all that Sokolov is playing myriad obscure jokes throughout, that some second satiric meaning lurks behind everything. Is the Xixi language full of esoteric...
...good, but Fraser had better not rest on his laurels. American Flashmaniacs can hardly be expected to wait much longer for him to come across with the great man's oft-hinted-at memories of cutthroat days at Little Big Horn and gunfights with Kit Carson. Ray Sokolov...