Set in the future, Reconstructing Mayakovsky revisits the past to make sense of our chaotic present. Mayakovsky’s life and poetry reveal the conflict between a dominant, fixed narrative (the “utopian” one propounded by the Soviet State) and a revolutionary, iconoclastic artistic vision. As readers discover the Russian Futurist’s page-turning biography (prison at age 15, a lifelong ménage-a-trois with his editor’s wife, fame, revolution, suicide, and posthumous resurrection by Joseph Stalin), they explore their own fears and fantasies about the future.
For some, the freedoms offered by the technological, social, and cultural changes of the 21st century are something to be embraced, whatever the risk. Others would gladly trade their freedom for an unchanging, unified, even mythic narrative (witness the rise of religious fundamentalism, conservative “values,” American jingoism.) Most of us would place ourselves somewhere in between. The novel offers characters and dramatic events that support all these points of view. The reader is free to choose.
Like the novel, the website http://www.reconstructingmayakovsky.com uses “found” objects (sound, image, text) and combines elements of sci-fi, poetry, historical fiction and the detective novel to tell the story of the Russian Futurist poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky, in a radically different way.
If you enjoy it, I hope you’ll pass it on and/or review it on your literary website/blog. Thanks.
