ZAZA BURCHULADZE

MINERAL JAZZ, 2003, Logos Press

Anti-novel “Mineral Jazz” is a nominee of the 2004 literary prize “Saba” (Georgian equivalent of Pulitzer, etc. – Eka Chialashvili)

Jazz - This Time Mineral

Gates of hell are not wide enough to encompass the chaos that permeates the pages of the new book by young Georgian writer Zaza Burchuladze “Mineral Jazz”. Absence of a singular storyline creates multiple plot options between which the author oscillates, hangs between and even straddles. There are elements of horror and fantasy here, in a way resembling the famed book by Russian mystery writer Mikhail Bulgakov whose book “Master and Margaret” requires reading between the lines.

Burchuladze’s book never once deviates from the author’s immediate one-to-one intimacy with the reader. He gets some very funny indulgent kicks and with his fellow conversant he confides something, asks for advice, leads or misleads him into something and then ends up giggling at the false guesses and expectations of the reader. This makes it abundantly clear that there can be no expectations and predictabilities, no received wisdoms and final truths when it comes to creating things. Burchuladze makes clear that he is no special kind of writing wizard or visionary and that he as a writer is no less plagued and beset by doubts and fears in his craft than any of us is in our tedious everyday realities and grapplings; common foes like bread-winning or being torn between the career chores, competitions and common skirmishes of the basest and minutest kind.

Mineral Jazz has no climactic sense of ending, with the writer’s admission that although he is clever and versed enough to play games with the plots and truths; and capable enough to scan the spam and lead you up and down and through the twists and curls and cusps, he fails to come up with answers. The world at his hand is far too weird, or too multi-faceted, or perhaps well-enough trodden and all too 'info-and-facts-packed' for him to boil it down into a handful of pages and chapters. The writer leaves off suddenly like a loser of a writer, yet he is a winner and a survival artist at being the one who’s been daring enough or time-conscious enough to face the music. Burchuladze is perhaps one of the most reader-friendly writers ever.

This book is like cubism descended on literature. Like cubism it tries to make the boundaries and definitions fluid and evanescent. It is like what Berdiayev said about stripping the real of its materiality without even once being able to give the brick and mortar and flesh and blood and the human trappings any substance, since there is no palpable substance from the writer-creator’s present vantage point. The vanishing realities aim to express the purposelessness and the vanity of the amorphous being that we all are inhabiting and can never dream of tossing off.

This is a very serious subject without the writer’s being imposing or self-righteous enough to make the point he is driving at too hard for the reader to swallow. You will giggle and grin and get carried away and you know that he, as the writing visionary, has give you green light and the say-so to get up and toss back the disposable future. Toss it back like a worn-out piece of your one-time attire that was meant to shield you from the foreign cold and harm and charm. Toss it back and leave this bare-footed and bare-chested and bare-souled. Hit the road that never ends and boasts of no destinations. Then it hits you like a lightening flash, that ole boy Martin the foolosopher was after all 'oh-so-right' and that you are thrown up into this world lemming-like, and that you need to take care of yourself. Like this crazy bald author you are reckless and desperate and lone enough to try and create something, anything; not for universal global use but at least for your local singular aims because nobody will ever bother to remember your ways and solutions in the final count.

The novel is written in the strange and outlandishly exotic language that is Georgian, the native tongue of a roomful of people from the Caucasus. It could be argued that if translated into one of the modern languages like English, German, French or Spanish, it could gain it's share of critical acclaim/disclaim and appreciation. Unfortunately, due to the complexity of the fabric of this peculiar language and culture, it has to be one of the most untranslatable pieces to have been written in modern literature.

Smile while you’re makin’ it
Laugh while you’re takin’ it
Even though you’re fakin’ it
Nobody’s gonna know…
(Alan Price)

Eka Chialashvili, May 23, 2005

A real writer is always at play: befriending the words that were extraneous to each other thus far and creating unpredictable verbal couples for a trivial mind. A linguist might argue that the valence of this or that word is not relevant for the author. For thousands of years these words had lived separately and unknowingly; the attributes and nouns would never be pronounced together in any language. Only the initiative and the willingness of a certain writer could think them up, and not just think them up but also name them, singularizing them and thus immortalizing them.

This is the case with the freshly vigorous coupling in “Mineral Jazz” – the invigorating encounter in this new Georgian novel with the decomposing culture surrounding it. This is simultaneously a liquefied jazz and the jazzified fizzy liquid that is the stream of consciousness. Mineral Jazz is taking steps along the road to establishing its niche.

Levan Berzenishvili

“Mineral Jazz” is the novel-meta-text about the unwritten novel that the writer undertakes yet due to the creative crisis fails to go on with. He never loses hope though that the Muse will come back to him and in the meantime is trying to entertain the reader with talks about life, literature, music, his own future characters.”

Levan Bregadze

This is a text composed not only of words but also sounds, colors and shapes. This is not just plain art, “Mineral Jazz” is a creative process in itself that shouldn’t and doesn’t have an ending.

Giorgi Gvakharia

Intensive anticipation on the part of the reader permeates “Mineral Jazz”: This is no detective pill for the reader to swallow, but an impressive and unforgettable literary adventure and abandonment and one well worth the effort.

Merab Gaganidze

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