“Today I Wrote Nothing” by Daniil Kharms

Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms

By Daniil Kharms; translated by Matvei Yankelevich

2007 (English)

288 pages

Fiction

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I’ve set myself the task of reviewing 50 excellent fiction works and 50 outstanding nonfiction books, all from the 21st century. Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms certainly fits the bill of truly astounding fiction, but I have to admit that I’m cheating on this one. Kharms was born in 1905 and died in 1942 after he was basically starved to death by the Russian communists. But since this work didn’t become available in English until the 21st century, I decided that it counts.

I didn’t know that Daniil Kharms existed until one of my favorite American authors, George Saunders, paid tribute to him in the New York Times Book Review. So I went to check them out and was very quickly hooked. To give you a feel for his writing, I will offer you one of his stories in its entirety.

There lived a redheaded man who had no eyes or ears. He didn’t have hair either, so he was called a redhead arbitrarily. He couldn’t talk because he had no mouth. He had no nose either. He didn’t even have arms or legs. He had no stomach, he had no back, he had no spine, and he had no innards at all. He didn’t have anything. So we don’t even know who we’re talking about. It’s better that we don’t talk about him anymore.

Now is that a great story or what? Kharms, who lived through the terrors of Stalinism, is an absurdist writer. His stories are generally short and quirky and every now and then there is one you think is going to go somewhere and then it doesn’t. Much of it could pass today for micro fiction – stories in the age of Twitter. Short attention span? This is the book for you.

I suppose asking the question, “What is the point of absurdist stories?” is a bit, well, absurd. Does it count as a point that there is no point? But this isn’t quite right. Kharms lived in a world that was cruel, crazy, and where the truth was simply manufactured by the people who had power. Aren’t you glad you don’t have to live in a world like that? Albert Camus would turn this absurdity into a philosophical position a couple of decades later.

But Kharms isn’t just wrestling with the lies the government was telling. He saw the world as cruel and painful and, most importantly, he didn’t believe the lie that we tell ourselves that our lives are like stories with nice predictable structures. We could only wish that our lives were as neat as the stories we tell about ourselves.

I have to admit it brings me a smile to imagine you reading this review, taking my advice, going out to read Daniil Kharms, and then asking, “Has Randy lost his mind?” But then, I am writing this while holed up in my home study during a time of plague. Absurd? Maybe.