YOU’RE AN ANIMAL VISKOVITZ!
By Alessandro Boffa
Canongate, £9.99; 192pp
ISBN 1 841 95414 4
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FROM THE world of Aesop’s Fables to Alice in Wonderland, anthropomorphism has been a staple element in children’s literature, but few modern writers have used it as audaciously as the Italian scribe Alessandro Boffa in his short story collection You’re an Animal Viskovitz! His tales describe the long suffering of Viskovitz as he inhabits the bodies of 20 organisms ranging from microbe to snail to lion.
The stories are linked though Viskovitz’s eternal pursuit of his sweetheart, Ljuba, who reappears in each as the perfected form of whichever species he happens to be at the time.
His affections remain frustrated every time. As a preying mantis, Ljuba (literally) bites off his head. As a lion, Viskovitz commits the ultimate faux pas by gobbling up Ljuba’s friends on a dinner date. Trapped in the body of a scorpion, his murderous instincts are overpowering. He tries to put his stinger to good use, sorting out the local toughs and so on, but after accidentally killing his lover he carries her body back to her family to apologise. “All I managed to do was massacre her parents and rape her sister,” he remarks bitterly. “I really wasn’t made for social life.”
Read together, Viskovitz’s struggles form a kind of genetic tragicomedy. In each incarnation Boffa shows his protagonist falling prey to a different set of behavioural characteristics over which he has no control. Aggression, narcissism, self-loathing and pride all prove his downfall. Through his failures the book explores the human condition in surprising and subtle ways.
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As a concept, Viskovitz’s journey under his assorted skins is one of rare invention. What elevates it to the status of a minor classic, however, is the author’s mastery of a verbal slapstick that mingles scientific terminology with wise- cracking wordplay. Fortunately, John Casey’s translation preserves the sparkle of the original.
Though Viskovitz makes his final appearance as a microbe, in literary terms his story sits on the highest rung of the evolutionary ladder.