Compulsory Happiness. - book reviews

Although Manea writes about the political situation in totalitarian states - especially Romania - he recognizes that he cannot offer the usual cliches about Control, Authority, the Law. He understands that he must twist language, destabilize "reality." Thus his novellas are disruptive, hallucinatory, perverse.

The title of the collection, Compulsory Happiness, is a clue to his artistic methods: it introduces an "interrogation" - his first novella is, indeed, called "The Interrogation" - of the meaning of words and of conditions. How can happiness be compulsory? Doesn't the phrase imply an odd (con)fusion of meanings? What are the limits of compulsion and happiness?

The reader should be alert to the titles of the other novellas, as well. "The Interrogation" is an especially disturbing performance because it makes us wonder about political role-playing, about identities, about the meaning of question and answer. The second novella, entitled "Composite Biography," is a shifting series of scenes in which biography - the life of citizens - is an unclear "composite," a mixture of facts and secrets, of realities and hallucinations. The third novella, "A Window on the Working Class," is a reflection on reflection, a meditation on the sides of a pane of glass (on pain!). The fourth novella, "The Trenchcoat," turns on the perhaps ominous meanings of a simple coat, which becomes as mysterious as Joseph's coat of many colors.

Manea's style deliberately introduces the rupture of language. He may employ official political language - "comrade," "party," "hero" - but he recognizes that these words are indeterminate; they are interpreted in different ways by different people at different times. I think he plays with the trenchcoat, for example, because he wants to raise the ghost of Gogol, another skeptical writer of fantasy. I think he uses "The Interrogation" not only for its Kafkaesque resonance but also for its questioning of the nature of truth in a Truth-dominated State. Manea is, thus, a comic writer, recognizing that comedy rebels against fixed interpretations, official beliefs.

The most significant passages in the correction are those that transform the ordinary, dreary routine of governmental propaganda. The interrogator of the first story is a nervous fellow who doesn't appear to fit his official position: "He moved silently, stooped over, without looking up, trying to be unobtrusive. He came in, disappeared, reappeared, gliding noiselessly.' Thought to be one of the "maintenance or clerical personnel," he is a "dogsbody." But the interrogator is dangerous because he is not what he seems. The fact that his victim, the prisoner, cannot judge the "fragile fellow" makes us uneasy. The entire interview becomes a series of turns and counterturns because, in an odd way, the interrogator is a victim of his authorities, and the prisoner questions him in a sleepy manner. The story becomes a delicate dance of death - a dance that ends with the wonderfully ambiguous sentences: "Her weary face seemed to glow with the fight of dawn. She appeared to be asleep" (emphasis added). The appearances are frightening because they may hide violent torture.

"Composite Biography" contains many passages open to question. Although we don't know who is speaking, we are aware that there is an air of suspicion and doubt. The adolescent at the heart of the group study also seems to be uncertain. His words are riddles, paradoxes, parables: "the typical day contains an entire biography of an age"; "Our biography means our political dossier." The word "biography" becomes totally meaningless, especially if we relate it to the title. Manea, I assume, is asking for the full definition of a biography, of a life; and he organizes his story to underscore that he will never get at the truth. Is "life" only a political matter? Is it dossier or absence of dossier? Does the "biography- come from others or from oneself?

The "Window" novella turns on the inside and outside of view. Point of view varies. So does sentence structure. Words are suddenly explosive, inverted, converted. "But here's a whole new morning coming up, ignorant of what may happen, peeping through the huge windows of the calendar. Tick-tock, singsongs the toad on the bedside table." The clock is a toad; time jumps as erratically as identity. We look at it from different angles, past and future. But no matter how we stand - or how we interpret - we will never see the whole event, the entire biography. We remain ignorant.

Perhaps these last sentences from "The Trenchcoat" best represent Manea's art: "There's something going on. There's always something under the surface, obviously. Obviously!" He is ironic, grim, darkly comic. He knows that no truths are obvious (especially political ones), but he is so haunted by his political upbringing that he is not even sure of the "obvious."

COPYRIGHT 1994 Studies in Short Fiction
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group