His Butler's Story

The narrator-protagonist of Limonov's second novel is also named Edward Limonov and like his namesake he is the author of a first novel called It's Me, Eddy. Also, both author and character are emigres from the Soviet Union who have settled first in New York, then Paris. Edward has become butler to an immensely rich American entrepreneur, whom he calls ""Gatsby,'' hates intemperately and inveighs against incessantly, goaded by the servile condition to which he has been reduced by those whom he arrogantly regards as his intellectual and cultural inferiors. Apparently unaware of his own crucial flaws of character, he is death on the rich Americans, as he is on the bogus revolutionaries of his homeland. But most of all the butler bores us with discussion of his private parts, and his repetition of words associated with their various activities seems to provide him with a pleasure more intense than the acts they presume to designate. There is no denying the narrative a certain coarse energy, but it's the energy of a ``scream,''as a character describes Edward's first novela prolonged scream of rage and resentment, anda mean-spirited, petulant envy.(June 8)