What do you think?
Rate this book
Pyat Quartet / Between the Wars #1
Byzantium Endures
The first volume of the Pyat Quartet.
Byzantium Endures, the first of the Pyat Quartet, introduces one of Michael Moorcock's most magnificent creations - Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski. Born in Kiev on the cusp of the twentieth century, he discovers the pleasures of sex and cocaine and glimpses a sophisticated world beyond his horizons before the storm of the October Revolution breaks. Still a student at St Petersburg, he is deflected into more immediate concerns, caught up in the rip-tide of history.
Byzantium Endures, the first of the Pyat Quartet, introduces one of Michael Moorcock's most magnificent creations - Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski. Born in Kiev on the cusp of the twentieth century, he discovers the pleasures of sex and cocaine and glimpses a sophisticated world beyond his horizons before the storm of the October Revolution breaks. Still a student at St Petersburg, he is deflected into more immediate concerns, caught up in the rip-tide of history.
416 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1981
About the author
Michael Moorcock
1,031 books3,394 followersMichael John Moorcock is an English writer primarily of science fiction and fantasy who has also published a number of literary novels.
Moorcock has mentioned The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw and The Constable of St. Nicholas by Edward Lester Arnold as the first three books which captured his imagination. He became editor of Tarzan Adventures in 1956, at the age of sixteen, and later moved on to edit Sexton Blake Library. As editor of the controversial British science fiction magazine New Worlds, from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the science fiction "New Wave" in the UK and indirectly in the United States. His serialization of Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron was notorious for causing British MPs to condemn in Parliament the Arts Council's funding of the magazine.
During this time, he occasionally wrote under the pseudonym of "James Colvin," a "house pseudonym" used by other critics on New Worlds. A spoof obituary of Colvin appeared in New Worlds #197 (January 1970), written by "William Barclay" (another Moorcock pseudonym). Moorcock, indeed, makes much use of the initials "JC", and not entirely coincidentally these are also the initials of Jesus Christ, the subject of his 1967 Nebula award-winning novella Behold the Man, which tells the story of Karl Glogauer, a time-traveller who takes on the role of Christ. They are also the initials of various "Eternal Champion" Moorcock characters such as Jerry Cornelius, Jerry Cornell and Jherek Carnelian. In more recent years, Moorcock has taken to using "Warwick Colvin, Jr." as yet another pseudonym, particularly in his Second Ether fiction.
Moorcock has mentioned The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw and The Constable of St. Nicholas by Edward Lester Arnold as the first three books which captured his imagination. He became editor of Tarzan Adventures in 1956, at the age of sixteen, and later moved on to edit Sexton Blake Library. As editor of the controversial British science fiction magazine New Worlds, from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the science fiction "New Wave" in the UK and indirectly in the United States. His serialization of Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron was notorious for causing British MPs to condemn in Parliament the Arts Council's funding of the magazine.
During this time, he occasionally wrote under the pseudonym of "James Colvin," a "house pseudonym" used by other critics on New Worlds. A spoof obituary of Colvin appeared in New Worlds #197 (January 1970), written by "William Barclay" (another Moorcock pseudonym). Moorcock, indeed, makes much use of the initials "JC", and not entirely coincidentally these are also the initials of Jesus Christ, the subject of his 1967 Nebula award-winning novella Behold the Man, which tells the story of Karl Glogauer, a time-traveller who takes on the role of Christ. They are also the initials of various "Eternal Champion" Moorcock characters such as Jerry Cornelius, Jerry Cornell and Jherek Carnelian. In more recent years, Moorcock has taken to using "Warwick Colvin, Jr." as yet another pseudonym, particularly in his Second Ether fiction.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews
February 3, 2009
Certainly the best 19th century Russian novel written in the 20th century by an Englishman if nothing else. Reaching depth and literary accomplishment beyond anything else in his excellent and (arguably) over productive writing career, Moorcock has written a literary and deeply evocative historical novel that will offer no comfort or easy ground for the reader. Filled with vicious ironies and harrowing darkness it’s also beautifully researched and utterly convincing in its portrait of its time and place. Pyatt is one of Moorcock’s best creations, a liar, right winger, lunatic, cocaine addict, nymphomaniac who despite it all you uncomfortably feel some connection to, because like Humber Humbert, he is monster, but a silvertongued one. Moorcock uses the trick of claiming that he is editing a found document, so these are Pyatt’s words you most interpret. The story follows the days of Russian Civil war as it transforms the Ukraine into a scene of some earthly hell. The intertextuality with other Moorcock books will make this book a lot of fun for his readers. I can’t wait to read the rest of Pyatt’s adventures as he sleazes his way towards the 20th century’s heart of darkness.
October 31, 2019
Cossack, Jew, Colonel
“Byzantium Endures" is the first part of a four-part fictional memoir of Colonel Pyat (purportedly “assembled” by Moorcock from his private papers), who lived the last years of his life as an antique shopkeeper in London's Portobello Road.
Pyat came from Ukrainian and Polish stock, though he claims that his deceased father was a Cossack soldier. There's some suggestion that his father might also have been a Socialist Revolutionary who was shot by the Tsar's forces, and potentially a Jew (which means that Pyat himself might be at least half-Jewish, despite his vehement denials and evident anti-Semitic prejudice).
The memoir deals with Pyat's life from 1916 to 1920, when he turns 20 (on 14 January, 1920).
Political Chameleon
Despite his relative youth, Pyat's life is an informative adventure and entertaining rollercoaster ride through the Russian Civil War as it was conducted in Ukraine. He trained as a mechanical engineer, and wanted to design and build various instruments of war (including a Violet Ray), to help Ukraine fight off the Russian Bolsheviks.
Wandering around the countryside of Ukraine, he is captured by and welcomed into various factions of the different participants, sometimes passing as a White Russian and others as a Bolshevik.
He is a political chameleon, though he never seems to reveal his true colours to anybody else. His memoir seems to be the only time he has ever revealed his real/true identity. Even then, it's difficult to tell whether he is a consistent liar and unreliable narrator. He's a (Nabokovian) butterfly that just can't be pinned down.
Cavalier Charm and Constant Mercuriality
Though Pyat lacks sincerity, he is not without a modicum of cavalier charm. He is certainly attractive to some of the girls (he rapes two while high on cocaine) and women he encounters in his life (“there was something about vulnerable young women which brought out the best in me"), although he doesn't necessarily treat any of them with any chivalry, courtesy or respect (except, perhaps, Mrs Cornelius, a close companion in his later life, who when young was a beautiful, if not sophisticated, Cockney-speaking femme fatale (if that is not inconceivable – at times, she sounds like a “Pearly Queen").
Pyat's sexual preferences seem to be pretty fluid, usually following his survival instinct. Nothing is constant, except perhaps his mercuriality.
Greek Orthodoxy is Waking
Pyat evidently looks like a Jew, for he is always being mistaken for one. However, he regards this as an insult. He denies that he is a “racialist". He claims that his prejudices are founded in religion, rather than race or politics. “I follow no flags. I am myself.”
He espouses some individualistic kind of Greek or Russian Orthodox Christianity (the symbol of which is the Byzantium of the book's title), to which he opposes the barbarism of Carthage and the Turks (“beneath the flapping banners of Bolshevism, beneath the banners of barbarism and cynicism and a passionless vengeance which dared to grace itself with the name of piety”).
His foes are therefore Jews, non-Orthodox Christians, Moslems, atheists and Bolsheviks. He sees himself as a promoter of a Greek tradition of Christianity focussed on Jesus Christ: “I thought I was cleansing Russia of decadence...My faith is in God and scientific analysis...The Greek is waking. Byzantium endures.”
Ukraine, Russia and the Slavic Balkans together constitute a melting pot of people, races, ideologies, religions, manners, customs and prejudices that swirls around Pyat, just as it does today.
We are not meant to sympathise or agree with Pyat. Moorcock says in his fictional introduction: “Colonel Pyat’s was not a pleasant personality, and his intolerance and passionately-held right-wing views were hard to take.”
Instead, his example is designed to help us understand both the plight of people under totalitarianism and the plight of Jews caught in the Holocaust, and to answer the questions: why did the human catastrophes of the twentieth century occur, and why did otherwise civilised and pious people do so little to prevent them?
(MULTI-)VERSE
Honoria Cornelius
[Apologies to Bob Dylan]
You used to ride
In a limousine
With your Bolshevik
Playing tamborine.
He knew you before
The rest of us read
You were famous for
Doing good in bed,
Like Venus in furs
With a string of pearls,
Puzzled by the fog
Of revolution,
Your amphetamines
Whirling all around
The recesses of
Such a pretty head.
Blessed Mother of God
[In the words of Michael Moorcock]
She was a whore,
A femme fatale.
Mother of God!
She gave too much.
The strong are often
Called upon this way.
They can expect
Nothing in return,
Save abuse and,
Now and then, affection.
That is how
God blesses them.
SOUNDTRACK:
Bob Dylan - "Just Like a Woman"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRLXZ...
Bob Dylan - "Just Like a Woman" (Take 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljbxm...
Traffic - "Pearly Queen" (live in 1994)
https://youtu.be/SHRpRzXzTHg
“Byzantium Endures" is the first part of a four-part fictional memoir of Colonel Pyat (purportedly “assembled” by Moorcock from his private papers), who lived the last years of his life as an antique shopkeeper in London's Portobello Road.
Pyat came from Ukrainian and Polish stock, though he claims that his deceased father was a Cossack soldier. There's some suggestion that his father might also have been a Socialist Revolutionary who was shot by the Tsar's forces, and potentially a Jew (which means that Pyat himself might be at least half-Jewish, despite his vehement denials and evident anti-Semitic prejudice).
The memoir deals with Pyat's life from 1916 to 1920, when he turns 20 (on 14 January, 1920).
Political Chameleon
Despite his relative youth, Pyat's life is an informative adventure and entertaining rollercoaster ride through the Russian Civil War as it was conducted in Ukraine. He trained as a mechanical engineer, and wanted to design and build various instruments of war (including a Violet Ray), to help Ukraine fight off the Russian Bolsheviks.
Wandering around the countryside of Ukraine, he is captured by and welcomed into various factions of the different participants, sometimes passing as a White Russian and others as a Bolshevik.
He is a political chameleon, though he never seems to reveal his true colours to anybody else. His memoir seems to be the only time he has ever revealed his real/true identity. Even then, it's difficult to tell whether he is a consistent liar and unreliable narrator. He's a (Nabokovian) butterfly that just can't be pinned down.
Cavalier Charm and Constant Mercuriality
Though Pyat lacks sincerity, he is not without a modicum of cavalier charm. He is certainly attractive to some of the girls (he rapes two while high on cocaine) and women he encounters in his life (“there was something about vulnerable young women which brought out the best in me"), although he doesn't necessarily treat any of them with any chivalry, courtesy or respect (except, perhaps, Mrs Cornelius, a close companion in his later life, who when young was a beautiful, if not sophisticated, Cockney-speaking femme fatale (if that is not inconceivable – at times, she sounds like a “Pearly Queen").
Pyat's sexual preferences seem to be pretty fluid, usually following his survival instinct. Nothing is constant, except perhaps his mercuriality.
Greek Orthodoxy is Waking
Pyat evidently looks like a Jew, for he is always being mistaken for one. However, he regards this as an insult. He denies that he is a “racialist". He claims that his prejudices are founded in religion, rather than race or politics. “I follow no flags. I am myself.”
He espouses some individualistic kind of Greek or Russian Orthodox Christianity (the symbol of which is the Byzantium of the book's title), to which he opposes the barbarism of Carthage and the Turks (“beneath the flapping banners of Bolshevism, beneath the banners of barbarism and cynicism and a passionless vengeance which dared to grace itself with the name of piety”).
His foes are therefore Jews, non-Orthodox Christians, Moslems, atheists and Bolsheviks. He sees himself as a promoter of a Greek tradition of Christianity focussed on Jesus Christ: “I thought I was cleansing Russia of decadence...My faith is in God and scientific analysis...The Greek is waking. Byzantium endures.”
Ukraine, Russia and the Slavic Balkans together constitute a melting pot of people, races, ideologies, religions, manners, customs and prejudices that swirls around Pyat, just as it does today.
We are not meant to sympathise or agree with Pyat. Moorcock says in his fictional introduction: “Colonel Pyat’s was not a pleasant personality, and his intolerance and passionately-held right-wing views were hard to take.”
Instead, his example is designed to help us understand both the plight of people under totalitarianism and the plight of Jews caught in the Holocaust, and to answer the questions: why did the human catastrophes of the twentieth century occur, and why did otherwise civilised and pious people do so little to prevent them?
(MULTI-)VERSE
Honoria Cornelius
[Apologies to Bob Dylan]
You used to ride
In a limousine
With your Bolshevik
Playing tamborine.
He knew you before
The rest of us read
You were famous for
Doing good in bed,
Like Venus in furs
With a string of pearls,
Puzzled by the fog
Of revolution,
Your amphetamines
Whirling all around
The recesses of
Such a pretty head.
Blessed Mother of God
[In the words of Michael Moorcock]
She was a whore,
A femme fatale.
Mother of God!
She gave too much.
The strong are often
Called upon this way.
They can expect
Nothing in return,
Save abuse and,
Now and then, affection.
That is how
God blesses them.
SOUNDTRACK:
Bob Dylan - "Just Like a Woman"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRLXZ...
Bob Dylan - "Just Like a Woman" (Take 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljbxm...
Traffic - "Pearly Queen" (live in 1994)
https://youtu.be/SHRpRzXzTHg
June 18, 2009
Ever heard of an unreliable narrator? I hadn't, so this book was a bit of a shock and a revelation. I must have been 13-15 years old and I'd been devouring Moorcock's fantasies at a rate of knots, without worrying at all about the allegorical or Tolkien-reactionary nature of them, which I didn't really catch up on for a few more years. So I was in the library and came across this book and picked it up without thinking or looking closely, just 'cos it had "Moorcok" written on the spine...it was a surprise, therefore, to be confronted by a historical novel that employs that pretending to be based on real documents technique that there is probably a name for and not a hint of fantasy in sight.
Except there is actually plenty of fantasy, really, as Moorcock plainly states in his foreword, where he introduces the narrator of the book as if he is a personal acquaintance who recently died and says the following narrative is based on recorded conversations between the two of them. Moorcock states that Pyat - a protagonist that could hardly be called a hero - is a liar and moderately demented. But I didn't really get it until 3/4 of the way through the novel, when I realised that Pyat was talking complete BS and probably had been several times before, now that I stop to think about it....
It was tough going, with really long paragraphs, a fairly slow pace and a narrative that would wander between telling the tale and ranting about politics, race and religion fairly arbitrarily. It was educational, though; not only did I learn what an unreliable narrator is, I learned the meaning of "pogrom" and a bit about the history of the Russian October Revolution and subsequent civil war. (Mainly that is was really complicated and confusing and that most of the Big Names didn't have much clue what was going on either.)
Being a glutton for punishment I went on to read the sequel....
Fast-forward about twenty years and the fourth and final volume in the series has been published and I decide I ought to read them and figure out what it was all about.
So here we go again; Moorcock states in his foreword that Pyat is a liar - I think, man, he says right here that he can't be trusted - what an idiot I was! Was the narrative going to be as tough going as I remembered? No. The average paragraph length is quite long by contemporary standards, with some of them longer than a page, but this is worst at the beginning and end. Most of the rambling and ranting is confined to the beginning and end, too, subtly disguising the fact that Moorcock keeps the main portion of the narrative relatively straight-forward. It's not remotely so hard as reading William Langland as I am doing right now and calling it fun. Exactly how much of Pyat's adventures are completely made up, exagerated versions of the "truth" or unadorned "fact" cannot be ascertained - one has to judge for oneself, just as Moorcock says back in the foreword - but the general sweep of history can be relied on, I think, because that seems to be the point:
Pyat was born in 1900 in the Ukraine and lives through all of the most extreme turmoil of the first half of the century, his life being defined by it. Through Pyat, Moorcock gets to talk about all this history - in this volume covering the time from about 1912 up to and inclusive of 1920 in detail. The main strength of the book is how convincing Pyat is as a character and how ironic - Pyat is an anti-semitic ethnic Jew who follows the Christian Orthodox Church, for instance. Pyat is not overly likable - a boaster and liar, spending most of his time pursuing his self interest (or survival, later, which is easier to sympathise with) or his vices and being outrageously racist. But he is not a complete monster either; he genuinely attempts to look after his family and childhood friend when politics deteriorates into revolution and war.
The evocation of social atmosphere whether it be Bohemian Odessa and Kiev or those same cities living amidst famine and destruction only a few years later is excellent and perhaps one of Moorcock's primary purposes - but I'll have to read the other three volumes to be sure.
Except there is actually plenty of fantasy, really, as Moorcock plainly states in his foreword, where he introduces the narrator of the book as if he is a personal acquaintance who recently died and says the following narrative is based on recorded conversations between the two of them. Moorcock states that Pyat - a protagonist that could hardly be called a hero - is a liar and moderately demented. But I didn't really get it until 3/4 of the way through the novel, when I realised that Pyat was talking complete BS and probably had been several times before, now that I stop to think about it....
It was tough going, with really long paragraphs, a fairly slow pace and a narrative that would wander between telling the tale and ranting about politics, race and religion fairly arbitrarily. It was educational, though; not only did I learn what an unreliable narrator is, I learned the meaning of "pogrom" and a bit about the history of the Russian October Revolution and subsequent civil war. (Mainly that is was really complicated and confusing and that most of the Big Names didn't have much clue what was going on either.)
Being a glutton for punishment I went on to read the sequel....
Fast-forward about twenty years and the fourth and final volume in the series has been published and I decide I ought to read them and figure out what it was all about.
So here we go again; Moorcock states in his foreword that Pyat is a liar - I think, man, he says right here that he can't be trusted - what an idiot I was! Was the narrative going to be as tough going as I remembered? No. The average paragraph length is quite long by contemporary standards, with some of them longer than a page, but this is worst at the beginning and end. Most of the rambling and ranting is confined to the beginning and end, too, subtly disguising the fact that Moorcock keeps the main portion of the narrative relatively straight-forward. It's not remotely so hard as reading William Langland as I am doing right now and calling it fun. Exactly how much of Pyat's adventures are completely made up, exagerated versions of the "truth" or unadorned "fact" cannot be ascertained - one has to judge for oneself, just as Moorcock says back in the foreword - but the general sweep of history can be relied on, I think, because that seems to be the point:
Pyat was born in 1900 in the Ukraine and lives through all of the most extreme turmoil of the first half of the century, his life being defined by it. Through Pyat, Moorcock gets to talk about all this history - in this volume covering the time from about 1912 up to and inclusive of 1920 in detail. The main strength of the book is how convincing Pyat is as a character and how ironic - Pyat is an anti-semitic ethnic Jew who follows the Christian Orthodox Church, for instance. Pyat is not overly likable - a boaster and liar, spending most of his time pursuing his self interest (or survival, later, which is easier to sympathise with) or his vices and being outrageously racist. But he is not a complete monster either; he genuinely attempts to look after his family and childhood friend when politics deteriorates into revolution and war.
The evocation of social atmosphere whether it be Bohemian Odessa and Kiev or those same cities living amidst famine and destruction only a few years later is excellent and perhaps one of Moorcock's primary purposes - but I'll have to read the other three volumes to be sure.
April 8, 2012
Historical fiction is an favourite genre of mine. Reading Moorcock's superior novel of the Russian Revolution, I realise how much historical fiction wants you to like their central characters; this plucky woman, that working class hero, this Romantic poetic soul but Moorcock's Pyat is different. Moorcock's central character is the nasty old racist pub bore who also happens to have lived through one of the most extraordinary periods of modern history, the 1917 Revolution. Was he ennobled by suffering? Changed by what he saw? Only for the worse.
Fuelled by cocaine, he suffers from delusions of grandeur and is a model of a man in denial about his true character. Yet, he never misses a chance to further himself. His ability to survive dangerous situations and even profit from them is the most remarkable thing about him, but he still sees every piece of sheer luck that comes his way as his right.
Through this unreliable, unlikeable narrator, Moorcock explores the ideas that swirled around Europe, especially but not exclusively in the East in the first 20 years of the twentieth century. His character is a supporter of the pan-Slavic movement, supporting racial and religious war against Teutons, Turks and especially Jews. In hindsight, it seems like an appalling philosophy but at the time, it was a very common idea with believers including Kaiser Wilhelm II himself ,who was keen to assert Teutonic superiority over Slavs pre 1914.
This was a time of social Darwinism, of Socialist revolution and eugenics. Europe likes to see the Nazis as an aberration but books like this remind us that the dictators and their horrors were nurtured in the seething cauldrons of the late 19th and early 20th century which saw its fair share of pogroms, massacres and atrocities even before a certain little Austrian thought he could be master of the world.
Fuelled by cocaine, he suffers from delusions of grandeur and is a model of a man in denial about his true character. Yet, he never misses a chance to further himself. His ability to survive dangerous situations and even profit from them is the most remarkable thing about him, but he still sees every piece of sheer luck that comes his way as his right.
Through this unreliable, unlikeable narrator, Moorcock explores the ideas that swirled around Europe, especially but not exclusively in the East in the first 20 years of the twentieth century. His character is a supporter of the pan-Slavic movement, supporting racial and religious war against Teutons, Turks and especially Jews. In hindsight, it seems like an appalling philosophy but at the time, it was a very common idea with believers including Kaiser Wilhelm II himself ,who was keen to assert Teutonic superiority over Slavs pre 1914.
This was a time of social Darwinism, of Socialist revolution and eugenics. Europe likes to see the Nazis as an aberration but books like this remind us that the dictators and their horrors were nurtured in the seething cauldrons of the late 19th and early 20th century which saw its fair share of pogroms, massacres and atrocities even before a certain little Austrian thought he could be master of the world.
June 5, 2015
Navigating your way through Moorcock's oeuvre can be daunting since its clear he's written about a thousand novels, of which approximately nine hundred have something to do with his "Eternal Champion" series, where various incarnations of the same character (many of whom don't even seem to realize they are the Champion) figure in the struggle between order and chaos. The broadness of theme and the flexibility of the setting means he can pretty much write whatever story suits his needs at that particular time and still have it fit in the wider framework. This gives the new reader a wide variety of genres to choose from, with various strains of fantasy and SF all intermingling freely, but the trick can be figuring out which stories are the ones that suit your fancy. The quality is fairly consistent, especially since Moorcock has revised some of the earlier novels over the years to fit in better and slightly disguise the fact that, while thought through, a number of them were a bit dashed off due to money or deadline purposes.
Of all the alleged Eternal Champion manifestations, one of the more slightly obscure (at least to American readers) is probably Colonel Pyat, star of his own quartet of novels. I first heard of them as a sidenote in John Clute's "Science-Fiction: the Illustrated Encyclopedia" years ago and at the time the novels were only available in British editions. In fact, when I purchased them over ten years ago only the first three were written and people had been waiting since 1992 for the fourth volume, and it wasn't until 2006 that "Vengeance of Rome" was finally published, sort of justifying my relative lack of speed in getting around to reading them.
Pyat is one of Moorcock's more interesting creations, seemingly designed to make you hate his guts but retaining some semblance of charisma and flair that even when he's engaging in heinous acts and delusionally justifying them as necessary or even beneficial, he's enough of a rambling raconteur that you're still interested in the story itself, even when it's clear that he's less reliable than my horoscope in getting the details right. Moorcock frames the story as a series of manuscripts given to him by Pyat himself before his death, ones that he promised to clean up and render coherent in the hopes of publishing them. What we get is the story of a man at the cusp of the twentieth century in Russia and starting to come of age just as WWI starts to hit and just when that is almost over, the fall of the tsar and the October Revolution and all the months of good times that came from that.
Moorcock greatest gift here is to recreate the world of WWI-era Russia right when everything went straight to hell, packing the story with enough knowing detail that the very texture of it comes across as true, so that even when its clear that Pyat is making up everything that's happening to him, the foundation is solid enough that you can take in the scenery and sort out the rest later. And there is quite a bit to sort out: Pyat is a mass of contradictions, most of them self-imposed and seemingly unaware of each other, a Jew (a fact he continually hides, even to himself, despite ample evidence to the contrary) who constantly professes to hate Jews and most other races in fact, even other Russians. He presents himself as the greatest scientific genius of his age and claims responsibility for various inventions created by others that were "stolen" from him, inhales copious amounts of cocaine while simultaneously insisting that he can quit anytime he wants, and mostly makes his way through the world by lying to everyone he meets about something, which he never perceives as lying because everything is true about him all the time.
It makes for an interesting reading experience because Moorcock is giving you a tour of Russia as it falls apart through the eyes of a man who is clearly mentally unbalanced, and the story is at its best when its navigates that narrow space between a ground-level of the various political factions slugging it out with guns and tanks in the revolutionary period of Russia and Pyat's perception of everything, especially in those moments when he goes off on present day rants about whatever enters his rambling mind and reveals himself to be less an intelligent survivor than perhaps an extremely deluded and racist old man who can't tell the difference between his lies and what he believes are lies. The moments when the action in the story completely goes against the tale he's telling us (notably his attempt to get a diploma and a rather unapologetic sexual assault) are where the tale becomes most frightening and you realize your perception of this story's reality is in the hands of someone who may be out of his mind, like being trapped on a bus that's heading for a cliff while the driver is cheerfully telling you he can see the sand of the beaches in Florida just ahead.
It adds an extra sheen to a story that probably wouldn't need it based on the bare bones, as while the scenes in Kiev and Odessa are more or less standard "coming of age through all the wrong ways" scenarios as Pyat learns about ladies and drugs, often at the same time, the scenes as the war hits home and especially when the revolution rears its ugly head and its impossible to tell who is on what side anymore (including the people involved sometimes) as cities change hands with alarming speed and getting shot is often a matter of not answering a question in the right way fast enough. Moorcock gets some comic relief by having Jerry Cornelius' mom show up repeatedly, at one point claiming to be Leon Trotsky's ladyfriend but the focus is generally on Pyat, doing his best to survive and convincing himself that its best for humanity if he does because he's a genius who can change the world. It seems like Moorcock is going to be doing something similar to what happened with the original Jerry Cornelius quartet, where a character who lives in a fanciful world has the world gradually stripped away and is forced to confront his own internally constructed fabrications and the consequences of them. In Cornelius' case, he was more a swinging, amoral force, a reflection of a time when everything was in flux and identities were unsettled. With Pyat, he may be too much of a mirror for the century, not so much in the ugliness but in the sheen concocted not only to make everything seem not as bad as it really was, but to minimize humanity's own role in the unpleasantness. When the truth was, sadly, it was probably worse.
Of all the alleged Eternal Champion manifestations, one of the more slightly obscure (at least to American readers) is probably Colonel Pyat, star of his own quartet of novels. I first heard of them as a sidenote in John Clute's "Science-Fiction: the Illustrated Encyclopedia" years ago and at the time the novels were only available in British editions. In fact, when I purchased them over ten years ago only the first three were written and people had been waiting since 1992 for the fourth volume, and it wasn't until 2006 that "Vengeance of Rome" was finally published, sort of justifying my relative lack of speed in getting around to reading them.
Pyat is one of Moorcock's more interesting creations, seemingly designed to make you hate his guts but retaining some semblance of charisma and flair that even when he's engaging in heinous acts and delusionally justifying them as necessary or even beneficial, he's enough of a rambling raconteur that you're still interested in the story itself, even when it's clear that he's less reliable than my horoscope in getting the details right. Moorcock frames the story as a series of manuscripts given to him by Pyat himself before his death, ones that he promised to clean up and render coherent in the hopes of publishing them. What we get is the story of a man at the cusp of the twentieth century in Russia and starting to come of age just as WWI starts to hit and just when that is almost over, the fall of the tsar and the October Revolution and all the months of good times that came from that.
Moorcock greatest gift here is to recreate the world of WWI-era Russia right when everything went straight to hell, packing the story with enough knowing detail that the very texture of it comes across as true, so that even when its clear that Pyat is making up everything that's happening to him, the foundation is solid enough that you can take in the scenery and sort out the rest later. And there is quite a bit to sort out: Pyat is a mass of contradictions, most of them self-imposed and seemingly unaware of each other, a Jew (a fact he continually hides, even to himself, despite ample evidence to the contrary) who constantly professes to hate Jews and most other races in fact, even other Russians. He presents himself as the greatest scientific genius of his age and claims responsibility for various inventions created by others that were "stolen" from him, inhales copious amounts of cocaine while simultaneously insisting that he can quit anytime he wants, and mostly makes his way through the world by lying to everyone he meets about something, which he never perceives as lying because everything is true about him all the time.
It makes for an interesting reading experience because Moorcock is giving you a tour of Russia as it falls apart through the eyes of a man who is clearly mentally unbalanced, and the story is at its best when its navigates that narrow space between a ground-level of the various political factions slugging it out with guns and tanks in the revolutionary period of Russia and Pyat's perception of everything, especially in those moments when he goes off on present day rants about whatever enters his rambling mind and reveals himself to be less an intelligent survivor than perhaps an extremely deluded and racist old man who can't tell the difference between his lies and what he believes are lies. The moments when the action in the story completely goes against the tale he's telling us (notably his attempt to get a diploma and a rather unapologetic sexual assault) are where the tale becomes most frightening and you realize your perception of this story's reality is in the hands of someone who may be out of his mind, like being trapped on a bus that's heading for a cliff while the driver is cheerfully telling you he can see the sand of the beaches in Florida just ahead.
It adds an extra sheen to a story that probably wouldn't need it based on the bare bones, as while the scenes in Kiev and Odessa are more or less standard "coming of age through all the wrong ways" scenarios as Pyat learns about ladies and drugs, often at the same time, the scenes as the war hits home and especially when the revolution rears its ugly head and its impossible to tell who is on what side anymore (including the people involved sometimes) as cities change hands with alarming speed and getting shot is often a matter of not answering a question in the right way fast enough. Moorcock gets some comic relief by having Jerry Cornelius' mom show up repeatedly, at one point claiming to be Leon Trotsky's ladyfriend but the focus is generally on Pyat, doing his best to survive and convincing himself that its best for humanity if he does because he's a genius who can change the world. It seems like Moorcock is going to be doing something similar to what happened with the original Jerry Cornelius quartet, where a character who lives in a fanciful world has the world gradually stripped away and is forced to confront his own internally constructed fabrications and the consequences of them. In Cornelius' case, he was more a swinging, amoral force, a reflection of a time when everything was in flux and identities were unsettled. With Pyat, he may be too much of a mirror for the century, not so much in the ugliness but in the sheen concocted not only to make everything seem not as bad as it really was, but to minimize humanity's own role in the unpleasantness. When the truth was, sadly, it was probably worse.
April 18, 2020
Byzantium Endures is one of Moorcock's most dense, interesting, and challenging novels. It's the first of the Pyat novels, familiar of the Cornelius family, who's addicted to cocaine and sex, and who is probably Moorcock's least reliable narrator. It's a 19th-century Russian novel that examines religion and science fiction and survival... a mix of Tolstoy and Dickens and William Burroughs and James Branch Cabell. I thought it was interesting and quite good, but it's certainly not light or casual reading.
December 26, 2017
Mental
April 4, 2022
pyat is probably the most inhabited "unreliable narrator" voice I have ever encountered. I love his confused rants about slavic blood and socialism and The Jews. I love his obvious lies, his tall tales about heroic deeds, or how some lowly scum without his purity of vision ruined his plans at the last moment, and that's why you never read about his brilliant death ray atop st George's cathedral in the history books. I love his mental and emotional fragility; you can imagine an old pyat in his shop in Westminster, weathered and diseased, collecting bile and hurt all day at work from young people who laugh at his racist conspiratorial pamphlets, then going home and scribbling out furious recollections of his youthful importance - his coke fueled sexual escapades and no less coke fueled tromps through the war torn sundered Russian Empire. he is a living, breathing figure, and moorcock understands how he thinks on a deep level. I won't go into current geopolitical implications of pyat's stances here except to say that this is an illuminating book for a set of views that is more widely held than any of us would like to admit. I can't wait to see what this sick freak gets up to next!!!!
January 19, 2020
I had more patience reading the book this time around. Previously I had expectations of it fitting somehow into the whole Moorcock multiverse thing. But apart from the presence of the ever jovial Mrs Cornelius that isn't the case.
I'd still have preferred more scenes where the narrator's understanding of his circumstances was as at odds with reality as that revealed during his oral examination for his diploma
Anyway, on to Volume 2 The Laughter of Carthage
I'd still have preferred more scenes where the narrator's understanding of his circumstances was as at odds with reality as that revealed during his oral examination for his diploma
Anyway, on to Volume 2 The Laughter of Carthage
September 21, 2019
Это совсем не известный мне Муркок - и сразу какая игра одновременно с рассказчиком-вралем и кокаинистом и турбулентностью русской революции! Это была чума. То смешно, то очень красиво. Не так откровенно издевательски, как в "Глориане", ведь тут полно боли и фатализма событий, но все-таки Муркок - лучший. AMAZING
February 4, 2013
Originally published on my blog here in July 2003.
The creation of Maxim Pyatniski, or Colonel Pyat, is Moorcock's supreme piece of literary artistry. Many writers, even some of the best, find it hard to write a convincing, three dimensional character who has a different voice from their own. In Pyat, Moorcock's aim seems to be a narrator who is the diametrical opposite of himself in as many ways as possible. The one thing he is unable to do is to make him admirable or sympathetic - he is rabidly anti-Semitic, self-aggrandizing, foolish, vain, cocaine-addicted (and that is just what comes across in his own autobiographical narrative).
Byzantium Endures is the first of four lengthy novels, which means that it is possible to pursue Pyat's repellent personality at great length through the twentieth century. Myself, I find that a relatively small quantity of this goes a long way, despite the fascinating backgrounds (in this case, Russia just before the Communist revolution and during the subsequent civil war). This feeling was exacerbated by not having read the series in the correct order, as I purchased them as I found them in bookshops, and so there weren't really any surprises by the time I worked back to the first of them. By warned - the impact of Byzantium Endures is drastically reduced by doing this. Even taking this into account, I think that some of Moorcock's less ambitious writing is more successful, and certainly more congenial.
The creation of Maxim Pyatniski, or Colonel Pyat, is Moorcock's supreme piece of literary artistry. Many writers, even some of the best, find it hard to write a convincing, three dimensional character who has a different voice from their own. In Pyat, Moorcock's aim seems to be a narrator who is the diametrical opposite of himself in as many ways as possible. The one thing he is unable to do is to make him admirable or sympathetic - he is rabidly anti-Semitic, self-aggrandizing, foolish, vain, cocaine-addicted (and that is just what comes across in his own autobiographical narrative).
Byzantium Endures is the first of four lengthy novels, which means that it is possible to pursue Pyat's repellent personality at great length through the twentieth century. Myself, I find that a relatively small quantity of this goes a long way, despite the fascinating backgrounds (in this case, Russia just before the Communist revolution and during the subsequent civil war). This feeling was exacerbated by not having read the series in the correct order, as I purchased them as I found them in bookshops, and so there weren't really any surprises by the time I worked back to the first of them. By warned - the impact of Byzantium Endures is drastically reduced by doing this. Even taking this into account, I think that some of Moorcock's less ambitious writing is more successful, and certainly more congenial.
August 19, 2016
I have a lot of respect for what Moorcock accomplishes in this novel. Roughly the first half of the book is devoted to Pyat's teenage years, and Moorcock establishes the time and place with just enough detail to put you there. A whiff of nostalgia permeates it all, which is appropriate considering that Pyat is reminiscing about his past from his seventies and that the period which he is discussing was demolished by the wars that swallowed up so many lives and ways of living.
The rest of the book sees Europe spiraling into the first World War, and with it Pyat finds his own life detaching itself from all that he knows. Pyat ends up behind the lines of battle, and to survive he passes from one military unit to another, switching sides with an ease that somehow fits alongside his principles. At this point, I understood why Moorcock first introduced Pyat as a scoundrel and an opportunist; at the same time, I could see that Pyat was doing whatever he could to survive a crazy time of violence and dissolution. Given how blurry the lines of battle are, it is no surprise that Pyat molds himself to each encounter that carries him forward one more day.
I am very glad PM Press brought these books back into print. Volumes 2-4 are on my shelf and I will surely devour them this year.
The rest of the book sees Europe spiraling into the first World War, and with it Pyat finds his own life detaching itself from all that he knows. Pyat ends up behind the lines of battle, and to survive he passes from one military unit to another, switching sides with an ease that somehow fits alongside his principles. At this point, I understood why Moorcock first introduced Pyat as a scoundrel and an opportunist; at the same time, I could see that Pyat was doing whatever he could to survive a crazy time of violence and dissolution. Given how blurry the lines of battle are, it is no surprise that Pyat molds himself to each encounter that carries him forward one more day.
I am very glad PM Press brought these books back into print. Volumes 2-4 are on my shelf and I will surely devour them this year.
Read
October 17, 2014I don't easily give up. Heck, Musil is still in my 'to finish' pile. But in this case I just couldn't be bothered anymore. Maybe it's because the concept of an unreliable narrator is new to me and I need to learn to fully understand and enjoy it, maybe it needs to grow...
I don't know..
I could deal with the 'is he a Jew or not' thing. His bisexuality was fun too, but when Pyat completely lost it at the exams, that was a wee bit too much for my taste. When it became apparent that he was a delusional freak, living in his imaginary world, with an ego that's way beyond the socially acceptable, I quickly lost interest.
Moreover, his claims to deal with the beau monde, rich industrials etc, make it all sound a bit daft if you bear in mind that he was only 17 or 18 years old. As if those people cared about the ravings of a snotnosed brat.
I like the Russian setting, I really loved the (pre) revolutionary atmosphere, and that kept me going for a long time. But it wasn't enough to make me finish this book. There was some fine language, some really good quotable stuff, but again, not enough to win me over.
I gave up at page 234. Maybe I'll pick it up later. Probably not.
I don't know..
I could deal with the 'is he a Jew or not' thing. His bisexuality was fun too, but when Pyat completely lost it at the exams, that was a wee bit too much for my taste. When it became apparent that he was a delusional freak, living in his imaginary world, with an ego that's way beyond the socially acceptable, I quickly lost interest.
Moreover, his claims to deal with the beau monde, rich industrials etc, make it all sound a bit daft if you bear in mind that he was only 17 or 18 years old. As if those people cared about the ravings of a snotnosed brat.
I like the Russian setting, I really loved the (pre) revolutionary atmosphere, and that kept me going for a long time. But it wasn't enough to make me finish this book. There was some fine language, some really good quotable stuff, but again, not enough to win me over.
I gave up at page 234. Maybe I'll pick it up later. Probably not.
May 20, 2013
A entertaining, if meandering, self-portrait of a self-deluded monster. A work of historical fiction by an unreliable narrator who is also racist, sexist, homophobic, and an all around hateful human being. A portrait of the Russian revolution by the kind of opportunist who benefitted most from it. It's the first volume of a quartet, so in some ways, I should reserve judgment, but so far, it's an entertaining narrative about a monster in a monstrous century.
October 16, 2020
Jack Isidore of Seville, CA* as played in the film adaptation by Rade Serbedzija, telling the story of the Russian Revolution from the barstool next to you, with lots of antisemetic rants and flights of nostalgic fancy. Doesn't sound too interesting, but actually weirdly fascinating. There are three sequels. But I need a break.
*See Philip K. Dick's Confessions of a Crap Artist
*See Philip K. Dick's Confessions of a Crap Artist
October 14, 2018
Joyride with a sociopath sums it up. Sometimes Pyat's (or whatever name he is using at the time) ramblings were too much for me but I get Moorcock's point. His main character is suffering from mental illness but a functional one! The historical depth is enjoyable..sweeping to say the least. Us humans are a mess.
March 15, 2014
The first of Moorcock's Pyat Quartet, this sets things off well with a protagonist who you find yourself rooting for despite being as repulsive as Thomas Covenant. The remainder of the four will follow.
October 17, 2016
Fantastic history story from the beginning of 20th century. If you like history spiced with a little bit adventure the book is right on the spot. For me there was too much ranting from main character.
January 19, 2015
Stunning book set around the Russian revolution. Pyat is a model unreliable narrator and unpacking the truth from his contradictions and lack of self awareness adds to the experience.
March 19, 2016
Excellent series. Man's self-self delusion at its finest. Great story and characters.
Shelved as 'fic-guided'
June 15, 2020His publishers gave up very early in the game trying to count Michael Moorcock’s novel output: ‘more than seventy’ is the bland estimate usually offered. His work has always communicated a sense of authorial inexhaustibility and unpredictability (he has resolutely refused, for example, to get locked into the SF ‘ghetto’ – despite being routinely hailed as Britain’s most distinguished living practitioner in the field). Byzantium Endures, the first volume of what would extend to a tetralogy, was unlike anything Moorcock had hitherto done – or that anyone has hitherto done, to be honest. The narrator-hero is ‘Colonel Pyat’, alias Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, alias Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff, alias Whoknowswhat – a rogue and a liar. We encounter Pyat in his birthplace, pre-Revolution Kiev, where he has some adventures with a one-man flying machine he has invented. Pyat is, of course, well ahead of his dishonest rival Sikorsky – witness, as he proudly tells the reader, the records of his flight in the foreign journals Reveille (a now defunct British wank-mag) and the National Enquirer (still active celebrity-scandal mag). His aeronautic experiments end with a plunge into Babi Yar: ‘a strange coincidence’, in view of his unending protestations that he is not Jewish but pure Slav (see BABI YAR).
We follow Pyat to Odessa, where he loses his virginity, becomes hooked for life on cocaine and indulges in seaport crime. Then it’s off to St Petersburg, where a brilliant career as an engineer (as he would have us believe) is cut short by war and revolution. Thereafter his adventures are increasingly picaresque, as he is swept around by the gigantic historical forces that shaped the twentieth century. At one moment he is with the Cossacks, at the next with the Soviets, and then with Ukrainian nationalists, designing a prototype laser gun (some of Moorcock’s SF habits die hard). He survives to old age, a Portobello Road trader in junk, literally in the dustbin of history. A violent racist, he dies of shock in 1977 during the Notting Hill Carnival, ‘when a group of black boys and girls entered his shop (one of the few open) and demanded a contribution’. His eleven shoeboxes of papers, written in six languages, come into the possession of ‘Michael Moorcock’, for whose magnificently bearded face Pyat had always had a nostalgic respect. Me too.
Byzantium Endures is a narrative tour-de-force. Pyat’s account, untampered with by the Moorcock editor figure, is all vanity, bigotry, deceit and obsession. And comical English in his Portobello phase. As he recalls with some perplexity, ‘My attempts to apply it so as to put others at ease were not always successful . . . My affectionate and admiring “How are you, you old bugger?” to Mr (later Lord) Winston Churchill, at a function for celebrated Polish émigrés, was not as well-received as I had expected and I was never able to thank him, thereafter, for the hearty support he had given to the cause of Russia’s rightful rulers.’
We follow Pyat to Odessa, where he loses his virginity, becomes hooked for life on cocaine and indulges in seaport crime. Then it’s off to St Petersburg, where a brilliant career as an engineer (as he would have us believe) is cut short by war and revolution. Thereafter his adventures are increasingly picaresque, as he is swept around by the gigantic historical forces that shaped the twentieth century. At one moment he is with the Cossacks, at the next with the Soviets, and then with Ukrainian nationalists, designing a prototype laser gun (some of Moorcock’s SF habits die hard). He survives to old age, a Portobello Road trader in junk, literally in the dustbin of history. A violent racist, he dies of shock in 1977 during the Notting Hill Carnival, ‘when a group of black boys and girls entered his shop (one of the few open) and demanded a contribution’. His eleven shoeboxes of papers, written in six languages, come into the possession of ‘Michael Moorcock’, for whose magnificently bearded face Pyat had always had a nostalgic respect. Me too.
Byzantium Endures is a narrative tour-de-force. Pyat’s account, untampered with by the Moorcock editor figure, is all vanity, bigotry, deceit and obsession. And comical English in his Portobello phase. As he recalls with some perplexity, ‘My attempts to apply it so as to put others at ease were not always successful . . . My affectionate and admiring “How are you, you old bugger?” to Mr (later Lord) Winston Churchill, at a function for celebrated Polish émigrés, was not as well-received as I had expected and I was never able to thank him, thereafter, for the hearty support he had given to the cause of Russia’s rightful rulers.’
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 17, 2020
I'm not sure quite how to review this book, but I'll take a deep breath and give it a shot. So. Michael Moorcock is one of my favorite sci-fi and fantasy/sword-and-sorcery authors of all time. He was also important to Gary Gygax, who included him on the Appendix N list of authors and works who helped inspire the creation of Dungeons & Dragons. BUT . . . this isn't a work of fantasy, exactly, nor sci-fi exactly (although versions of our Unreliable Narrator protagonist, "Colonel Pyat," have appeared in sci-fi/fantasy works by Moorcock), nor is it exactly historical fiction. It somewhat defies genre, by design. The work has been compared to the work of James Joyce, particularly Ulysses, and I can see that comparison, and even more so, Colonel Pyat resembles Ulysses himself, Odysseus, in that he is a liar and a scoundrel, telling his own story from his own point of view, but it is left to the reader to decide what they think are lies and truth, if those terms have any meaning, here. Pyat is an anti-hero (as is typical of Moorcock) - he is a terrible person, a rabid anti-Semite (though half Jewish himself, which he takes pains to deny), a liar and a turncoat who switches sides as it is convenient, a drug addict (particuarly cocaine) . . . not someone to admire or emulate, and his terrible views are verifiably the opposite of Moorcock's own. Pyat was allegedly born in Ukraine on January 1st, 1900, and he in some ways is a personification of the 20th century's worst aspects, especially the strife of Eastern Europe and central Eurasia, in this volume. I should note that this book is not truly, formally part of Appendix N, which was compiled in the late 1970s (this book was first published in 1981). The title refers to the ideals to which Pyat claims to cling, an Eastern Orthodox Christian faith and a Greek Roman imperialism which had passed the torch of empire to the Slavs, particularly Russia before the revolution. He sees this idealized Eastern Europe as the bulwark of civilization against the "savagery" he perceives is Orientals (not just Asians, but Semites, including Arabs and Muslims of all sorts) and Africans (he is a racist who apparently views black people as subhuman) - the second volume is entitled The Laughter of Carthage, referring to what Pyat sees as the symbolic antithesis of civilization (Carthage was a city founded by Semites in North Africa, that rivaled Ancient Greece and Rome, and so stands as the symbol of evil against the Byzantium used as a symbol of civilization that has passed from Greece to Rome to Russia). This book is dense and Byzantine (if you'll forgive the turn of phrase), and hard to follow at times with Pyat's rambling and ranting and outright lies about himself (though what that means in a fictional narrative . . .?), and harder to read with Pyat's racist views. Sadly, he is in many ways a fitting personification of the first 3 quarters of the 20th century, with all its horrors, and really, this book is mostly about his life up through the Russian revolution, so worse is yet to come . . .
February 2, 2023
Michael Moorcock’s Byzantium Endures put the reader in an interesting, indelicate position. You’ve heard of the unreliable narrator. That is one feature of this book. The narrator Maxim Pya is a youth growing up in the Ukraine at the time of World War I. He often brags about his futuristic design ideas and his varied successes in impressing his professors, which are not always credible. This is a familiar strategy with unreliable speakers as seen in the third section of The Sound and The Fury, for example, or in Lardner’s baseball novel You Know Me, Al.
However, Moorcock introduces the concept of the “unreliable reader.” Here’s what I mean. At a key juncture in Pyat’s life, he is to take an oral exam and give a talk at his engineering college in order to obtain his degree; but as he tells the story, it becomes unclear (given his unreliability) whether the audience reaction is one of jeers or cheers, and then whether the “special” degree he is to be awarded is a high accolade or a put-on.
Now, usually in a story with an unreliable narrator, he or she eventually gets a comeuppance. In the Faulkner novel, the stingy Jason ends up robbed by Quentin, whose money he has been stealing. As this denouncement seems to be approaching in Byzantium, society disintegrates as the Communists take over the state and civil war breaks out. Was Pyat’s triumph real or imagined? The reader will never know since his university career is nipped in the bud. And this unclarity shadows every page of the novel because the reader has to relate her feeling about the veracity of Pyat’s report on his college performance to each new incident in which the narrator’s truth is called into question. Indeed, the reader may have to constantly revise her assessment of the college scene with each new turn in the plot.
But let’s go deeper. The book’s theme is war and the chaos that comes into everyone’s life as they are affected by it. (Incidentally, the theme of my wife Nhi Chung’s memoir of the Vietnam War.) Moorcock develops this theme in the hero’s loss of his career track in academia so he ends up being a tossed-about refugee ineffectually trying to save his mother and sweetheart. Moreover, the author also shows this in revealing how that the great cities: Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa, which he describes as they existed before the conflict as bustling, variegated and magically colorful, are demolished during the conflict, depopulated so each loses its special grace and willfulness. But most creatively, Moorcock allows the intrusion of the war to break the typical trajectory of a novel with an unreliable narrator, so whether he is telling the truth or fibbing about key incidents is never revealed. Moorcock shows the destruction of war insinuates itself even into the structure of fiction.
However, Moorcock introduces the concept of the “unreliable reader.” Here’s what I mean. At a key juncture in Pyat’s life, he is to take an oral exam and give a talk at his engineering college in order to obtain his degree; but as he tells the story, it becomes unclear (given his unreliability) whether the audience reaction is one of jeers or cheers, and then whether the “special” degree he is to be awarded is a high accolade or a put-on.
Now, usually in a story with an unreliable narrator, he or she eventually gets a comeuppance. In the Faulkner novel, the stingy Jason ends up robbed by Quentin, whose money he has been stealing. As this denouncement seems to be approaching in Byzantium, society disintegrates as the Communists take over the state and civil war breaks out. Was Pyat’s triumph real or imagined? The reader will never know since his university career is nipped in the bud. And this unclarity shadows every page of the novel because the reader has to relate her feeling about the veracity of Pyat’s report on his college performance to each new incident in which the narrator’s truth is called into question. Indeed, the reader may have to constantly revise her assessment of the college scene with each new turn in the plot.
But let’s go deeper. The book’s theme is war and the chaos that comes into everyone’s life as they are affected by it. (Incidentally, the theme of my wife Nhi Chung’s memoir of the Vietnam War.) Moorcock develops this theme in the hero’s loss of his career track in academia so he ends up being a tossed-about refugee ineffectually trying to save his mother and sweetheart. Moreover, the author also shows this in revealing how that the great cities: Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa, which he describes as they existed before the conflict as bustling, variegated and magically colorful, are demolished during the conflict, depopulated so each loses its special grace and willfulness. But most creatively, Moorcock allows the intrusion of the war to break the typical trajectory of a novel with an unreliable narrator, so whether he is telling the truth or fibbing about key incidents is never revealed. Moorcock shows the destruction of war insinuates itself even into the structure of fiction.
September 7, 2022
A disgusting tour de force. Moorcock gives us a madcap tour of revolutionary Russia through the eyes of a broken, diseased, pedophilic, drug-addicted, narcissistic, delusional, proto-Fascist, anti-Semitic Jew. I was shocked and thrilled by this and couldn't look away-- its descriptions of Russia at the time of the First War and various revolutions rang as deeply realistic, so I persevered despite my growing misgivings at every turn.
Then I reached the end of the book, where Moorcock credits Konstantin Paustovsky's memoir The Story of a Life as having provided the majority of the inspiration for his book. It didn't take me long to realize that Byzantium Endures was simply The Story of a Life with extra steps, and the reason it felt so realistic was because much of it was lifted beat-for-beat from Paustovsky's much-superior work. Paustovky's writing, in its 2022 translation, is also leagues better than Moorcock's, who next to the Soviet writer comes off as a second-rate pulp scribbler. Indeed, as I slogged my way through the rest of the series I noticed that, without Paustovky's grounding influence, the story feels less and less connected to reality, until it goes completely off the rails with whole pages devoted to the joy of having sex with 11-year-old girls and broken Yiddish-English-Russian gurglings.
At bottom, that's what this entire series is: a joyfully awful pulp romp through the twentieth century's most chaotic moments, unreliably retold by an extremely chaotic man. While you can tell that Moorcock had great fun concocting Pyat's ramblings and inserting him into history like a cringing, cocaine-addicted Forrest Gump, great literature it is not. Those who compare this to a great 19th-century Russian novel would be better-served by reading the Paustovky, which is in every way the 20-century 19th-century Russian novel: beautiful, wistful, tragic and yet still hopeful.
I love pulp adventure like this, which is why it gets three stars. However, my gradual and building disgust with Moorcock's Pyat, along with the eye-rolling proliferation of the Moorcock multiverse, prevented me from finishing the entire series. This book is the literary equivalent of something like the Tower of Terror at Disneyland: buy the ticket, get spooked, enjoy the ride.
Then I reached the end of the book, where Moorcock credits Konstantin Paustovsky's memoir The Story of a Life as having provided the majority of the inspiration for his book. It didn't take me long to realize that Byzantium Endures was simply The Story of a Life with extra steps, and the reason it felt so realistic was because much of it was lifted beat-for-beat from Paustovsky's much-superior work. Paustovky's writing, in its 2022 translation, is also leagues better than Moorcock's, who next to the Soviet writer comes off as a second-rate pulp scribbler. Indeed, as I slogged my way through the rest of the series I noticed that, without Paustovky's grounding influence, the story feels less and less connected to reality, until it goes completely off the rails with whole pages devoted to the joy of having sex with 11-year-old girls and broken Yiddish-English-Russian gurglings.
At bottom, that's what this entire series is: a joyfully awful pulp romp through the twentieth century's most chaotic moments, unreliably retold by an extremely chaotic man. While you can tell that Moorcock had great fun concocting Pyat's ramblings and inserting him into history like a cringing, cocaine-addicted Forrest Gump, great literature it is not. Those who compare this to a great 19th-century Russian novel would be better-served by reading the Paustovky, which is in every way the 20-century 19th-century Russian novel: beautiful, wistful, tragic and yet still hopeful.
I love pulp adventure like this, which is why it gets three stars. However, my gradual and building disgust with Moorcock's Pyat, along with the eye-rolling proliferation of the Moorcock multiverse, prevented me from finishing the entire series. This book is the literary equivalent of something like the Tower of Terror at Disneyland: buy the ticket, get spooked, enjoy the ride.
June 5, 2021
If I had a brain in my head (obviously a short debate on that point) I would finish the grand historical epics that I start before moving on to the next one. I'm still 2/3rds through Proust. I'm 1,360 pages into the 4,000-odd pages of Solzhenitsyn's Red Wheel Quartet. Then I had a night on the sauce with Dave Mackie who put this bloody book in front of me, the first of four.
Here's another lesson: if you're inclined to write a remarkable set of books, set it during one person's lifetime; make them spectators and/or participants at the watershed historical moments of world history at that time; make them not want to be there; and give them massive character flaws. For CS Forrester's Hornblower give him crippling self doubt and an iron-clad sense of duty at the exclusion of his family. For George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman make him a drunkard, reprobate, coward and poltroon. In this case, make Pyat a liar, an egotist, drug addict, a pervert and rapist and an anti-semite. You'll be on to a winner because the less likeable they should be the more you want to see them get out alive, but fuck knows why. If there was any natural justice they wouldn't but then life isn't fair.
So, the verdict on this one: the author has created a total villain in an environment where good people are murdered as easily as money is spent, snow falls and morals are suspended. The bugger shouldn't survive, but he does. Despite not being able to believe half his stories, you are impressed that he's survived like a cockroach or a rat... and there's three more volumes to go!
Anti-heroes.
Enjoy them but don't become one.
Here's another lesson: if you're inclined to write a remarkable set of books, set it during one person's lifetime; make them spectators and/or participants at the watershed historical moments of world history at that time; make them not want to be there; and give them massive character flaws. For CS Forrester's Hornblower give him crippling self doubt and an iron-clad sense of duty at the exclusion of his family. For George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman make him a drunkard, reprobate, coward and poltroon. In this case, make Pyat a liar, an egotist, drug addict, a pervert and rapist and an anti-semite. You'll be on to a winner because the less likeable they should be the more you want to see them get out alive, but fuck knows why. If there was any natural justice they wouldn't but then life isn't fair.
So, the verdict on this one: the author has created a total villain in an environment where good people are murdered as easily as money is spent, snow falls and morals are suspended. The bugger shouldn't survive, but he does. Despite not being able to believe half his stories, you are impressed that he's survived like a cockroach or a rat... and there's three more volumes to go!
Anti-heroes.
Enjoy them but don't become one.
October 1, 2023
This book is a well written account of Russia in the final years of the Czarist rule at the start of the 20th century depicting the collapse of the Romanov dynasty and the years of chaos that ensued from the Russian Revolution, the following Civil War and the complete collapse of southern Russia into Anarchy, banditry, and destruction as rival factions scramble for power as seen through the eyes of the protagonist.
However this character is difficult to endure because he is so flawed and unlikeable. He is massively anti-Semitic with both racial and gender prejudices and holds anyone who doesn't share his odd worldview in contempt.
Just as the reader gets caught up in his life story some crazy, naive, notion of how the world works gets broadcast. Its the characters that drift in and out of his life who are far more interesting but the reader only gets to see them through the narrator's warped perception. There are layers to this bizarre central character that could make it fun to dissect such as is he a real person that the author got to know in London well after the events depicted? Even if true the life story that unfolds is the character's point of view; how much is truth and how much embellished nonsense?
Whoever this mad Russian is, he is certainly a survivor (this first volume ends with his narrow escape from Russia to Istanbul and beyond).
But for me it's not enough for me to pursue the next volume "The Laughter of Carthage". In the end I just don't care enough about the character to pursue his mad adventure through the 20th Century no matter how well written the narrative is. It's a bold gamble by the author but in the end it just doesn't work for me.
However this character is difficult to endure because he is so flawed and unlikeable. He is massively anti-Semitic with both racial and gender prejudices and holds anyone who doesn't share his odd worldview in contempt.
Just as the reader gets caught up in his life story some crazy, naive, notion of how the world works gets broadcast. Its the characters that drift in and out of his life who are far more interesting but the reader only gets to see them through the narrator's warped perception. There are layers to this bizarre central character that could make it fun to dissect such as is he a real person that the author got to know in London well after the events depicted? Even if true the life story that unfolds is the character's point of view; how much is truth and how much embellished nonsense?
Whoever this mad Russian is, he is certainly a survivor (this first volume ends with his narrow escape from Russia to Istanbul and beyond).
But for me it's not enough for me to pursue the next volume "The Laughter of Carthage". In the end I just don't care enough about the character to pursue his mad adventure through the 20th Century no matter how well written the narrative is. It's a bold gamble by the author but in the end it just doesn't work for me.
April 5, 2020
I'm not sure why everyone thinks the protagonist is the antithesis of Moorcock. In my view, they share such a large number of similarities that it almost seems like there's an autobiographical strain to this work. Both the author and character were highly intelligent schizophrenic Jews; both were raised by poor single mothers and led eclectic lives; and both were a wee bit narcissistic.
Of course, they differ in notable ways as well. Pyat is a sex-addicted antihero with views suspiciously similar to J.R.R Tolkien's, while Moorcock is a hopefully non-sex-addicted anarchist.
I read this book almost a year ago. While Moorcock's other books have failed to impress me very much, Byzantium Endures has stayed with me. It's unusual for a Moorcock work to have such strong characters and plot, but here we are. Its most significant attribute, though, is how it evokes the period of its setting. Moorcock does this as well as Orwell or Steinbeck, which is all the more impressive because unlike those stellar social realists, Moorcock didn't have the luxury of actually inhabiting the period he wrote about. In any case, this story provides a far more compelling picture of late Tsarist and revolutionary Russia than any other, and for that reason it's one of my favorites.
Of course, they differ in notable ways as well. Pyat is a sex-addicted antihero with views suspiciously similar to J.R.R Tolkien's, while Moorcock is a hopefully non-sex-addicted anarchist.
I read this book almost a year ago. While Moorcock's other books have failed to impress me very much, Byzantium Endures has stayed with me. It's unusual for a Moorcock work to have such strong characters and plot, but here we are. Its most significant attribute, though, is how it evokes the period of its setting. Moorcock does this as well as Orwell or Steinbeck, which is all the more impressive because unlike those stellar social realists, Moorcock didn't have the luxury of actually inhabiting the period he wrote about. In any case, this story provides a far more compelling picture of late Tsarist and revolutionary Russia than any other, and for that reason it's one of my favorites.
August 14, 2022
"Unreliable narrator" novels are nothing new, but rarely has an unreliable narrator been as venal, monstrous, pathetic, treacherous, or steeped in self-loathing as Colonel Pyat. Not all readers will be able to stomach the life story of this bullshitter who's long since drunk his own kool-aid and seems overly anxious to persuade the reader he isn't Jewish... but those who can won't be able to look away. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/201...
February 1, 2023
A frustrating waste of time. Whatever interest I had in the period and setting was overwhelmed by the endless political, and anti-semitic tirades. I understand that the reader is meant to read these critically but it is just so tiresome and overdone. Better writing would have helped, as opposed to mere typing, and all attempts at humor relating to Pyat's self-delusions or the gruesome Mrs. Cornelius is pitiful. That there are three more novels in this series shows just how many unnecessary books are published.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews