Viken Berberian

Last updated
Viken Berberian
Viken BERBERIAN - Comedie Du livre 2009 - P1070987.jpg
OccupationNovelist
Alma mater Columbia University (MS)
London School of Economics (MSc)
Period2002–present
GenreLiterary fiction
Notable worksDas Kapital, The Cyclist, The Structure is Rotten, Comrade

Viken Berberian is a writer [1] and essayist whose works rely on satire and defy easy categorization. [2] [3] Berberian's fiction and essays have appeared in print and online in The New York Times , [4] le Monde Diplomatique , [5] Foreign Affairs , Financial Times , Granta , BOMB, The Nation , and the New York Review of Books . His novels have been translated to French, Hebrew, Italian, [6] German and Dutch. They are marked by keen wit and a sense of economic and political injustice.

Contents

Biography

Berberian was raised in an Armenian-speaking household in Beirut. The family moved to Los Angeles at the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war, and this experience helped shape his first novel, The Cyclist. His second novel, Das Kapital, which he has described as falling somewhere between Groucho Marx and Karl Marx, was influenced by his work in the financial industry. He has graduate degrees from Columbia University and the London School of Economics (LSE). [7]

Awards and honors

Berberian's first novel, The Cyclist, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection. [8] He has received recognition from the Centre national du livre (CNL) in France (2009), the William Saroyan award for international writing at Stanford University (short-list, 2003), the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (2015), and the Canada Council for the Arts (2018).

Critical recognition

The Cyclist was published six months after 9/11 and was widely reviewed. [9] It deals with the thoughts of a nameless suicide bomber on a mission to use a bicycle race in Lebanon as a ruse for an insidious, international bombing conspiracy. The protagonist, the eponymous "cyclist," shares with readers his obsession with food. In the Boston Globe , Liza Weisstuch described the book as a "stunning debut ... Throughout, Berberian heaps on profound and frequently witty insight into often unexplored territory ... It's a tantalizing trip for the senses that also challenges the sensibilities." [10]

On January 1, 2002, Kirkus Reviews wrote: "First-novelist Berberian, a New Yorker, has somehow—the somehow is actually highly skilled writing—managed to create a believable world in the mind of a young man about to end the lives of hundreds of innocents in what can no longer be called an unbelievable act...Deeply creepy, funny and perfectly timed." [11] The novel sparked controversy for its genre and subject matter. In its 2002 Year in Ideas issue, Daniel Zalewski of the New York Times Magazine grouped Berberian, Zadie Smith, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace under the "hysterical realism" banner. [12] Commenting on Berberian's style, Colin Walters wrote in the Washington Times that "despite its comparative brevity, The Cyclist is not a quick read, if only because the narrative doubles back on itself so much as it does, somewhat in the manner of the French nouveau roman a half-century ago...This is an odd little book, different." [13] The Believer magazine described him as a "risk-taker who allows his imagination free rein." [3] In its autumn 2002 issue, the Virginia Quarterly Review commented: "Very few authors have attempted a narrative portrayal concerning the relationship of a terrorist to the act of terror he feels compelled to commit. In his first novel, Viken Berberian masterfully tackles this notion." [14]

"Das Kapital: a novel of love & money markets" was published by Editions Gallmeister (France, 2009) [15] and Simon & Schuster (United States, 2007), more than a year before the subprime crisis. It tells the story of a trader trying to profit from market declines. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote: "No, this isn't a new translation of Marx's obtuse and history altering tome, but a slim, impeccably cool new novel ... Berberian juxtaposes the cold, profit-driven trading environment of Wall Street, with the lush antiquated calm of Marseille, France." [16] Das Kapital emblematizes the existential soul of the investment industry in the new millennium. Its protagonist, Wayne, is an unscrupulous, legendary short seller. Berberian's real zest is for viciously satirizing the demigods of Wall Street with self-conscious language that is by turns lyrical and lacerating. Das Kapital is, as the title would suggest, both an homage and a ruthlessly funny take-down of Karl Marx's exhaustive, unfinished analysis of the capitalist system. It "captures financial lingo with hilarious panache." [17]

In her 2013 essay, "Writing Energy Security after 9/11: Oil, Narrative, and Globalization," Georgiana Banita of Universität Bamberg noted: "The juxtaposition of finance jargon and poetic language was pioneered by Viken Berberian's Das Kapital: a novel of love and money markets, which is doubly impressive in its ability to predict the financial crisis (the book appeared in 2007) and its insight, deeper than Wayne's, into why Karl Marx's Das Kapital is especially useful as a shorthand for the entwinement of finance, social relations, and globalization in the twilight of the American empire." [18]

In June 2014, Stipe Grgas, Chair of the American Studies Program, University of Zagreb, noted: "If people in American Studies had paid more heed to writers such as Don DeLillo, they would have had to take cognizance of the fact that DeLillo chose to title the last section of his novel Underworld (1998) Das Kapital. ... Viken Berberian's later novel, Das Kapital, only substantiates the claim that writers have been more perceptive of what was happening in the United States than those for whom the polity is the object of professional work." [19]

In May 2019, Berberian and French illustrator Yann Kebbi published a graphic novel, "The Structure is Rotten, Comrade," by Fantagraphics Books. A French edition appeared in 2017 by Editions Actes Sud under the title, "La Structure est Pourrie, Camarade." The original manuscript was written in English by Berberian. Set in Moscow, Yerevan and Paris, it describes the story of an architect bent on destroying the collective memory of a city. The satirical book received praise in Le Monde by Mathias Enard as "more than a parody of conquering architecture... full of hilarious jabs." [20] The Washington Post noted that the book, an honorable mention, was among "the best graphic novels, memoirs and story collections of 2019...that combine uncommon originality, plotting, and artwork." [21]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karl Marx</span> German-born philosopher (1818–1883)

Karl Marx was a German-born philosopher, economist, political theorist, historian, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His best-known works are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto and the three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1894); the latter employs his theory of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism, representing his greatest intellectual achievement. Marx's ideas and theories and their subsequent development, collectively known as Marxism, have exerted enormous influence on modern intellectual, economic, and political history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Ford</span> American author

Richard Ford is an American novelist and short story writer, best known for his novels featuring Frank Bascombe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rana Dasgupta</span> British Indian novelist and essayist

Rana Dasgupta is a British Indian novelist and essayist. He grew up in Cambridge, England, and studied at Balliol College, Oxford, the Conservatoire Darius Milhaud in Aix-en-Provence, and, as a Fulbright Scholar, the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 2010 The Daily Telegraph called him one of Britain's best novelists under 40. In 2014, Le Monde named him one of 70 people who are making the world of tomorrow. Among the prizes won by Dasgupta's works are the Commonwealth Prize and the Ryszard Kapuściński Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saïd Sayrafiezadeh</span> American dramatist

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is an American memoirist, playwright and fiction writer living in New York City. He won a 2010 Whiting Award for his memoir, When Skateboards Will Be Free. He is the author of two story collections, American Estrangement (2021) and Brief Encounters With the Enemy, which was short-listed for the 2014 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction. He serves on the board of directors for the New York Foundation for the Arts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joshua Cohen (writer)</span> American novelist and story writer

Joshua Aaron Cohen is an American novelist and story writer, best known for his works Witz (2010), Book of Numbers (2015), and Moving Kings (2017). Cohen won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel The Netanyahus (2021).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chloe Aridjis</span> Mexican-American novelist and writer

Chloe Aridjis is a Mexican and American novelist and writer. Her novel Book of Clouds (2009) was published in eight countries, and won the Prix du Premier Roman Étranger. Her second novel, Asunder was published in 2013 to unanimous acclaim. Her third novel, Sea Monsters (2019), was awarded the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2020. She is the eldest daughter of Mexican poet and diplomat Homero Aridjis and American Betty F. de Aridjis, an environmental activist and translator. She is the sister of film maker Eva Aridjis. She has a doctorate in nineteenth-century French poetry and magic from the University of Oxford.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Madeleine Thien</span> Canadian short story writer and novelist

Madeleine Thien is a Canadian short story writer and novelist. The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature has considered her work as reflecting the increasingly trans-cultural nature of Canadian literature, exploring art, expression and politics inside Cambodia and China, as well as within diasporic East Asian communities. Thien's critically acclaimed novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, won the 2016 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards for Fiction. It was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and the 2017 Rathbones Folio Prize. Her books have been translated into more than 25 languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gary Shteyngart</span> Russian-American writer

Gary Shteyngart is a Soviet-born American writer. He is the author of five novels and a memoir. Much of his work is satirical.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Alarcón</span> Peruvian-American novelist, journalist and radio producer

Daniel Alarcón is a Peruvian-American novelist, journalist and radio producer. He is co-founder, host and executive producer of Radio Ambulante, an award-winning Spanish language podcast distributed by NPR. Currently, he is an assistant professor of broadcast journalism at the Columbia University Journalism School and writes about Latin America for The New Yorker.

<i>Das Kapital, Volume II</i> 1885 book by Karl Marx

Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Volume II: The Process of Circulation of Capital is the second of three volumes of Capital: Critique of Political Economy. It was prepared by Friedrich Engels from notes left by Karl Marx and published in 1885.

Neue Marx-Lektüre or NML is a revival and interpretation of Karl Marx's critique of political economy, which originated during the mid-1960s in both Western and Eastern Europe and opposed both Marxist–Leninist and social democratic interpretations of Marx. Neue Marx-Lektüre covers a loose group of authors primarily from German-speaking countries who reject certain historicizing and empiricist interpretations of Marx's analysis of economic forms, many of which are argued to spring from Friedrich Engels role in the early Marxist workers' movement.

Georgi Tenev is a Bulgarian novelist, short story writer, playwright and film/TV screenwriter.

Maria Joan Hyland is an ex-lawyer and the author of three novels: How the Light Gets In (2004), Carry Me Down (2006) and This is How (2009). Hyland is a lecturer in creative writing in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester. Carry Me Down (2006) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Hawthornden Prize and the Encore Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karl Marx in film</span>

Karl Marx and his ideas have been represented in film in genres ranging from documentary to fictional drama, art house and comedy.

Benjamin Anastas is an American novelist, memoirist, journalist and book reviewer born in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He teaches literature and writing at Bennington College and is on the faculty of the Bennington Writing Seminars MFA program.

<i>Das Kapital</i> Foundational theoretical text of Karl Marx

Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, also known as Capital, is a foundational theoretical text in materialist philosophy and critique of political economy written by Karl Marx, published as three volumes in 1867, 1885, and 1894. The culmination of his life's work, the text contains Marx's analysis of capitalism, to which he sought to apply his theory of historical materialism "to lay bare the economic laws of modern society", following from classical political economists such as Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill. The text's second and third volumes were completed from Marx's notes after his death and published by his colleague Friedrich Engels. Das Kapital is the most cited book in the social sciences published before 1950.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Appignanesi</span> Canadian writer and editor

Richard Appignanesi is a Canadian writer and editor. He was the originating editor of the internationally successful illustrated For Beginners book series, as well as the author of several of the series' texts. He is a founding publisher and editor of Icon Books. He was founding editor of the Manga Shakespeare series. He is a former executive editor of the journal Third Text, and reviews editor of the policy studies journal Futures.

<i>Grundrisse</i> Unfinished manuscript by Marx on critique of economics

The Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie is an unfinished manuscript by the German philosopher Karl Marx. The series of seven notebooks was rough-drafted by Marx, chiefly for purposes of self-clarification, during the winter of 1857–8. Left aside by Marx in 1858, it remained unpublished until 1939.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrés Barba</span> Spanish writer

Andrés Barba is a Spanish writer and translator graduated in Hispanic Philology from the Complutense University of Madrid, with a degree in Philosophy. He has taught at Bowdoin College, the Complutense University of Madrid and Princeton University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Heinrich</span> German political scientist

Michael Heinrich is a German historian of philosophy, political scientist, and mathematician, specialising in the critical study of the development of Marx's thought. Heinrich's work, influenced by Elmar Altvater and the Neue Marx-Lektüre of Hans-Georg Backhaus and Helmut Reichelt is characterised by its focus on the points of ambivalence and inconsistency in the work of Marx. Through this theme, Heinrich challenges both the closed system he identifies with "worldview Marxism", as well as teleological narratives of Marx's intellectual development throughout his life. He is best known for his 1991 study of the theoretical field of classical political economy The Science of Value, his introductory text to the critique of political economy An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital, and his ongoing project to produce a multi-volume biography of Marx, of which the first volume of a projected four was published in 2020.

References

  1. ↑ Rakoff, Joanna Smith (March–April 2002). "First: The Brutal Lyricism of Viken Berberian". Poets & Writers. Retrieved 25 February 2012.
  2. ↑ "Das Kapital: A Novel of Love and Money Markets". 2007-04-16.
  3. 1 2 "UNDERAPPRECIATED IN 2002*". The Believer. 2003-03-03.
  4. ↑ Berberian, Viken (2003-07-03). "No Remembrance Of the Things They Passed - New York Times". The New York Times . Retrieved 2012-02-18.
  5. ↑ Berberian, Viken (2008-02-03). "The Consolidated Republic of Nowhere - Le Monde diplomatique - English edition". Mondediplo.com. Retrieved 2012-02-18.
  6. ↑ "Italian publisher Minimum Fax homepage". 2007-02-02. Retrieved 2012-02-24.
  7. ↑ Gros, Emmanuel (April 2013). "Viken Berberian interview". Literature Across Frontiers. Retrieved 2013-05-23.
  8. ↑ "Discover Great New Writers: 2002 Discover Award Archive - Barnes & Noble". Barnesandnoble.com. 2011-07-19. Retrieved 2012-02-18.
  9. ↑ Berberian, Viken (2003-06-06). The Cyclist. Simon & Schuster. ISBN   9780743249393 . Retrieved 2012-02-25.
  10. ↑ Weisstuch, Liza (August 18, 2002). "When Terrorism And Tahini Mix". The Boston Globe.
  11. ↑ "Kirkus Reviews". 2002-01-01. Retrieved 2012-02-24.
  12. ↑ Zalewski, Daniel (2002-12-15). "New York Times Magazine". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-12-15.
  13. ↑ Walters, Colin (February 24, 2002). "Terror studies, with love and apricots: The Cyclist by Viken Berberian". The Washington Times. Retrieved 2012-02-24.
  14. ↑ "Notes on Current Books, Autumn 2002". The Virginia Quarterly Review. vqronline.org. Autumn 2002. Retrieved 2021-01-29.
  15. ↑ "French publisher Editions Gallmeister homepage". 2009. Retrieved 2014-05-08.
  16. ↑ Leone, Michael (2007-06-18). "Review/ Wall Street trader creates havoc and profits, then falls in love". San Francisco Chronicle.
  17. ↑ Wilson-Goldie, Kaelen (2007-07-10). "The Daily Star" . Retrieved 2014-05-13.
  18. ↑ Banita, Georgiana (2013). "Beyond 9/11: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Twenty-First Century US American Culture". Writing Energy Security After 9/11: Oil, Narrative, and Globalization. Lang, Frankfurt. Retrieved 9 September 2015.
  19. ↑ Grgas, Stipe (June 2014). "On Violence". Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation, University of Zagreb, Croatia, No. 2, Year 2014. Retrieved 29 January 2021.
  20. ↑ "Berberian est Kebbi Cassent la Baraque". Le Monde. 2017-02-02. Retrieved 4 February 2017.
  21. ↑ Cavna, Michael (2019-11-21). "The Best Graphic Novels, Memoirs, and Story Collections of 2019". The Washington Post.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.