Customer Reviews:
 Comrades September 1, 2008
Mr. Ivor Hibbitt (France)
v
Hammer and Tickle By Ben Lewis
A review by the Cote d'Azure Men's
Book Club
You can die laughing at Russian jokes, and the millions who died at the hands of Josef Stalin, sped on their way by the likes of Beria and his NKVD acolytes certainly would not have seen the joke had they been asked if they wanted the good news or the bad news first. The good was that Comrade Stalin had taken a personal interest. The bad ? A trip across the Styx.
There must be a good joke waiting to tickle one's fancy lurking in the vast acres of the country that has demanded loyalty at any price from the loyal subjects of the Tsar, and the comrades who thought they had found new hope under Gorbachev and Yeltsin.
The Russian character seems to be an enigma, a paradox within a sort of family puzzle, from which emerges - once the camouflage is removed - the blackest of black humours. Jokes often rely on a penalty, at worst death and there is always a sting in the tail. Hammer and Tickle, by Ben Lewis, got the odd chuckle from the Book Club members but not a lot of laughter, maybe because the Kremlin launched its military might against Georgia, rekindling fears of a new Cold War. as the book was reviewed.
. Russian jokes are delivered deadpan, a reflection of a society where to laugh at the leadership is an invitation to a spell in the Gulags Fear and terror seem to strike the Soviet psyche whenever authority is mocked or challenged. Laughter is an escape valve, it does not make the world go round for these comrades, for whom a smile might be a passport to the posthumous award of Hero of the Putin Platoon. .
A glance at the bibliography of this book tells the reader that Mr Lewis had done very extensive research. It is doubtful that he enjoyed the scholarly effort. .
Perhaps we need to distinguish between jokes and comedy, the froth of entertainment we have been able to enjoy is quite different from the jokes that emerged as an expression of satire following the shutdown of printed avenues of expression. The jokes in this book reflect, in a unique way, the experience of an oppressed people. One is reminded of the poignancy of the humour of our own coal miners and cotton workers in the not so distant past. It seems that only when a threshold of oppression that affects the individual is reached that this kind of joke emerges. How long before gallows humour is aimed at our leaders?
We in the West have been conditioned by years of mistrust about the depressed, vodka swilling comrades and, possibly more than depressed knowing we were targets of their nuclear missiles. Living under the shadow of The Bomb was not a joke, either..
Let us wave a tickling stick and take a look at a Russian joke: Boris is walking his pet sheep in the forest, they fall into a deep pit, joined minutes later by Comrade Wolf. Sheep starts baaing. Boris says," Stop your baaing, Comrade Sheep, Comrade Wolf knows which one of us to eat". Boom, boom, as Basil Brush would say.
We enjoyed reading Hammer and Tickle, which evinced guffaws rather than belly laughs Maybe they do not have ways of making you laugh in the Kremlin. A joke, comrades, honestly, just a joke.
We, as westerners accustomed to years and years of Kremlin inspired gloom and thousands of "Nyets" at the United Nations, passive victims of the Cold War and the Soviet chill against the West. have not yet lost the ability to laugh at ourselves, which, considering the sombre nature of our leaders - particularly in the UK - is an admirable tribute. The comrades laugh when the light at the end of the tunnel goes out.
Maybe their humour, and ours, does not survive translation. Sadly it is hard to enjoy fatalistic joking from a country that has repeatedly crushed the spirit of enterprise and the attempt to gain freedom, as evinced by Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the rest.
Hammer and Tickle is not your normal compendium of happy, side- splitting jokes but a reflection of a society that mocks itself in depressive self - reflection. How can one read a joke book, even an intellectual joke book with Freudian overtones, and become as miserable as Ebenezer Scrooge giving money to the poor? Baa, Humbug? Nyet, comrades, just the reality of daily life beyond the old Iron Curtain; still, it appears, no joke.
.
 Rave review for this book in the London 'Spectator' book reviews. July 20, 2008
Michael J. Brett (London, England)
0 out of 10 found this review helpful
The Spectator said that this was an interesting and entertaining read.
I have not read it yet, but that was good enough for me to put it on my wishlist. Christmas is only 123 days away after all!
|
