'Latvians Are Everywhere' by Otto Ozols: A New Face of Modern [Latvian] Literature or A Mirror of the World Today?

Source: janisroze.lv

I walk along the numerous shelves of diverse manifestations of knowledge, and stop at the shelf stating 'Latvian Literature'. So there I stand, scanning through the many new and old masterpieces of new and old wizards of domestic literature. What immediately catches my eye is the very patriotic cover of a book 'Latvians Are Everywhere' [Latvieši ir Visur] by Otto Ozols. It also states that it's a special limited edition dedicated to the country's birthday in November. As follows, this national thriller as named by some was first published in 2010. I'm intrigued, though I'm not able peak inside as it's covered in extra plastic. However, it is visible to the eye that the cover contains engraved Latvian ornaments and has four short reviews on the back cover made by publicly well-known figures, including the wizards of contemporary Latvian literature. One of the main conclusions the locally famous reviewers try to feed to the audience is that the book is like a medicine for those that have lost their feeling of national significance. The book is pricier than other books, so I have my moment of doubt whether I should spend 18 something Euros and get this 'boost of national significance'. Well, 'Latvians Are Everywhere' and they win me over, also because I'm intrigued to learn about how people describe their experiences of living abroad. However, not everything looking splendid and promising from the outside is able to keep up with the created image when extra plastic cover is removed...

The Bits of Nostalgic Past

The story starts its natural flow quite lyrically introducing the main character through his story of escape from the Soviet Union in one of the last years of its' existence. Even if you're born close to the end of the Soviet Empire or in the 'New' world already, you can easily relate to this story of escape or any other, since while growing up you've heard many similar ones about the life and broken dreams in the USSR. The lyrical introduction takes you in so deep that you automatically crave for more as you can feel the character and you've just got yourself a momentary literary and nostalgic pleasure both at the same time. So the story goes that the main character gets himself approved for a participation in a sports event in Sweden and from there escapes to Denmark and becomes a Soviet refugee. His journey continues to Germany, where he meets an experienced, much older [than him] Latvian guy, who works as a private Currier, driving his minivan and delivering different important and maybe even a bit tainted packages around the world. So the main character is given an opportunity to work for the man, from whom he learns a lot, especially about national significance and life as such. At this point, you become so tempted to absorb more and more, you feel like glued to the character and his further adventures, as well as to the descriptive details about developments in the world and general thoughts and challenges of Latvians that existed back then just before and after the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

Porsche and Miss Hilton - Living a Teenage Dream?

From the start the author has certainly created a strong feeling of reality with describing the escape from USSR or being a Soviet refugee, making you strongly believe all these events actually happened or could have happened. Unfortunately, it changes through the course of the book. At some point you realize that the story has suddenly become too fictional for your taste, although it happens gradually.You basically start to feel trapped in the story, as you have an unbearable desire to know what happens next, but certain events described make you feel reluctant and guilty of not wanting to continue reading it. Okay, maybe with working very hard in very dangerous places as a Currier you can save up enough money to buy a Porsche, no questions there. However, the character having a girlfriend that is supposedly 'Paris Hilton' (the author never mentioned the real name of his character's girlfriend, just that her father owns a hotel chain and that she's blond) altogether makes an impression of living a some sort of cliche-ic teenage dream of someone, maybe even living it just through these pages...

Latvians Are Everywhere...

Yes, they are... the author has proved this hypothesis through many meaningful conversations that the main character had with different Latvians and foreigners in different corners of the world. The idea of 'Latvians being Everywhere' is discussed by different people in the story trying to prove the fact that Latvians, even historically have participated if not in all then in most of the important events in the world. Sometimes in the background, but they were there. It does not totally convince me to believe these long monologues that the author has recorded in his book (although they look like dialogues), since description of the teenage dream happened a bit earlier in the book spoiling the feeling of reality and possible authenticity of the facts completely. The author also tried to place his main character in the middle of an important event indirectly by connecting Afghans that lived across his house to a possible bombing incident. Consequently, the intake of information about all the amazing facts proving presence of Latvians in important events and lives of important people of the world was for me surrounded with a great dose of skepticism, so I cannot really say that the promised therapy of raising national significance really worked, at least not for me. Some of the mono(dia)logues are so long (stretched to more than 10 pages) that at some point it makes you restless wanting the storyteller to stop talking while BBQ-ing and start doing something. That was particularly the effect of Chapter 20. Apart from that, the hypothesis that 'Latvians Are Everywhere' is proved simply by the portrayed life story of the main character as a foreigner himself and all the interesting details of different places he has been to, as well through stories of Latvians and representatives of other nationalities that he has met there and spoken to.

A New Face of Modern [Latvian] Literature or A Mirror of the World Today?

It's a brave statement, however I use it because there were some discrepancies and faults that I could not ignore while reading this particular literary work and I will lay them out further. First of all, typing mistakes. Maybe I am a bit spoiled reader, but in my reader's experience I have mainly encountered books with only one or no typing mistakes, no matter how long or short the book was. In this particular case, I counted at least 3 or more typing mistakes, which weirdly enough made this whole process of reading a bit irritating. Maybe I am just old-fashioned and '3 or more typing mistakes' today is the new '1 or none typing mistake' of the past? Secondly, although the author paid a great attention to describing all the significant events and places Latvians have been involved in through different historically documented and approved or unapproved statements in dialogues of his characters, it is clear that the story of this book is based on the life experiences of real persons. It is especially clear, when in Chapter 20 some fictional Latvian artist with family name Jāņsons living in the U.S. suddenly is referred to as Jākabsons (p.226). It sort of creates a feeling that this literary work was written very fast like it was supposed to meet '5 pm deadline' for submission, so in the whole rush some details were left unnoticed. Thirdly, the way the story develops throughout the whole book. At first, the author starts with a lyrical introduction into his adventures, even notices what is around him and that it is autumn outside, but then at some point it all becomes very intense, creating an impression that the story was written in a hasty manner, or there was no time to think how to improve the sounding or layout of the story in some places - like in the case of many long mono(dia)logues told by one character in a single BBQ party. My overall conclusion is that maybe this book in its presentation is a mirror of today's world and society at large: the quickness of processes, short attention spans, amount of posted posts per second on social media channels, the life in the Internet and information-overload era, where you're one click away from failure? Or maybe it is the new accepted or adapted standard in modern [Latvian] literature (acknowledging the fact that 'Latvians Are Everywhere' was proclaimed as the best selling book of 2011 in Latvia)?

I apologize... I've never written a bad review about a book. Maybe that's just a bad example of the author's work, however I am not extremely tempted to check out his other literary creations, even if they hold a greater promise. I'd say to myself - first, write a book yourself and then judge... however, I just did the opposite. Overall, there is also one very positive aspect of this book - apart from stereotypical connection of Afghans and a bombing incident, it portrays [and indirectly encourages] friendly affections between representatives of different nationalities not putting any nation higher than the other, although the book itself is about national significance of being 'Latvian'.