Roadside Picnic, Stalker and Zone - pt 1.
The novel Roadside picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, begins with a sublime piece of misdirection, an interview with a scientist via Radio, and a classic piece of Russian humour - a swift bit of build up and knock down:
"I suppose that your first serious discovery, Dr Pilman, should be considered what is now called the Pilman Radiant?"
"I don't think so. The Pilman Radiant wasn't the wasn't the first, nor was it serious, nor was it really a discovery. And it wasn't completely mine, either."
This style of humour introduces the western reader to a certain voice found elsewhere in much popular Russian prose.
Recently I heard this voice in Alex Auswaks translation of Sherlock Holmes in Russia.
It is a voice of heavy irony, dry wit. And I can think of few English books of a similar tone - Chandler at his most parodic, The Little Sister, although his descriptions of people are very different and further back, Stevenson's Suicide Club and other adventures of Prince Florizel, which is of course very well liked in Russia, is strikingly similar but also affects an upper class distancing not found here. Indeed the main protagonist of Picnic is a humble 'Stalker' a poor hunter of Alien artefacts and lab assistant, scraping by financially - as he often complains.
The ironically named 'Red' Schuhart is something of braggart - indeed, in the second piece of misdirection, he presents himself as something of a hard-case and the novel would appear to be heading for a noir territory as we are introduced to his views on the job he does and his hearty dislike of most of those around him.He confronts a guard that he apparently beat up one time over nothing, but the encounter is comedic for Red's over the top behaviour AND his description of it.
Red's moods are well used by the authors - an unreliable narrator whose ego swells and bursts according to the amount of money in his hand or alcohol in his blood.
There is a lot of alcohol in the book - most of the townsfolk drink heavily, living as they live next to the terrifying Zone, this is not surprising, when someone arrives who neither drinks nor smokes, they are immediately singled out as suspicious.
It is a testament to the writers’ abilities that they can allow Red to be maudlin without the prose, the narrative voice itself, collapsing into the same emotion. The novel itself drives along rapidly, pulling the reader with it… and it is this more than anything that is in direct contrast to the film Stalker (directed by Andrei Tarkovsky) which uses elements of the book as a source. Stalker is directed in Tarkovsky’s typical style of long takes with sparse dialogue, rendering his films dreamlike and at times overpoweringly beautiful. The visuals in Stalker are incredible, belying the arduous process that went into their creation, involving two photographers and almost three versions of the film itself.
The connection between the novel and the film is complex (the nearest equivalent I can think of is the movie Bladerunner which has as its source three different texts y three different authors).
Wikipedia says, (and is maybe wrong,) that an early version of the script based on another book by the brothers was abandoned - the brothers then rewrote this script as The Wish Machine - published in the UK as Stalker. It was THIS that I read some years ago when attending a screening of Tarkovsky’s film Stalker.
Tarkovsky then decided to adapt Roadside Picnic instead. In the third and final filming it would appear that he has used elements of both earlier sources since the movie contains ideas from one source, the wish chamber - the family background etc., whereas Roadside has scenes such as the nut throwing and the cable car into the zone sequence.
Thematically, Tarkovsky’s film fits into a body of work exploring space and the spirit. He approaches a religious sensibility in both Stalker and Solaris (although in its spirituality Solaris is an oddity in Lem’s oeuvre). Tarkovsky’s essential meditation is on the nature of Faith. Something that becomes more obvious with each of his films, not unlike the German director Wim Wenders.
There is much less of this philosophising in the novel of Roadside Picnic. What the novel does do is ask a series of intelligent questions on many different subjects - these questions flash through the mind of the main character and are rarely given a direct answer. So quickly in fact they can easily be over-looked by a reader wishing to just engage in the adventure. A popular novel with substance.
Questions such as, what is the nature of technology - what are its implications, and what sort of relationship with it should mankind have?
Questions such as; what is responsibility and is accepting responsibility the same thing as taking the blame? Should responsibility be thought of as individual or belonging instead to a group, a team or a collective (corporate or community), a whole (Mankind)?
The zone itself is a place of potentially wild transformation - everything looks normal but can shift in an instant. The abandoned Zone and the fear of both contagion and mutation have been seen as prescient, often linked by critics and reviewers to the meltdown at Chenobyl. Such a nuclear beased fear was of course common enough at the time of writing, the 1960s and 70s. Not long after both Cuba and the consequent building of the Berlin wall,in England the production of The Bed Sitting Room covered much the same ground.
The Bed Sitting room is a black farce - and interestingly falls somewhere between both Roadside Picnic and Stalker in its presentation on film. Dick Lester's black and white photography and the use of a wasteland articulate the bleakness at the heart of the Zone, whilst feeding the viewer much needed comedy., just as there s comedy in the novel.
Aside from the opening, and the prose styling itself, other sources of mirth within Roadside can be found in Red’s grumblings. These entail describing vehicles as Flying Boots, bemoaning the lack of equipment and transport in the hands of others (such as a Helicopter). And of course, acting at times like a complete buffoon. He also has a sarcastic way of talking about fallen comrades and their various strange fates, the harsh laughter of the fox hole.
All of which aids the third piece of misdirection. The reader is caught unawares by the climax of the first part of the book which involves the death of a major character (who has better luck in the film), the ominous notion of Alien technology as potential weapon and Red’s relationship with his girlfriend.
End of part one.