Eleanor Rigby: The Chronicles of Great Love and Fall of Great Empire

By Zamir Osorov

This novel is as a keepsake. It comes to us from times irreversable, when the Kyrgyz Republic was still solidly embedded in the USSR and few people dared to dream about an independent future. For most Kyrgyz, contacts with the West were limited to the one-way traffic of Beatles-cassettes brought about by Soviet soldiers serving in Eastern Europe. In those late seventies, early eighties, a period of stability in Soviet history, the events of this story take place. Four students experimenting with telepathy turn upside down their home village when one of them fixes in his dream a date with an english girl. In expectation of her arrival, the students agitate the whole population to tidy up their houses, the streets and in the meantime their morality. Kyrgyz tradition prescribes hospitality, but the isolated village lacks of many elementary conveniences. By depicting the struggle with the bureaucratic authorities which the students have to fight in order to improve the life circumstances, the writer shows the defects of the political system. The novel is a cultural critique, a profound complaint against the mentality of inertness fostered throughout decades of Soviet rule. Though the students are oriented to the West, they love their homeland and keep hoping for a better future.
Now that reality has surpassed all dreams and Kyrgyzstan has become a democratic republic, people ardently try to get rid of the past. Contacts with the West flourish in the form of international organisations which aim to develop a civil society in Central Asia. As a journalist, the author is watching the changes in his country attentively. His novel was an invitation for the West to come, but the story doesnt end with it. We can expect a following-up, since these times of transformation are fascinating for all who are interested in the young republics of the former USSR.
The editor,
Kirsten Verpaalen (anthropologist)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Jun 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781482823585

Zamir Osorov

The Kyrgyz philosopher and esthetician Begaly Tagaev in his monograph Naziktik temasy Kyrgyz adabiatynda(Tenderness as esthetic category and its dominance in Kyrgyz modern and ancient literature) came to firm conclusion that our world and mankind find way to harmony and peace just only through the laws of justice and tenderness. John Lennon and Leo Tolstoy had been right: we must do everything to escape hate, war - and turn to love and peace. Moreover, every living creature in the world and even any object and phenomenon or manifestation of objective and subjective world should be considered as unique and extraordinary thing that requires appropriate with reverent attitude and comprehension. For the simple reason - our world was born from these awe and rapture and supported by their mode and laws. Than further forward moving humanity, than clearer, deeper and fuller will aware that one of the main obstacles to its development are the rudeness and cynicism belonged and coherent his nature too long, which was being imposed by his past and present imperfection and incompetence.

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Copyright © 2014 by Zamir Osorov.

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Contents

Preface

From author

Part one

The bandwidth signal

The antidarwinizm of love

The pearly shell of mollusk

How Pity

Perfect vision

An English limerick

It’s just a wonder

The magic of love

Part two

The great hit of master

Let’s go to live forever

The paradoxes of high improved and obscured societies

The plain comparisons for our shepherds

The shop of political dolls and our idiosyncrasy

Namaz for Wests values

The enigma of love from first seeing

The secret of woman’s beauty

Instead of epilogue

Ode to John Lennon

Preface

This novel is as a keepsake. It comes to us from times irreversable, when the Kyrgyz Republic was still solidly embedded in the USSR and few people dared to dream about an independent future. For most Kyrgyz, contacts with the West were limited to the one-way traffic of Beatles-cassettes brought about by Soviet soldiers serving in Eastern Europe. In those late seventies, early eighties, a period of stability in Soviet history, the events of this story take place. Four students experimenting with telepathy turn upside down their home village when one of them fixes in his dream a date with an english girl. In expectation of her arrival, the students agitate the whole population to tidy up their houses, the streets and in the meantime their morality. Kyrgyz tradition prescribes hospitality, but the isolated village lacks of many elementary conveniences. By depicting the struggle with the bureaucratic authorities which the students have to fight in order to improve the life circumstances, the writer shows the defects of the political system. The novel is a cultural critique, a profound complaint against the mentality of inertness fostered throughout decades of Soviet rule. Though the students are oriented to the West, they love their homeland and keep hoping for a better future.

Now that reality has surpassed all dreams and Kyrgyzstan has become a democratic republic, people ardently try to get rid of the past. Contacts with the West flourish in the form of international organisations which aim to develop a civil society in Central Asia. As a journalist, the author is watching the changes in his country attentively. His novel was an invitation for the West to come, but the story doesn’t end with it. We can expect a following-up, since these times of transformation are fascinating for all who are interested in the young republics of the former USSR.

The editor,

Kirsten Verpaalen (anthropologist),

1997 year

From author

This novel was been started in 1978 and ended in 1990 year and published on Kyrgyz and Russian in 1992 year. So I counted needful adding some latest commentaries for better understanding how and where and from such reasons and environment originated story and for which kind of results and utterly new reality turned eventually all our world.

Once more this is story about truly love, a deep and strong attraction that have rooted in the hearts two persons, primarily have not any chances for meeting and more even to knowing about each other’s existing. She was born in the small town in England, he—in the remotest mountain village of Kyrgyzstan, the part of Central Asia in the 60th years of last millennium. It was time of Cold War, when our world was deeply divided and polarized for two large antagonizing parts—West and East, and between free world and non-free part of it, trapped by the authoritarian comrades, have erected the strong Iron Fence.

It’s fairly easy to understand that such epoch was absolutely fatal for love between two honest and kind persons, those lives were divided with such great distances, cultural, political and many others obstacles. From one hand old communists of USSR proceeded creating totally insulated world of happiness and glory for labor class and from other hand the West countries gone with own way, protecting themselves from aggressively totalitarian regimes, communistic ideology and addition to all the world faced to perspective of total destruction from suddenly sparking nuclear war.

Nevertheless, the truly love has the greatest transformational, creative and transitional power and we just not imagine what might to happen in our live, time and world if only we able really fell in love from young days as heroes of this story.

For better understanding I conveyed some parts the story with late written poems and references.

So, dear reader, when you submerged to the ground of this novel, written in the epoch of Iron Fence and starting looking around with the eyes of people living in the other side of border, you will also appreciated what happened later through poetic revelations and recollections caused by some great historical, political, and cultural events, belonged to that period.

2014 year

010_a_reigun.jpg

The valley in central part of Kyrgyzstan

in the road between Toktogul and Karakul towns

Part one

I was ready to go around the whole world

to find somebody…

R. Berns.

I

It all began when we were once, and it seemed to us forever, carried away by telepathy. People from time immemorial believed in the existence of this phenomenon, but untill now science didn’t find an answer to its physical nature. Known is only, that at critical moments, moments of intense emotion or shock, people begin to understand each other, even though they may be separated from each other by unsurpassable mountains and forests or immense seas between them.

A case with the sailor, who fallen over a board of a ship on a stormy night, is typical example. Struggling in icy-cold water, the sailor a moment before his death had passed tragic information of his desperate situation to his son, who was three thousand kilometres away. The son woke up in the middle of the night crying loudly: Daddy is drowning! My Daddy is drowning! Help him! Choking with tears he told his mother, that in his dream he had seen with unusual clarity how his father had fallen over board of a ship into icy cold water. Less then two weeks passed and everything got confirmed as the news about the death of the boy’s father reached the fishermen settlement.

Another case which took place in Michael Lomonosov’s life is also well-known. The father of Russian great scientist a fisherman from Archangelsk, dying on one of the islands of the White sea communicated to his son, who at that time studied in Germany. As a result Lomonosov not only informed about his father’s death, but identified as well the place where it all was happening. The news reached him also through the dream. When comrades of his father, the merchants, arrived in Germany and told him that his father had died on one of the islands and that they failed to find his corpse, Lomonosov named the island, where the body was found afterwards.

And lastly a quite ordinary example, of a girl, working at a machine tool at the plant. Suddenly and apparently without any reason she felt an intense depression and hopeless despair. Nothing similarly had ever happened to her. Suffering from an awful headache she asked for leave and came home, where she found out that her mother had died of a sudden heart attack.

We can cited endlessly such convincing evidence of the reality of this mysterious. But there’s always a tragic and gloomy veil has stretched out upon everything concerning with telepathy. That phenomenon takes place only in such heartbreaking and exceptional cases, connected with death and destruction. In ordinarily life it doesn’t display itself completely, while that no mean that it doesn’t exist at all. We are just unaware about its existence.

One day, maybe in a not too distant future, when the riddle of this unique biological phenomena will be properly studied, developed and improved, mankind will take great advantage from such way of communication.

It would be a real revolution in our life. Just imagine what may happen, when all people will find themselves able to understand each other. Any time of day or night you could ring any person up, without any cables, wires, commutators, receivers, without telegraphists and telephone operators. It seems to me only after such achievement we will going to be completely civilised and sensible creatures, when each human being’s soul opened to the outer world, all innermost thoughts and feelings have been understandable and accessible to everybody, so that everybody must be urge to get rid from all his not so good, maybe evil thoughts, plans and aspirations. Oh! By the time we would turn into perfect angels, wouldn’t we?

Certainly together with benefits we face up with a great number of new problems! For example how to reject undesired calls, and find way to people you need without disturbing others, how to protect yourself from thieves-telepaths, robbers and gangsters? There’s nothing surprising about it, as any great discovery might be used both for good and evil. And difficulties would be tremendous, but quite solvable, as publicity would be general and absolute. Supposing, someone doesn’t want to talk to you, to listen to your complaints, for example, your chief, just hangs up the receiver and all, and you could nothing to do with them, but right in this moment, when your line and hopes breaks off, a lot of other sensible and kind people around the globe would get in touch with you, who sympathise and understand you, they will not only listen to you, but could give you valuable advice, and could even ring your chief up as well to warn him not to make such obvious breaches henceforth, if such breaches were made or show completely other ways and possibilities.

Do you understand the full and exclusively value of such a call, which you lack so much in your real life? And if it surfaced that it is yours guilty, own quarrelsome nature or your professional inadequacy produced crisis the same contacting people will comfort you, they will find some way out from this conflict situation—and everything will be done without bloodshed. And when the things roll down with such way we ourselves will become much better, and all kinds of filthiness, such as bureaucracy, corruption will come to an end; the deepest and darkest waters, and most secluded corners will be brightly lighted. But if some crazy person tries to do something filthy, hundreds, thousands of courageous telephath-Holmses and telephath-Puarrots will rush at once after the bandit.

Mankind will be like to some extent some gigantic cetacean, able to communicate with each other at a distance of hundreds and thousands kilometres, owing to deep-water channels of communication in the ocean. In past centuries, when steamers, tankers, submarine, boats, aircraft carries and other superpower sea techniques had not been invented yet the quality of such kind of submarine communication was perfect, and cashalots lived in all-planetary tribe, exchanging words with each other even if they were on quite opposite parts of the Earth.

Reviews for Eleanor Rigby

[annarama · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

it's the story of a canadian woman who, in her mid thirties, finally comes face to face with the son she gave birth to/gave away when she was a teenager. it has some very sad moments, but is also 'classic coupland' in the sense that it offers hope and optimism.

[jaemaree · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

coupland's tribute to loneliness. i can't wait to check out j-pod!

[debbie.menzel · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Douglas Coupland is about my age and I've been reading his books since the beginning of his career. I always feel like I can relate to what he's writing and he's a great writer and story teller.

[adonisguilfoyle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I must confess to never having heard of Douglas Coupland until another of his novels, 'Generation X', was recommended to me. I read the blurbs and reviews for both books on Amazon, but chose 'Eleanor Rigby' as my introduction to Coupland's writing, because I could idenitfy with the main character, Liz Dunn. I won't tell you how much, but observations about turning bitter at 30 and being 'invisible' struck a nerve!This is an emotional story about a modern Eleanor Rigby, from the Beatles song - 'All the lonely people' - whose blank, uneventful and empty life is changed forever when she is reunited with her son. The first person narrative from Liz is honest, funny, slightly random and bittersweet - she is who she is, although she does harp on about what it is to be lonely a lot. Her family is mildly dysfunctional, or 'messy', as she calls them, and she has no real friends, only colleagues and acquaintances. Jeremy, the son she had at sixteen and gave away, is possibly the most interesting and rewarding relationship she has - but their happiness at finding each other is cruelly brief.I could sympathise with Liz's private thoughts, but I don't think that's necessary to enjoy the story. Coupland's writing is sharp, humorous and poetic (my favourite description has to be of the Gothic architecture in Vienna, which is so intricate that it is almost 'dreaming'), and it's impossible not to believe that Liz is what she states she is: real. My one minor quibble is that the ending is perhaps a little bit too neat, like the romantic daydream of a lonely person rather than a convincing twist, but I won't begrudge Liz her happy ending. A thoughtful book I shall no doubt read again and again, highlighting quotes and psychoanalysing myself as I go.

[nickelini · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is one of those rare books that is both laugh out loud funny, sad and thoughtful, all at the same time. It made me a huge fan of Douglas Coupland.

[extrajoker · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

first line: "I had always thought that a person born blind and given sight later on in life through the miracles of modern medicine would feel reborn.""Look at all the lonely people." Loneliness is definitely a prominent theme of this book: the experience of loneliness; the ways we cloak it; why and how we overcome it. It sounds like a real downer, but it's got some wonderful imagery and humor. One of my favorite quotes:"the gas station...employees were the handsomest men any of us had ever seen, sculpted from gold, and with voices like songs. And there they were, in a gas station in the middle of nowhere, going to waste. They ought to have been perched on jagged lava cliffs having their hearts ripped out as sacrifices to the gods."

[simonea_533972 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A nicely written book about loneliness. I really felt for the main character.

[sadiebabie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was the fifth Coupland book I read, & I think its up there as a favourite with Girlfriend in a Coma. I liked the way the story built to its conclusion, although that conclusion was a little too soppy for my tastes. I thought the basic themes of the book were interesting - how people can change those around them, & how parents & the children they had put up for adoption attempt to come to terms with being in one another's lives again. As with a lot of Coupland's stuff, he takes reality & mixes in a bit of fantasy to mess with the story a little, & as I've always found he makes it work as he doesn't take it too far. Good book, nothing too taxing.

[meggo_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An excellent, bittersweet tale of lost love, loneliness, discovery and tragedy. Told from the viewpoint of a lonely woman whose life is irrevocably changed when her 20-year old son, given up for adoption at birth, finds her and puts her name on his medicalert bracelet. I greatly enjoyed this book, and had a hard time putting it down - so instead I read it cover to cover.

[autumnc_12 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love the protagonist in Eleanor Rigby...I think I might be her. What else can I say about it? A man writing a woman and doing it so well, this turned me on to other Coupland novels that I didn't feel as connected with. The radical and highly unlikely ending doesn't take anything away from it, either.

[ahs7wolfy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Liz Dunn is one of the lonely people. The only others she interacts with on a regular basis are work colleagues and her family consisting of her mother, her brother William and her sister Leslie. But that's all about to change when she gets a phone call from the hospital to say they've admitted a patient who had no identification other than a MedicAlert bracelet which had Liz down as the person to be contacted. Arriving at the hospital she finds a young man named Jeremy who turns out to be the son she gave up for adoption after giving birth to at the age of sixteen. Jeremy has primary progressive multiple sclerosis and as he isn’t taking care of himself his girlfriend has kicked him out. Liz agrees to let him stay with her so they can get to know each other better while there’s still time.The novel switches back and forth between when Liz meets Jeremy and several years later with reminiscences from her past including finding a dead body and a school trip to Rome for Liz and her classmates. While it touches on some dark subjects such as loneliness and death the tone of the book never becomes bleak and is often imbued with touches of humour and even descends into farce at one point. Despite the constant time shifts this story is easy to follow and works really well in getting to know the main character. A very quick and enjoyable read.

[wflooter480 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good book, but not great. I emotionally connected with Liz, a frumperific, lonely thirty-something and I adored her son just as she did. However, I felt that the last fifth of the book kind of took a left turn and I felt like while it made the book come fullcircle, it also lessened it. I don't quite know how to explain it without spoiling the ending, but it just felt contrived. Don't get me wrong, I liked the ending, but that's also the reason why I don't like it. That doesn't make sense, but there you go.

[mickyfine · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Liz Dunn has verged on being invisible for most of her life and she spends much of her time attempting to avoid loneliness. Her dull life is irrevocably altered when she receives a phone call and discovers her name is on the Medic Alert bracelet of a young man she's never met.Coupland is an excellent writer of literary fiction whom I've always enjoyed and I wasn't disappointed when I picked up this novel. He beautifully writes about the issue of loneliness for a middle-aged single woman living alone in Vancouver. Her voice is clear and the passages in which she reflects on herself and her struggle with loneliness are so evocative. The other characters in her life are equally rich that provide flashes of humour and contrast to Liz. The prose is harsh and realistic but beautiful at the same time, and the narrative, while heading to darker places, ultimately arrives in a more optimistic place.

[ocgreg34 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

For Liz Dunn, life is fairly routine, dull and lonely. She's single, overweight, works a fairly tedious job and tries to put on a comrade-like face when dealing with co-workers. She doesn't realize how stuck in a rut she is until a Vancouver hospital calls, saying that a young man has been admitted, and the only number he carries happens to be hers. She visits him in the hospital and takes a chance on him, allowing the charming young man with strange, apocalyptic visions of farmers, into her home, changing her outlook of loneliness and life forever."Eleanor Rigby" weaves a fun tale of a woman overcoming her self-made obstacles to regain the life she thought she would never have. As Liz begins to learn more about the mysterious young man, she re-examines her teen years, realizing her life wasn't as bad as she makes it out to be. She traveled to Europe on her own, made a fairly decent amount of money in the stock market, and has a secret that at one time, she thought would be her undoing but instead has made her a better person. I like that she grows as the story progresses, and as a reader, I can see the changes as she becomes more outgoing and learns to allow others into her life rather than keeping them at a distance. Oh, and her conversations with the young stranger are wonderfully written, the kind of talks I wish I could have with people, saying whatever comes to mind and not feeling judged for it.It's well worth reading, and I recommend it highly.

[twomoredays · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wow has Douglas Coupland’s writing changed over the years. He’s gone soft in his old age. (Old age being a relative term.) My favorite quote from Generation X, I think captures the old Coupland well: “You see, when you’re middle class, you have to live with the fact that history will ignore you. You have to live with the fact that history will never champion your causes and that history will never feel sorry for you. It is the price paid for day-to-day comfort and silence. And because of this price, all happinesses are sterile; all sadnesses go unoticed. And any small moments of intense, flaring beauty such as this morning’s will be utterly forgotten, dissolved by time like a super-8 film left out in the rain, without sound, and quickly replaced by thousands of silently growing trees.”While of course not all of his novels share the same tone of Generation X none of them come close to Eleanor Rigby.Eleanor Rigby tells the story of Liz, a frumpy, lonely middle-aged woman, whose son she gave up for adoption years ago suddenly shows up in her life, completely, as the book blurb would say, changing everything.Luckily for me, I picked my copy up at our independent bookstore’s closing sale, so I didn’t even read the cover blurb. Plus, it’s Coupland. I love him. And after Eleanor Rigby I still do, but I’m surprised at the different direction the novel took. I had previously pigeonholed Coupland as being like Chuck Palahniuk, an author I dearly adore, who writes in one specific style. But Coupland has broken out of that style, at least for one book, which is something Chuck, as much as I love him, and I do love him, has yet to do.This is a book about the power of family. The positive power of family. We’re not talking All Families are Psychotic, though there is still plenty of dysfunction to go around. No, Eleanor Rigby speaks to the fact that your family is the one place where you can be dysfunctional without judgment. It sounds sappy and it very nearly is, but Coupland manages to throw in enough of his trademark humor to keep the book somewhat level. There are some moments where the plot becomes stretched a little thin, but overall the book is touching, funny, and worth the read.Here’s another four star-er for you.