Immigrant’s Psalm

Aleksander Hemon resurrects us all

By John Hood

A hundred years ago, an Eastern European immigrant named Lazarus Averbuch knocked on the door of Chicago Police Chief George Shippy intending to present a letter. What was on the man’s mind — or in the letter — we may never know, but Shippy, a touchy old soul with visions of Haymarket still clouding his mind, wasn’t about to find out. In fact, Shippy believed Averbuch had a knife and later told everybody he feared for his life. Seven bullets later, Lazarus was dead.

It’s a sad story; tragic too, and well deserving of the resurrection it gets in Aleksander Hemon’s The Lazarus Project (Riverhead, $24.95), a book that may be billed as a novel, but reads like a long-form psalm.

Okay, so it’s a hundred times more erudite than any psalm I’ve ever read, but its sacredness has all the hallmarks of the Big Book itself — no, not the blue one, the black one, specifically the part of the latter that recounts the history of a certain chosen people.

In this case, the chosen are chased from their homeland and end up in the promise of Chicago. There’s Averbuch, of course, who’s at the core of the story, and there’s Brik, whose backtracking of Lazarus’ life becomes a sordidly beautiful story in itself. Thing is, Eastern Europe is infinitely more mobbed-up than it was back in Averbuch’s day, and the Windy City seems infinitely more amenable to immigrants. Back then, anyone with a certain accent and facial structure could be construed as an anarchist and suffered accordingly; now, such new citizens get to work in the service industry.

That’s what happened to Hemon, who, despite a degree in literature, slung at a series of low-wage jobs after war broke out in the former Yugoslavia and he was kept from returning to his native Sarajevo. The difference is that Hemon came equipped with an unswerving drive to write, even if it had to be in English, of which he knew very little.

If Lazarus is the result of writing in a language not originally one’s own, then the world needs more second-language students — it is that stunning. But the delirious acclaim that greeted both of Hemon’s previous books (The Question of Bruno and The Nowhere Man) has already been exceeded by the hurrahs granted TLP, so I need not add to the chorus. I will say that the man writes as if his life depends on it — and that the life of literature might just depend on what the man writes. Hyperbole? You betcha. But Hemon’s worth every word of it.

I slipped the wily wordslinger a few quick either/ors in the midst of his book tour. Here’s what he slipped back:

Ferdinand or Tito?
Tito. He did organize an anti-fascist liberation movement in World War II.

Gogol or Tolstoy?
They complement each other. Tolstoy is a more generous [writer], but Gogol is a funnier one. I don’t have to choose.

Nabokov or Conrad?
Nabokov. I don’t actually like Conrad.

Greene or Le Carre?
I like them both. Greene is a little better writer, but Le Carre was a better spy.

Killing Mr. Watson or Absalom, Absalom!?
Haven’t read either of them.

Schwitters or Cornell?
Cornell. I always want to touch what is in his boxes.

Friend or stranger?
Friends, many.

Verb or adjective?
Neither of them can do it alone.

El or Underground?
Metro in Paris.

A Big Mac in Chişinău or steak at the Chicago Chop House?
I never ate at the Chişinău McDonald’s. Research can only go so far.

Aleksander Hemon reads from The Lazarus Project at 8 p.m. Tuesday, May 13, at Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables; 305-442-4408.