March 18, 2020 

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“Bohemians” lives in the first section of part IV of In Persuasion Nation. Each section is preceded by a citation from the Textbook for the New Nation. I imagine the textbook as an ideological touchstone for the leaders of this new nation, complete with mantras and slogans and ideology that the chosen leaders interpret to support their agenda. The epigraph at the beginning of part four follows:

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“When they come to destroy us, they will not use force, but will turn our words against us; therefore we must not be slaves to what we have previously said, [what?] or claimed to be true, or know to be true, [but… if we know it to be true?] but instead must choose our words and our truths such that these will yield the most effective and desirable results [yikes]. Because, in the end, what is more honest than preserving one’s preferred way of life? [I can think of a few things] What is truth, if not an ongoing faith in, and continuing hope for, that which one feels and knows in one’s heart to be right, all temporary and ephemeral contraindications notwithstanding?” 

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Basically, the story hasn't even started and we know three things: first of all, this nation doesn't care about the truth; secondly, whoever the leaders are, they are expecting a significant threat to their power; finally, the preservation of power is more important to the leaders than, well, anything. If this story collection didn't come out in 2006, I would say Saunders was pointing fun at a certain man with a tan.  

 

In the first sentence, the narrator introduces his neighbors: two elderly women who lost their husbands in an Eastern European “pogrom”. At first, I read this word as “program”, but realizing that that didn’t seem right, I reread the sentence. 

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Pogrom: “an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jews in Russia or eastern Europe”.

 

I’ve never heard the Holocaust referred to as such; not quite a euphemism, since I’m not sure that over 50% of the population would be able to define this word, but definitely a deliberate choice. A word that leads to a confused pause, which leads to a google search, and culminates in more time spent with this word than what the common

nine-letters allows. I made a mental note that naming and word choice were probably going to be an especially important part of this narrative. 

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Next, we find out that the narrator’s father refers to the women as the “Bohemians”, not because of their proximity to the art scene or his admiration of their upcycled denim, but because he calls any white person with an accent a Bohemian. Ahhhhhh, now I get it. 

 

Because his father does it, the narrator also refers to the ladies as such. Mrs. Poltoi is known to have spent the entire war in a crawl space, where she split one potato per day with six cousins. Mrs. Hopanlitski, her happy-go-lucky counterpart, describes her time being made into a human pack animal, forced to carry the belongings of cruel officers, and being chained to a tree in the nighttime. This sounds miserable - just miserable enough to not be entirely believable, but I decide that none of us can fully know about all of the atrocities committed during the Holocaust. Anyway, who am I to say which tragedies someone did or did not endure? 

 

Mrs. Hopanlitski dazzles the narrator and his friends with her optimism while Mrs. Poltoi advertises her belief that the Catholic church drinks the blood of the poor and describes America - all of her - as a spoiled child ignorant of grief. 

 

Mrs. Hopanlitski thanks God for the few years she got to spend with her three young children before they were murdered. Her gratitude in the face of all of the grief that she seems so have endured is incredible. Naturally, the narrator and his friends are drawn to Mrs. Hopanlitski - how could Mrs. P be so bitter, when the tragedies endured by Mrs. H seemed so much worse? 

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Then, an incident occurs that confirms the neighborhood children's bias against Mrs. Poltoi. Eddie, a mentally challenged neighborhood boy, goes round to all the houses attempting to raise funds for his birthday party. After asking Mrs. P for a donation, he tries to enter her house, an advance that Mrs. P refuses. He persists, trying to push past her, and she uses her minimal old-lady strength to push Eddie away. Eddie falls down the stairs, bumping his head and spilling blood. The incident solidified Mrs. P as a mean old lady in the minds of the neighborhood kids; as a reader, the matter-of-fact way in which the story was told, and the sympathy I had for both characters left me feeling uncomfortably neutral. The physical reaction of Mrs. P to a young man charging at her seemed entirely warranted; at the same time, I understood that Eddie's inability to pick up on social cues meant he was also innocent. 

 

Often in narratives we are able to choose teams - to decipher between the good and the bad, and wear our colors accordingly. I didn’t dislike Mrs. P, but I felt like maybe I should. The neighborhood kids knew exactly where to point their hate. Shouldn't I? Or was it more complicated than that? 

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This dissonance between what I felt and how I thought I ought to feel laced the narrative with suspense.

 

The narrator is forced to spend a week with Mrs. Poltoi while his parents go on a cruise. He begs his parents to let him stay with Mrs. Hopanlitski, but they scoff at the  suggestion. I didn't know if I should believe the parent's distrust of Mrs. H. After all, the narrator's parents, and all of the parents on this dysfunctional cul-de-sac were often absent and more often drunk.The metaphor of America as a spoiled child ignorant of grief seemed to relate much more to the parents of these children. Other parents in the neighborhood that Saunders crafted were constantly arguing, leaving their child sleepless, or apt to being found sprawled on the front porch naked with a sexual partner.

 

During that weekend, Mrs. Poltoi treats the narrator like a king. They eat potato pancakes and sausage, play cards, and Mrs. Poltoi changes his sheets when he wets the bed (versus complaining that she can’t wait for him to get married, so she can finally get some sleep, like his mom usually does). Mrs. Hopanlitski, the chosen favorite Bohemian of the neighborhood kids, comes to check on the narrator during his stay. After she leaves, Mrs. P hints at her disdain for Mrs. H:

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“‘She is lie… she act so sweet and everything but she lie. She been born in Skokie. Live here all her life, in America. Why you think she talk so good?’” 

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The narrator asks his father for the truth about the "Bohemians". The narrator's father reveals a meandering story about how she used to be a cashier at a local grocery store where she was caught stealing. When she was caught, she said she was with the main office, until a guy from the main office showed up, where she then claimed to be with the FBI. To corroborate this claim, Mrs. Hopanlitski produced a handwritten letter from Lady Bird “Jonsen”. Somehow, she would end up impersonating a Holocaust survivor just doors away from an actual survivor. 

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Mrs. Hopanlitski, or whatever her real name is, was able to preserve her desired way of life by subverting the truth and crafting an identity for herself, embodying the ideals of The New Nation. Saunders dropped hints throughout the narrative that perhaps Mrs. H wasn’t to be trusted, with her hyperbolic origin story and last name that sounds like a bunch of Slavic-ish sounding syllables strung together by accident. But the true power came from telling the narrative through the lens of a ten year old boy, who was simply taking cues from others to try to make sense of the world around him. 

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“Bohemians” pushes me to consider what is in a name, but more specifically, what is in our decision to give something a name? If we give something a name that is supposed to confer meaning, or truth, or portray knowledge or understanding, what does it mean if we are blind as well? Saunders names his characters, but also allows his characters to give names to phenomena and other characters in the story. 

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This silly yet profound work reminds me of Karl Marx’s theory of the sociology of knowledge. Essentially, Marx told us that you know something exists because you know about it. There is no way to know about things that exist that you don’t know about, but that doesn’t mean those things don't exist.

 

I am limited to my knowledge and my experiences, and with that information I try to make sense of the world around me. Therefore, my identification of something as a hat is limited to my knowledge of what constitutes a hat. Simple enough, right? Marx said a whole bunch of stuff, but this theory is one of my favorites. I especially like this idea as it relates to children, because their knowledge, up to a certain age, is almost completely limited to what their caretakers expose them to.  How could these kids be expected to form measured opinions about those around them, if the adults in the room were too preoccupied with their own drama? Just like Mrs. Poltoi’s reaction to Eddie was born out of fear, so was the children’s fear of Mrs. Poltoi born of fear, and ignorance. 

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I might incorporate inept authority figures into my short story. It seems particularly relevant in terms of the apocalypse that we face as a nation-state, but also as individuals. What do you do when the adults you always thought to be capable of guidance simply aren't? What do you do if in the face of a crisis, you are the adult in the room? 

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It certainly is a great (or terrible) time to be wrestling with dystopian fiction.