Creation for Creation’s Sake: Going Beyond Plot in Sasha Sokolov’s Between Dog & Wolf
Sokolov's Writing
Sasha Sokolov’s Between Dog & Wolf is regarded as a masterpiece of Russian literature, but it is extremely atypical when regarded as a novel. From a “normal” fictional novel, a reader would come away with an understanding of the characters in the book and the events that befell them; upon finishing this novel, however, it’s entirely possible to still be thoroughly confused on what exactly happened and to exactly whom. The uncertainty arises somewhere between the multiple unreliable narrators presenting contradictory information about themselves, other (sets of) characters who may or may not be actually distinct from each other, and events that seem to happen twice or happen in two different ways. This doesn’t, however, make it a “bad” novel. It simply has a different goal than most novels do — it’s an art piece. Meaning, it is art for its own sake.Sokolov takes the artistry of his writing to a deeper level than many. Between Dog & Wolf specifically showcases this aim: The book alternates between chapters of prose and poetry, yet even the prose chapters give a distinctly poetic impression, because Sokolov seems to choose every word in every sentence carefully, enriching them with various literary devices and wordplay as well as references to other works and homages to other writers. Even the style of writing pulls double duty; in the chapters narrated by Ilya, the grammatical choices and spelling errors serve to characterize him as the uneducated rural knife sharpener.
The complex, dense way Sokolov writes has been criticized by some readers, but highly praised by other, notably including another respected Russian author and notoriously selective reader, Vladimir Nabokov. Admittedly, then, we as readers — especially those of us less familiar with Russian literature or the study of literature in general — have to work a little harder to get something out of the novel beyond admiring Sokolov’s artistic skill. After all, a writer as intentional as Sokolov wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble to build these characters, this setting, and this plot if there was nothing at all to extract from it.
Interpreting a book as richly layered as this one will benefit from delving into the meta of why and how Sokolov wrote it this way. We learn a lot about his philosophies on writing in his essay “The Key Word of Belles-Lettres,” a helpful analysis of which exists here. In brief, he makes it very clear he values intentionally-crafted prose, and less so bland presentations of events. Sokolov explicitly declares his allegiance to “art-for-art’s-sake” and indeed asserts that “by definition art is always for its own sake and there can be no other kind of art” (28). Even within the essay, as is made clear in the analysis linked above, Sokolov employs these values. So, we know his goal with writing is different from many other authors.
Exploring a perspective like Sokolov’s, which could be described as that of a creator with a driving creative goal producing a work relatively unique in its medium, will allow us to gain more insight on things to take away from Between Dog & Wolf. To do this, I’d like to look at a specific example from a completely different era and context.
Unus Annus
In late 2020, the YouTube channel Unus Annus was deleted. Its name, meaning “one year” in Latin, signified this fate — it existed for 365 days exactly, and hosted daily uploads of live-action videos from the duo of primarily gaming YouTubers Markiplier (Mark Fischbach) and CrankGameplays (Ethan Nestor). Each video began and ended with the ticking clock, counting down to the inevitable deletion of the channel.
On YouTube, from a moneymaking perspective, certain formulas work: A title and thumbnail that will get lots of clicks, commentary and editing that will lead to long watch-times, and overall ad-friendly content. If a video is deemed not advertiser-friendly, YouTube will both demonetize it (ads no longer roll on it and thus the creator does not get ad revenue from it) and suppress it from potential new viewers. It’s certainly safer to stick to a known formula, but that easily leads to a creative rut. Unus Annus freed itself from that formula as it was separate from its creators’ main channels (and thus their sources of stable income) and was fated to be deleted anyway. Mark and Ethan were left beholden only to their self-imposed constraints and could then create for creation’s sake. And create they did — everything from a professional-quality mockumentary filmed in the California wilderness to learning skills such as the art of mime with a professional to “learning” practices like chiropractic medicine with no professionals in sight to running Mad Libs through Google Translate. To completely summarize the content, I would have to give you a list 365 videos long — everything from serious to hilarious and upsetting to chaotic.
Of course, I cannot link you to the channel. It is dead. You can view Mark and Ethan’s main channels; in the linked videos, they discuss their feelings about project immediately after it ended. For some other glimpses into what was, we apparently have an IMDb page and a TVTropes page. This video is an entertaining summary of certain aspects, including a truly spot-on "fake Unus Annus video."
The project was wildly successful, repeatedly exceeding Mark and Ethan’s expectations in terms of engagement — the metrics such as subscribers, watch time, ratio of likes, and so on. At its death, it had approximately 4.5 million subscribers. And, over the course of its life, an incredible amount of work was put in by Mark, Ethan, and the folks on the other side of the camera (responsible for filming, editing, production, ideas, and more) simply to make the project the best it could be — to push themselves to create, push the boundaries of the platform, and push the viewers to challenge the common compulsion to cling onto everything even at the expense of participating in the moment and making the most of what we have in life. Its fans, myself included, formed a real community. There was a culture of watching the upload the instant it dropped, then going to social media to discuss it: Daily, people made fanart, memes, theories, and more. Through a back-and-forth with Mark and Ethan, community members, and particularly one editor, the channel even developed a dubiously-canon fictional story-like layer — this “lore” is well-summarized here, at least as things stood a few weeks before the death of the channel; this, too, lead to a lot of creative production — both in affecting the channel’s content, and in terms of fancontent.
Connections Between the Media
The surface-level parallel between the dubiously canon lore of the channel and the dubiously presented plot of Between Dog & Wolf is a curiosity, but the two media share a deeper parallel on the creative production level. Mark and Ethan, like Sokolov, are motivated and passionate creators. Both parties have self-imposed standards and reject outwardly-imposed ones. And I believe that, as described above, the community we created is a manifestation of the artistic milieu that Sokolov calls for in “The Key Word of Belles-Lettres” in a completely different medium. Sokolov believes that writing should have a back-and-forth with critical, thoughtful readers, who are ideally also writers and of his community, in order to deepen and enhance the craft and the final product. We may generalize and say that creation in general is improved when it experiences a back-and-forth with critical, thoughtful consumers. Not every reader of Sokolov’s work is going to be able to fully engage with the novel in this way, but those who can keep up with his references and parse his style are the critical readers on Sokolov’s level whom he wishes to seek out and believes valuable to his creative process. Perhaps a community such as Unus Annus (or the pre-existing and remaining communities surrounding Markiplier and CrankGameplays) doesn’t have this same level of selectivity, but it is still those active, engaged members who have the most effect — for example, the fans who latched onto the lore and began creating fancontent for it, thus developing the fiction layer of the channel. Here, too, the most engaged participants — affecting the work the most, and getting the most out of the work — are frequently creators themselves.The Unus Annus Interpretation of the Novel
Since we’ve established this intriguing cross-medium, cross-time parallel between these creators, I believe we can interpret one part of Between Dog & Wolf through the lens of Unus Annus. This involves the theme of death and the coupled concept of time, which are ever-present in both works.Throughout Between Dog & Wolf, there are numerous tellings and re-tellings of purported events. A standout example of this phenomenon is Chapter 10, which is mostly (if we trust it) Ilya’s account of statements by Orina — a woman of several names in the book who is romantically involved with, and possibly married to, Ilya — about her own life. When she is young, a fox cub dies on the train tracks. Orina takes its pelt, at the urging of her granny, to the furrier in the room under the stairs to be made into boots. At the end of her recollections, Orina says, “…the shoemaker also faded away, Granny disappeared somewhere, and my son is gone, but I am still here, I live here permanently, as a rule” (126). The old granny and the young son — representing either end of life — both disappear, but Orina remains; she is in the middle of life. Then, cyclically, it seems Ilya might’ve replaced the “faded” shoemaker: we learn in Chapter 14 that, after a falling out with Orina, he moves under the stairs and becomes “a sort of a chillin furrier” (187). He implies that this is when Orina begins sleeping with other men, despite in her story those habits having begun while she was still living with her granny. It is clear that something odd is going on with time, and that these characters persist while other things may pass on.
At the end of the book, strengthening the cycle, Ilya parallels the fox cub; he’s tied to the train tracks, and Orina (here, Orya) tries to save him, going so far as to risk her own life, and possibly die there with him (195). Interestingly, while tied to the tracks, Ilya says, “And—as it is customary—I started refreshin my past: How did I live this time, decently or not?” (194) The use of “this time” implies he at least believes he might live multiple times, but in the view of the time-blurry, cyclical surrounding plot, it seems as if he really has died and then lived past events again—possibly with minor differences, which might lead to the inconsistencies in the plot. In the end, even, we find out he has been drowned—yet, he’s been telling a large portion of the book, which would imply under “normal” circumstances that he is not dead.
Sokolov has left us, then, with this novel where death is omnipresent but impermanent, and time is cyclical or at least blurry. While we’re already considering things beyond and behind the book, it stands to reason that it is relevant that this is a novel. A novel ends, and the world within is fictional — is different from our reality. Notably, this novel ends with Yakov, the hunter and author of the poetry sections, insinuating the person who finds his poems, which we can extend to us as readers, may as well burn them. If they were burnt, however, Yakov wouldn’t know. He’s sent them down the river in a bottle; to him, they’re gone whether they’re read and shared or never found or found and then burnt. His life is what it is regardless of what his reader does. The events featured in the poems happened regardless. The novel overall has this same quality—to the characters, nothing matters “after”—their reality ends where the book ends. In strong contrast, we the readers continue on in the real world, beholden to linear time and the threat of permanent death.
In the case of Unus Annus, the content was destroyed, but like the events in the poems to the world of the novel, it most certainly happened. One of the explicitly-stated messages of the channel was that Mark and Ethan want those of us who participated to move forward and make the most of our life with what we learned: Devote our time and energy to the things that we care about, participate in the world in the form of creating and learning and trying new things and improving yourself, and doing all of this with the time and energy and ability that we are given.
Given the contrast between the world of the novel and our reality, one takeaway from Between Dog & Wolf may be that very same idea. The characters in the novel are stagnant—eternally on the Itil River—but by contrast, we readers should not be. We have read Sokolov’s book like whoever found the bottle has read Yakov’s poems, and now we, like them, are free to do whatever with it and ourselves. Instead of burning it without getting anything out of it, we should take the impetus to engage, starting with the novel as, ideally, the active critical readership which Sokolov appreciates, and then forward to the rest of life.
Bibliography
Sokolov, Sasha. Between Dog & Wolf. Translated by Alexander Boguslawski. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.Sokolov, Sasha. “The Key Word of Belles-Lettres.” In In the House of the Hanged: Essays and Vers Libres, translated by Alexander Boguslawski, 23–29. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.
