Ivan Cox, the supposed author of “Oodles of Rubles,” is the Stephen Colbert (à la “Colbert Report”) of real estate agents. Actually penned by Gerry Yukevich (and delightfully illustrated by Mick Stevens), the book is part satire, part love letter to the Island. (The subtitle, “The Russian Oligarch’s [Confidential] Guide to Martha’s Vineyard Real Estate,” sorta says it all.) Ivan is a would-be real estate agent, who with the enthusiasm of a puppy describes how perfect the Vineyard would be for every red-blooded oligarch (symbolically crystalized into a single “Ollie,” whom he is addressing throughout).
This simple premise is funnier than it might sound, because Ivan’s daft reasoning leads to gonzo attempts to prove why Russians should buy in here. Littered with phrases like “It’s entirely possible … although not all experts agree,” his patter-of-potential is inexhaustible. For instance, both Martha’s Vineyard and parts of Russia are glacial moraine, and thus both populations are, on a soul-level, “morainites” — and obviously a morainite, should, for their own spiritual comfort, want to purchase nothing but more moraine. His most farfetched premise is providing nonsensical, convoluted “proof” that uber-oligarch Vladimir Putin has been genetically modified with shark DNA — and can it be a coincidence that he looks so sharklike? (One of Stevens’ illustrations demonstrates this similarity.) He’s also cocksure why the Vineyard has become so popular: “If the surge in oyster farming coincides perfectly with the rise in the power of the Island’s mystique, then why do we need to look further for an explanation?” The book is littered with similar little gems of nonsense.
Ivan has no filter, and shares with his potential client an inappropriate amount of information about himself (a former English teacher whose preppy students couldn’t appreciate “Moby-Dick”) and his wife Trixie (a horny romance novelist). He sports a purple baseball cap emblazoned with “MVGA,” which stands for “Make the Vineyard Great Again.” He really has no idea what he is doing.
But that doesn’t stop him from trying. About a third of the book is, in fact, a guide to the Island towns. Here Yukevich does a lovely job of blending his genuine appreciation of the Vineyard (in Aquinnah, “there is a sense of isolation and enchantment that seems to float in the very atmosphere of that beautifully bleak and windswept promontory”) with Ivan’s obsessive pitching-of-Island-charm (bragging that a potential client had been so enamoured with the Ag Fair that he wanted to fly his Percherons over from France to compete in the draft horse competition).
The final chapter takes an unexpected turn: Suddenly Ivan goes into gruesome detail about ticks and tick-borne illnesses … before cheerfully reminding the reader that the Vineyard is a magical, mystical place — and he’s waiting for your call to buy a piece of it, especially if you’re an Ollie.
Yukevich describes Ivan as “charmingly clueless.” But the author himself is also glibly, gleefully showing off a wealth of random knowledge: words in Wampanoag; obscure bits of world and Vineyard history; the molecular makeup of the vapor jet spouting from a whale’s blowhole.
Yukevich began “Oodles of Rubles” ages ago; the super-hot retail market here, and the increase in wealthy Russians voraciously buying up resort properties around the world, seemed like a natural combination. He found himself with lots of blank pages, and decided to reach out to New Yorker cartoonist Mick Stevens, whom he knew through a mutual friend. “We were sympatico from the very first moment,” he recalls, “and Mick was doing things that were on the button for what I wanted.”
Stevens agrees: “There wasn’t a big adjustment period. I got his jokes and he got mine.”
But for all the fun they were having, when the war in Ukraine began, Yukevich thought, “This isn’t funny anymore; let’s just put this away.” It stayed stowed for years. “But then,” Yukevich continues, “the current occupant of the White House suddenly welcomes in all these American oligarchs, and I thought, Well, if this is the time for oligarchs, let’s bring out ‘Oodles of Rubles’ again.”
It’s delightful that they did so.
“Oodles of Rubles” is available at Edgartown Books, Bunch of Grapes, Conroy’s Apothecary, and online. It will be available soon in all Island libraries.