Alexander Ageev. Hunger 54

Hunger 54
Practical gastroenterology reading

Alexander Ageev

Date of publication: September 25, 2001

During the days of the global crisis, I had the most annoying reading that I can only imagine and which I had been putting off for almost a month - Roman Senchin’s story “Minus” in the August “Znamena”. Minus on "Minus" did not create any plus, but caused some kind of moral and literary poisoning, which is easiest to get out of by writing this very text that you are reading.

While working at Znamya, I only had the opportunity two or three times (at internal editorial meetings, of course) to speak rather sharply about the prose that Znamya published. Well, the traditionally bad prose of former literary “generals”, whom Znamya publishes from time to time out of old friendship, does not count; it has never been seriously discussed. But the main flow almost never irritated me - it was both better and worse, but not to such an extent as to spoil the mood of my colleagues. The only rather stormy speech in the tone of “What are you doing!” I said it specifically about Roman Senchin, when Znamya published his story “Athens Nights,” which critics noticed and even enjoyed some success.

In any case, the most authoritative Irina Rodnyanskaya, in her article “The Hamburg Hedgehog in the Fog”, ranked this story by Senchin much higher than “The Capture of Izmail” by Mikhail Shishkin. That is, she did not compare them “head-on”, but from the entire context of the article it turned out that Shishkin with his “Ishmael” is not quite “real” literature, this is not “flight”, but its imitation, but about Senchin there were These amazing words were spoken:

“ For example, I am sure that the modest, inconspicuous stylistic plumage, almost “physiological”, almost “naturalistic”, almost “dark” short story - or short story - by Roman Senchin “Athens Nights” (“Banner”, 2000, # 9 ) is an essay remarkable for its economical tactics of successfully influencing the reader’s soul, for its depth in the “flat” everyday material, when an unexpected space opens up under the top trampled layer, for the seriousness of its thought, equally alien to didactics and shocking immoralism .”

Well, some time before the militant moralist and almost religious thinker Irina Rodnyanskaya wrote such sublime words about Senchin that could make a reputation for a young writer, I - an absolute positivist, a relativist and a general cynic - on the editorial at the meeting he spoke on the same topic in a style completely unusual for me: something about how the Devil comes into the world through such stories, and the prose department becomes his accomplice.

By that time I had completely forgotten how to make any extra-literary, moral, for example, demands on literature, even this verbal apparatus had somehow fallen out of my memory, and therefore I no longer spoke as a “literary critic”, but as a person who was simply physically sick from Senchin’s prose. I don’t like, say, Sorokin , but I read him quite calmly and coldly, realizing: this is a game, sometimes funny, sometimes boring. And from Senchin’s story there was a distinct feeling of gray; there I truly sensed the presence of an enemy of the human race.

The ladies from the prose department, outraged by my attack, objected to me at the level of “ Senchin knows from the inside the life he writes .” That is, the life of modern “little people” whose interests are fixated on the “grab”, “bukhalov” and “grandmothers” for the extraction of the first and second. The crown of dreams in that world is a good joint, but not for “expanding consciousness” and other meditative purposes, but for better oblivion.

I have seen so many of these “little people”, this harmful petty bastard - “from the inside”, “from the outside” and whatever else - in my life that I realized long ago: the old phrase “people of vile rank” was not a lordly mockery of the “common people” , but was simply a very precise sociological definition. This is even, perhaps, an anthropological type that, even in the most favorable times for it - under Soviet rule - was not able to step higher on the ladder of evolution, but multiplied incredibly. "These are gopniks!" once sang - as the unforgettable Mike Naumenko .

“Physiological”, “naturalistic”, “chernushny” - all these definitions are inapplicable to Senchin’s prose. Once, it seems, Inna Bulkina mentioned that Senchin writes “gray on grey.” This is very well said, but it is not enough.

Senchin writes, if you like, “chernukha of the second generation” - this is chernukha, on whose side is the main literary God - the Author. Senchin writes gray, wretched, “flat” (in Rodnyanskaya’s words) reality as the only one that exists. The author is inside this life, he speaks the same (garbage, sickeningly physiological) language with the characters, all his claims to this life are not enough! Not enough "havchik", not enough "bukhalov", not enough "grandmothers". When there is a lot, it will become good, but there is no other life, all other life is unreal.

It is a great honor for Senchin, but in principle it is possible, at the level of microanalysis of the text, to show how he plays with language and how he lies with language in order to give the reader the impression that the whole world is low, that all people are the same in their vulgarity. You can also show the simple techniques with which Senchin sells his misanthropic prose to middle-aged editorial ladies (well, if you like, personifying the people-loving Russian intelligentsia). A light, you know, wave of a certain moral perspective is sent through the text. And literary ladies are delighted: “And Gopniks know how to love!”

In a word, imagine Smerdyakov , who suddenly felt a literary gift in himself and decided that it would be a sin for such goodness to go to waste: hatred of people and everything “too complex” can be profitably traded. Fortunately, the Russian intelligentsia, which has not learned anything, has an ever-living reflex for a “talented person from the bottom” - Oleg Pavlov once successfully used it, now Roman Senchin uses it.

And “Minus” is a truncated Minusinsk, where a certain Roman Senchin, a local theater installer, suffers from a lack of money, food, and booze. For some time, the team of installers is thinking about how they can more skillfully rob the cashier of the same theater - it’s an everyday matter...

Meanwhile, the author gives out maxims from time to time - well, like this one:

" Hehe, to be honest, once in my youth I thought a lot and was tormented by an idiotic question: what is the meaning of life? I re-read a pile of philosophical nonsense, I remember myself even trying to answer. I developed theories. Recently I only realized that the meaning of life is in getting food. The paths are different, but the goal is the same. Man, by and large, is no different from the animal world. And all these philosophers... Hehe, it was easy for them to talk about something beyond spiritual, higher, when they knew that tomorrow was guaranteed for them, they didn’t have any trouble with food. So they sat in soundproof offices, sipping coffee, and ten-course lunches were prepared for them in the kitchens. Searching for the meaning of life is the privilege of foolish teenagers and those who eat regularly. The rest are worried about more significant problems ."

I am a fairly competent critic, I know what a “type of narrative” is and I will not confuse what the author is saying, what is the hero-narrator, and what is the character. The above is said - without any doubt - by the author, and the entire work of Roman Senchin is based on this philosophy. How did Rodnyanskaya put it? " An unexpected space opens up underneath the top compacted layer "? You have to really want to see such a space. Or we must resist with all our might a simple and clear thought: Roman Senchin says exactly what he says. Apparently, it simply does not occur to Rodnyanskaya that such a type of writer is possible in Russia - an outspoken, almost undisguised Smerdyakov. Humiliated and insulted, and therefore wanting to humiliate and insult everyone around him.

It seems that this is indeed something new in Russian literature.