Second issue

Second week of the first round The first round of any new game clearly shows the mistakes made when drawing up the rules . In particular, it became clear that four weeks for one story is a lot, players get tired and want variety. On the other hand, one week is short and uninteresting, because texts sent after reading other texts have their own extremely interesting, distinctive features. For example, it is clear that playing in the second week is more difficult than in the first: many options for developing the theme have already been used, and to create an original text you need to puff. On the third hand, those working on the topic in the second week of the tour may condense some interesting ideas from what others have written... In short, two weeks is delicious. Besides, I thought, by the second week, I could give the players little hints to make their work easier. In short, it seems worth doing the following:

1. Each topic will be allocated not four, but two weeks: the dynamism of the game will increase, and the “week-to-week” split clearly brings additional meaning to the game.

2. Thus, the final collection will have not 12, but 24 topics - that’s also good. But then every week you and I will select for the collection not one text out of three, but two, say, out of five. Then it will be easier for me too - there are clearly many more texts worthy of voting than three, and rather than usurping me, it would be better for you to democratically weed them out.

So, today opens the second week of the first round. Good luck to everyone.

I was pleased with the texts. During the first week, there were more than two dozen works worthy of consideration. In addition, all sorts of thoughts were good that were not expressed by the authors in the texts, but expressed in a general form. Norwegian Forester, for example, proposed the following plot: a little girl writes a letter to hedgehogs , offensive to Leonid Delitsyn - and then she gets fucked... But she didn’t send the text, you bastard.

It was interesting how differently the authors call “Capacitor”. The three most commonly used words are “game”, “project” and, it seems, I have never personally used the word “competition”. I am not at all inclined to consider The Capacitor a literary competition. Competition is different intentions, goals and structures. So the “competitive” essence of this project is probably best expressed by the word game.

As for the texts of the first week, they varied in the most amazing images: from touching minimalist, to one line:

- Well, hit me, hit me!

to the fairy tale about the childhood of Ivan Bodhiharma, sent by Tata Sh.:

═══════════ " ...and then one fine day Vanya went out into the garden and almost collided with a magnificent bright rooster on the path. Vanya reached out to play with him, but the rooster suddenly became furious and pecked Vanya in nose. It hurts, and most importantly, it’s offensive.

- Here it is, here it is! - there was a cry. A fat man with a huge ax ran up to the rooster, grabbed him by the neck and dragged him into the house, into the kitchen. Anyone else in Vanya’s place would have been glad that retribution had overtaken the offender, but Vanya felt even more pain than when the rooster pecked him, and he cried bitterly over a plate of chicken soup.”

Such a “Month in Dachau” for the little ones. Actually, a good fairy tale, mysterious and with a completely original idea.

It is very interesting to analyze two things: the degree of abstraction of the topic (moving away from the number “seven,” for example) and the degree of scattering of texts regarding the words given in the topic (for example, regarding the word “Cain”). As for the first, out of more than two dozen texts I evaluated, approximately 80% used the given numeral literally: they were rewarded only seven times, exactly seven times, exactly seven times. A couple of texts, in particular “Shaverma” by Birds, which I really liked, use the word seven as “many”:

════ "Tuesday. My stomach hurts. And it aches and hurts. Aslan says, “seven═ misfortunes” came, ate our shawarma and left. He says, now we will have misfortunes. Rita has a stomach ache, her face is green, she can’t stand "Aslan's stomach hurts, my stomach hurts. Bad place."

But the plot is good. :)

In general, a certain artistic problem arises here for me: where to draw the line beyond which texts are considered inappropriate to the topic? I wrote and erased a couple of paragraphs in which I tried to formulate the rules for drawing this boundary, until I thought: ah, to hell with it. And I decided to act in a purely feminine way at the level of my own intuition. A dictatorship is just a dictatorship.

As for the use of the word “Cain” and the Old Testament plot in general, there was no particular fixation here: the authors quite freely moved away from the sad story of fratricide, turning their thoughts to lighter things - infanticide, teacher murder and simply general murder.

"(...) A new attack of awareness whirled him. Scraps of memories and random phrases suddenly formed into a categorical certainty. Skirmishes with classmates ended with the offender being injured even without the assistance of Ganin, who did not know how to fight. The teachers who caught him in wrongdoing quickly themselves "
═════════════════════════════════════════ ═════════ ═══ Sergey Lagunov, "Ganin"

═══ "(...)
═══ Sanych:
═══ - But what is a rocket?

═══ At this time, a medium-sized rocket flies into the window. BAM! Everyone dies, except for Seryoga, whom I didn’t introduce at the beginning, because, firstly, he was sitting in the refrigerator, and secondly, he’s a cat.”
═════════════════════════════════════════ ═════════ ═══ Konstantin Skvortsov, “Missile”

═══ “I just thought, what if it’s true? About Igor Petrovich. He then forbade me to go outside. For three days. It was still September. The guys played football every day. And I only had two test tubes smashed it. If I had known that they would punish me like that, that hefty bottle would have crashed. And the next day Igor Petrovich had an accident. They say the brakes failed. (...)"
══════════════════════════════════════════════ ═══ Yevgeny Savenkov, "Lisbon on the Right"

And in a completely unexpected way, Pshat Midrashin treats the theme in the story “Open Blackmail”:

═══════════ “A certain person notices that the promise given by God to Cain is coming true with him: regardless of his, the man’s, will, all those who offended or oppressed him even in the smallest extent receive in return seven times the same misfortune or misfortune seven times. Realizing his own uniqueness, he looks at the mirror for a long time and not without pleasure; then he playfully winks at the reflection, for some reason shows himself a soft crimson tongue, runs to the computer and, swearing at the scattered letters, pokes the skinny index finger on the keyboard:

════════════ “Dear Linor Goralik! Be so kind as to publish by Monday my mediocre postmodernist text as part of your project “Capacitor”. In case of refusal, as you have recently begun to allow yourself to do, You will be greatly disappointed when you try to publish your next seven articles in the Russian Journal.
═══════════ With respect, your familiar Pshat Midrashin."

Special thanks to him for this warning. As you can see, I didn’t take any risks...

But, of course, it makes sense to finally analyze the treatment of the topic after the end of the tour, that is, in a week. I've been promised some nice surprises. Let's wait.

So far, here's what I'm voting on:

I ask players and voters to remember that the purpose of both my selection and voting is not only to select good texts, but also to select different texts, so that the selection included in the collection is as representative as possible from the point of view of today's author's and reader's tastes. And, of course, my dictatorial behavior.

Let me remind you of the theme of the tour:

A certain person notices that the promise given by God to Cain is coming true over him: regardless of his, the man’s, will, all those who offended or oppressed him even in the smallest extent receive in return seven times the same misfortune or misfortune, seven times greater.

Here are some of my thoughts and quirks on the topic:

- Baudelaire has a magnificent poem-proclamation “Abel and Cain”:

═══════ "(...)
═══════ Abel’s children! Now watch out
═══════ I heed the call to the last battle!**

═══════ Children of Cain! Climb to the sky
═══════ Throw the wrong god to the ground!"

- Actually, materials on the relevant history from the Old Testament can be found here , along with analysis and interpretations.

- Sheckley has a charming story close to our topic. It's called, if I'm not mistaken, "The Limit of a Man's Desires" and it talks about what can happen if you want too much. Not recommended for feminists or the faint of heart.

- I wonder what will happen if such a person, as described in the topic, tries to commit suicide?

I boldly call the idea of ​​the week the proposal made by Mikhail Epstein ( IntelNet and much more) to organize a super tournament at the end of the game, inviting the best minds among the already participating players plus intellectuals of different generations. The idea is beautiful and majestic, and I agree with it immediately. I would only hold such a tournament, say, once every three months, on the most favorite topic among the players among those played.

Therefore, I am starting to compile a list of those whom I would like to invite to this game. Accordingly, I expect help from you: who would you like to see among the participants in the super tournament? Send us your names, we will collect the list here. In the super tournament, naturally, I will not select texts; we will vote on all of them, choosing the first 5 works, which will be included in the treasured collection. I make the first suggestions for names myself:

Let's hope that those invited to the super tour will not refuse us .

Cry

Perhaps, I thought, it would be interesting to involve the players in choosing topics. Send us themes for games, then at the end of each round I will put the ones I particularly like to a vote. In light of the fact that the main goal of our project is to create a mirror of today's literary tastes, interests and fashions, such an approach to topics will be most welcome.

Yes, one more thing: texts can be sent with illustrations. I think it will be very interesting. If it works, you can vote for the best illustration of the topic, which will decorate the corresponding section of the collection. Welcome.

Present

Judy Belkin gave the Condenser a sonnet-vignette, for which I express my utmost gratitude:

ALCHEMIST

That prince, mired in lawlessness,
Destroyed my hut
And a castle with seven towers
Built on a rocky slope.

And I was put in the basement,
Chasing the hidden essence,
There he drew pentagrams
Yes, he sublimated sulfur with mercury.

Here the prince takes the sublimated fruit,
He throws it into the oven, his mouth curled.
And there was an explosion, and it was terrible.

And they fly to the heavens, roaring
All seven blood-red towers.
So God rewarded him sevenfold.

And A.N. Zhitinsky dedicated a poem to the project, which was lost in the archives of the LITO Smoking Room. I'll try to claim it from the author and publish it in the next issue.

Gifts are 5, I love them. Thank you!

Slags

* Unfortunately, I quote inaccurately: the original died under the ruins of the server when it crashed. I ask the author to respond, I feel very embarrassed in front of him. I feel like Lieutenant Rzhevsky: “I don’t remember the full text, but the general meaning is this:...”.

** Translation by Valery Bryusov.