Igor Mantsov. In the sandbox

In the sandbox
Igor Mantsov

Publication date: December 28, 2004

5:30. Oh my God. Oh my God. Where I am?

7:00. I weighed myself.

7:03. She returned to bed, upset about her weight. Bad situation in the head.

Helen Fielding's famous novels are not about the quirks of the middle class, not about women's foolishness. “The worst thing is the next five minutes,” said the insightful Slavomir Mrozek. Bridget Jones specific questions like "How to choose a boyfriend?" or "How to program a video?" boil down to the universal: “How to live the next five minutes?” To the most damned of questions.

14:00. They say taking a short nap is a great way to recuperate.

19:30. Damn it!!!

In novels about the adventures of the great and terrible Bridget Jones, the most successful moments are those where there are no large or medium narratives, but there is a series of intervals , segments, remarks, and interjections. Where already psychologically reliable speech behavior is once again verified by precise timing. When I first opened “Bridget Jones's Diary” four years ago, I recalled the intervals of Vasily Rozanov, Lev Rubinstein, Eduard Limonov of the “Diary of a Loser” era, but there is still a difference. Ours have an obsessive poetry, their formulas strive to nestle in an ideal dimension, outside of time and space. In essence, poetry is a kind of corporate ethics. Ours insist on randomness, on the optionality of their verbal gestures, but they immediately present “well-made things,” practically aphorisms. Our people are seduced by the hypererotic pose of the “great Russian writer.” Anyone who has tried it on himself at least once no longer takes the “next five minutes” seriously.

In the past year, the country has demonstrated its will to globalize. On the pages of a new glossy magazine, Vladimir Sorokin seriously speculated about which of the current Russian writers is worthy of the Nobel Prize. And we thought! At least one notorious cynic! But no. On a recent TV show, the presenter bluntly told a studio guest: “Eduard, close your ears. So, Limonov is a great Russian writer!” The toastee was proudly silent and did not protest, although he was invited on air as a politician. Sad. Even Dmitry Prigov, who cultivated sobriety, suddenly gave himself away, revealed passwords and appearances, setting the dialogues of Viktor Erofeev as an example to Boris Akunin (Prigov D.A., Shapoval S.I. Portrait Gallery D.A.P. - M.: 2003, p. 152-153). But excuse me, Akunin has repeatedly demonstrated his reluctance to be a “great Russian writer”; Akunin does not want to compare himself with either old or new “artists”, including Erofeev, whose dialogues are actually terrible: he wasn’t too lazy, he checked. (In addition, Akunin does not have “dialogues”, but comic-replicas; in the pictures they are placed in a “cloud”.)

And then, wasn’t it the sensible Prigov who explained to us that there is no difference between those writers and these writers? Now he amusingly pinches Akunin in revenge for the fact that this Akunin managed to fully implement the project that Dmitry Alexandrovich had been advertising for a decade and a half, advertising and nothing more. But why did the project fail for Prigov himself? Let's leave aside speculation on the scale of talent, on the topic of talent, Prigov seems to be a smart enough stylist to accomplish something similar, purely technological . In theory. It turns out, however, that he has fallen for the “great Russian writer” pose, that his social body tries on it, secretly practices it, and this pose, like a complex yogic asana, fetters the master’s movements, forces him to participate in corporate fuss and compare in all respects incommensurable .

Helen Fielding has written a book proportionate to man. It’s not a fact that all books should be like this, too human. But at least some books should be modest, programmatically small. "Bridget Jones's Diary" is an exemplary prose of life, presenting the next five minutes as the inalienable nightmare of each of us and thus equating the poor with the millionaire and the conservative with the liberal. The film adaptation is a much more commercial project. But it also has its merits. The second part, "The Edge of Reason" , is even prettier than the first . Actress Renee Zellweger has gained inhuman weight and has finally turned into a comically cute fatty . The result is a story about how a cheerful private individual, who at best had a chance for a non-winning supporting role, regularly violates the rules of the corporate game and, thanks to these violations, finally achieves the right to the main role. All other characters have several backup strategies of behavior in stock, they plan, play smart, make acquaintances, and try to look good. And only this, if I may say so, complete fool has only the next five minutes in mind. Probably, higher powers are planning for her. "Nobody knows the future!" - informed space aliens humbly recited in the recent “Chronicles of Riddick” .

In Russia, the concept of “project” has taken root, and this is not surprising. “I love the size of our plans, the scope of steps fathoms!” - in the past year they spoke much more confidently about achievements, prospects and scale. The country is moving ever closer to the truth. I'm afraid this meeting of old friends will be joyless. A fellow screenwriter with whom I have not communicated for a long time calls in Tula: “I read you in RZh. It turns out that nothing has changed!” And - he offers participation in a meaningless television adventure of the kind on which a couple of years ago I had already spent a lot of unpaid time. It’s a paradox: no one thinks of offering psychiatric help to the authors of stupid TV series, vile films and pretentious books, but look, my stylized intimate muttering evokes condescending sympathy.

But in reality this is not sympathy, but horror. There is a natural rejection of a private person by a person assigned to a corporation. Private opinion is annoying; from the point of view of corporate ethics, a private person is sure to make mistakes. But the worst thing is that he demonstratively despises any social design. He plans himself within the boundaries of the next five minutes and already by the sixth minute treats it with distrust, considering it an optional luxury, a vulgar futurism. True democracy is not a market, not private property, not liberal spells. Democracy is when they say: “Here is Mantsov, he is always wrong, he is wrong all around, and therefore we want to know his opinion. And we will blot the generally accepted truth, this reliable call girl, this politically correct snot, with a sanitary napkin.” In short, as the experience of Bridget Jones teaches, excess (social) weight provokes a bad situation in the head .

“Mom, mom, I saw grandma again!” - “How many times do I have to tell you, son, don’t dig so deep in the sandbox!” Before we had time to suspect the hero of a subtle nature and a penchant for mystical intuitions, our outspoken mother refuted our best suspicions. But what deep drilling, but what aplomb! Joke of the year.

I remember how, in the early 80s, concert recordings of the rock group “Time Machine” began to circulate. But I've always been a fan of good voices, inventive arrangements and rabid melodrama. I didn’t even like the more or less professional, but monotonously depressive “Sunday”. He listened and listened and returned the reel of “Machines” with an expression of disapproval. A school friend was offended: “Are you completely stupid? After all, these are songs of protest and struggle!” - "For example?" - “For example, “Puppets”. The whole truth about the CPSU Central Committee and about Brezhnev is encrypted there!” - "What, what?!"

An open letter from cultural figures “Blue Bird Stew” arrived immediately. Some philharmonic bison and Viktor Astafiev, who joined them, presented their absurd academic claims to “Machine”, thereby discrediting the very idea of ​​​​the fight against the new aesthetics and the neo-barbarism behind it. In 1982, I won a regional competition and went to the Orlyonok pioneer camp for a month, where inquisitive young men and women like me participated in the All-Russian Literary Festival. All of these were cultured, worthy people, with some of whom I became friends forever. In our second detachment, where the oldest, 16-year-olds, gathered, the bison's letter was hotly and unanimously condemned right at the pioneer campfire at night. I really liked “Eaglet” and my new friends, but this pathos evoked the most unkind social forebodings. I still remember how, contrasting the deep-digging rockers with the “corrupt VIA,” Misha from Omsk, who knew by heart all of Vysotsky and all of Makarevich, hissed in my face: “But the most disgusting, the most vile is the VIA “Jolly Fellows.” Not-na- I see!"

It was in the dining room, so I almost choked on my compote: what did these guys do wrong? Sheer love-carrots, the authors include the best poets and composers from Derbenev to Tukhmanov, a dozen brilliant vocalists from Berger and Lerman to Barykin and Aleshin. I reverently loved VIA, these sudden sprouts of domestic urban culture, which broke through the ideological reinforced concrete of the CPSU Central Committee in the late 60s, I could not understand why my precocious peers were playing short , rejecting voice and meaning - in the name of the triumph of falsetto and speculative couplet. I felt like a dissident. I felt with my whole body how an era was approaching when it would become awkward to talk about love and health, but vague, semi-literate hints would acquire the status of a new religion. Just ten years later, huge advertising posters naturally appeared on the streets of Moscow, where the “Machine”, which had won everyone and everything, obligingly advertised whatever they asked for as payment for the victory.

The following happened. Relying on communist princelings of rural origin, who fiercely strangled the deceptively simple urban mass culture and, like Zoshchenko’s heroes, who respected vague, semi-literate couplets (in the broad social sense, and not just in the pop sense), small shopkeepers, people for whom the Western the culture is hostile, and Russia is too big. The poetics of the small shopkeeper, which has been dominant for two decades, is unable to suggest an answer to the terrible, main question of world history: “What to do in the next five minutes?”

Wait, soon we will have a space program until 2050. We promise ourselves and the world Mars and Jupiter. We’ll fail the actual five-minute period again, and then we’ll be done for real. Even the former “great writers” will fade into oblivion, because not a single grateful reader will remain, only the greedy cosmopolitan plebs. Disillusioned with his profession, the Last Slavist from the University of Göttingen will publish a monograph in which he will vindictively prove that so-called Russian literature is the fruit of an exquisite mystification of the Prague student circle.

December 27, 2004, 20:37. Oh my God. Oh my God. Where I am?