Denis Bychikhin. The collapse of the Gutenberg era

The collapse of the Gutenberg era
Denis Bychikhin

Publication date: April 18, 2000

Today's catch was successful. In some places.

However, judge for yourself.

(It turned out to be a poem).

Net

1. In Izvestia, Alexander Arkhangelsky reviews a collection of stories by Heinrich Böll published by the Text publishing house. All of them have been translated into Russian for the first time.

According to Arkhangelsky, the stories themselves - most of them are samples of early prose from the writer's Cologne archive - are no better, and often much worse, than those repeatedly published in our country, "Through the Eyes of a Clown" or "Under the Escort of Care." However, there are advantages to getting to know them.

In particular, their content is clear evidence in favor of the Hegelian “spiral”:

Something in all this (and in the course of reasoning, and in skepticism, and in double consciousness, and in the fear of liberalism, which is better than totalitarianism, but still bad) is incorrigibly familiar, read in the Russian press of the 90s. Another thing is that Böll lived a little earlier, wrote better, read more books.

2. In “Results” there are two reviews by Sergei Gandlevsky. The first - (based on the book by Alexander Bakhrakh "Bunin in a Robe") - is simply boring. A sluggish, agonizing school essay. A score of 4 plus. For tiresome diligence.

The second is based on Mikhail Gasparov’s book “Records and Extracts” - more fun. Perhaps due to the abundance of quotes. Perhaps because of the unexpected cosmological ending. About the hierarchy of worlds:

Is this really wisdom: self-demandingness, tolerance of the world order and lack of illusions? In any case, let us take note: at the heights of knowledge, in the rarefied atmosphere of precision, there is even less certainty than with us sinners below. But life is also possible there, as convincing proof is Gasparov’s unusual book.

3. In Vremya Novostei, an article by Andrei Nemzer dedicated to Nathan Eidelman (he would have turned 70 this week). It’s difficult to comment - the comments would look too foreign:

What is remembered (and what is remembered) about Eidelman? Passionate interest in literally everything - from Pithecanthropus to newspaper news, from “native” history to physics, from chess to cinema. A temperament that governed large audiences and close friendly companies at a feast... Willingness to fight, sometimes turning into “ecstasy in battle,” - in an interview, Eidelman applied to himself the saying: “Be afraid to tease a good man!” Love of life: big, artistic, noisy, charming, who knew the value of his status, delivering a scientific report and telling jokes with equal gusto, he loved success and knew how to achieve it.

The rest is here .

Off-line

There is a lengthy article in “Power” by Mikhail Novikov. Eschatological: a monstrous new Babylon is mentioned and the collapse of the Gutenberg era is predicted. With a lot of evidence of this.

And an unequivocal conclusion:

One can look at the grandiose worldwide process of degeneration and (or) rebirth of the book with skepticism. If people have changed in any way over the past two hundred years, it’s perhaps that they have become even lazier and more incurious. It is difficult to sort out the letters, the imaginative efforts required when reading are no longer bearable, and literature finally becomes the lot of losers who have failed to adapt to the real world.