Kirill Kutalov-Postoll. Perfect Romance

Perfect Romance - 2
Kirill Kutalov-Postoll

Publication date: April 19, 2000

In other words, the perfect online romance. Because, as it turned out, a nightmare came true, and the network gave birth to a genre. Even several genres. Their network affiliation and network origin are expressed primarily in the fact that although no hyperlinks from one text to another lead, reading one without the other is the same as, if you have pineapples and champagne, absorbing only pineapples or only champagne. Only together, opening two IE windows at once, or whatever the reader has, and periodically pressing Alt-Tab. In other words, we can state the transition of the hyperlink phenomenon to a fundamentally new level. Now it is only implied, but there is no a href="... or anything equally crudely material. Without existing as such, the hyperlink nevertheless works, already representing something like a conditioned reflex that arises in the reader in the process of long-term reading of literature published on the Internet.

When you think about it, the whole so-called setatura seems simply the inept experience of a lone craftsman. In fact, even a child can put a link, but to make sure that this link is not needed at all - only a high professional is capable of this. A real artist.

To make it clearer, let’s imagine the following story. A certain well-known writer, published in large numbers, buys a house in the village. To write. He lives there from mid-spring to mid-autumn, that is, in the warm season. Appreciating comfort, the writer furnishes the house - he brings furniture, a TV, a satellite dish, and a local stove maker builds a fireplace for him. Naturally, leaving all this stuff unattended for the winter is frivolity, bordering on idiocy, and closer to the middle of autumn, the writer hires a person who would live for money in this house all winter, as well as the end of autumn and the beginning of spring. Or he doesn’t hire, but simply finds someone who has nowhere to live. And this man, who lives in this house in winter, also turns out to be a writer. Only unknown and generally unprintable. This is how they live - a writer (famous) writes all summer, and another writer (unknown) writes all winter. Around them there is some kind of village life, moonshine, fishing, haylofts, village girls, what else, but for one it is summer (“the heat and mosquitoes and flies”), and for the other it is winter (“get some ink and cry”) . So, this house, as well as the village, surrounding fields and village girls, is this very invisible hyperlink. Compare texts after finishing writing.

To make it even clearer, let's look at specific examples. Or rather, to one example, because the two texts discussed below are exactly one example, and in a sense, even one text. Since the new genres born of the network are still in the design stage, under construction, so to speak, I propose calling them by the names of the works themselves, and it should be noted that this method provides additional opportunities for understanding the essence of the phenomenon. So, “ The Life of Supermana or Butterfly in the Toilet ”, respectively by Alexander Shaburov and Andrey Shavrey (symmetry, however!).

Whose life is more interesting to read about - the life of Kuritsyn or the life of the husband of the President of Latvia? I cannot answer this question with certainty. But there is no doubt that, in addition to detective stories and romance novels, there is literature that has always been in extraordinary demand, despite the fact that it is hardly possible to reliably classify it as “non-reviewed”, at least not always - literature about the party (you must follow the link) .

This venerable phenomenon, dating back to ancient literature (mainly Roman), has educated more than one generation of Russian readers, and I suspect not only Russians. Which, in principle, is understandable - interest in closed communities has always existed and will obviously exist as long as these communities are alive. In addition, when the secrets of the community are revealed by an initiate, so to speak, “from the inside,” the reader should have the feeling that in front of him is a defector, a capitulator with a white flag, who has finally realized his mistakes and is ready to reveal all military secrets right up to the location of the field kitchens. This is, in a certain sense, literature of debunking, literature of demythologization (those “built in” into the party are spoken of as normal, ordinary people), but only on the one hand, on the other - myth-generating (if they are so ordinary, then why are they there ? What is do they have something that the reader doesn’t have? - but the author does not answer this question), and if the party is one of the modern deities, then literature about it gives the reader at the same time a feeling of being equal to God, and on the other hand leaves part of the mystery intact, in a word, the sought-after combination of capital and innocence. How can you not love this and not read it avidly?

In order, what actually interests the reader? Otherwise, from what side should a deity be shown so that it begins to resemble a person? (An even more intelligible formulation that does not require an answer suggests itself - what would one plunge him into?) This is precisely what is being discussed in the said two-chapter text.

The deity is immersed in everything that is the same and well known. Sex, politics and alcohol. Moreover, which is typical, in almost the same form - in the form of diary entries, with the only difference that in "Butterfly" they are somewhat more diluted with philosophical and lyrical digressions, but this does not reduce the effect of verisimilitude and documentary filming. Conceptual artist (scroll all the way down if it’s not immediately clear) Shaburov, as befits a conceptualist, does without digressions. Actually, this is where the similarity ends, and this is very productive, since each half of the text, taken separately, does not give a complete picture of the debunked deity. That is, it gives, but one-sidedly, which in itself is boring and can from the very beginning sow doubt in the reader’s soul about whether there is a deity in front of him at all, and if not a deity, then why read it. The effect of volume is achieved by an already known technique - through the physical manifestations of the characters. First of all, due to their sexual preferences - so, a gay hero would be of little interest, just like a straight hero, and the combination of both hypostases in one text would look funny, as a result, they end up being separated each into their own part and look so organic there, that the reader, regardless of his own orientation, will in any case experience, on the one hand, rejection, and on the other, a pleasant itch from sort of peeping through a keyhole, in a word, “ice and fire.” The same goes for alcohol and politics, but geography is especially interesting. It’s even symbolic in a sense: the hero is spread across different continents, which is especially important given the language in which all this is written - one part of him operates in Riga, and the other mainly in Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk, and this directly indicates that that the author not only plays on the base instincts of the reader, or rather, not only on them, but also touches on such complex mental constructs as Westernism and Slavophilism, although lately it increasingly seems that they, too, are base instincts.

Finally, compare the finals:

1) “And, reasoning against the backdrop of the green fireworks that is visible in the windows at the tram stop near the Opera, he cheerfully whispers in your ear: “It’s still just beginning. Ride!"

2) “When she left for Chelyabinsk, I told her (in her ear):

-I really like you.

And we parted forever. See you the day after tomorrow.

Nothing in LIFE ever ends."

The deity, immersed in everything possible, at the last moment gets up and goes away, dissolving into the fog. Beautiful. The reader is crying.

* * *

And finally, a little hoax. “Network Literature” nominated a text entitled “Dominus Bonus or the Last Night of Scheherazade” for “Tenet . ” Anyone who is even slightly familiar with the level of work presented on “Network Literature” should already from the second paragraph understand what’s what here. Or even from the first. This is how I imagine this scene: Gorny and Leibov, having become completely enraged by Internet literature, write a text in which every phrase... However, not a single epithet fits into a line, nor, indeed, a single example, since here every phrase - example. That is, literally every one. To say about this masterpiece that it is, they say, bad means to completely misunderstand the concept, to ignore the brilliant concept, since it lies beyond the boundaries of good and evil. This is a game of a subtle and cruel mind, the illegitimate brainchild of a genius embittered by the sticky insanity of everyday life. The text can be read not linearly, but, for example, like an acrostic, writing out the initial phrases of paragraphs on a piece of paper - if last time Sartre was resting, now Pavich is resting. Get ready Kafka.