Vyacheslav Kuritsyn. Kuritsyn-weekly from December 14, 2000

Kuritsyn-weekly from December 14, 2000
Vyacheslav Kuritsyn

Publication date: December 14, 2000

Here we are standing by the sea, and the clouds are passing by,
and our tracks are covered with water

jury The Debut announced the finalists for the first prize draw.

Long prose: 1. Anton Yankovsky, 23 years old, Vologda. The story "The Australian Connection". 2. Sergey Sakin, 23 years old, Pavel Tetersky, 24 years old, Moscow. The story "More Ben". 3. Anton Friedland, 24 years old, Kyiv. Novel "The Smell of Chess".

Great poetry: 1. Danila Davydov, 23 years old, Moscow. "Project of a literary magazine on the Internet. A sequence of romances alternating with something else." 2. Ekaterina Boyarskikh, 24 years old, Irkutsk. Poem "Echoes of Women". 3. Vladimir Kasyanov, 24 years old, Novgorod. Poem "Awakening".

Short prose: 1. Oksana Efremova, 18 years old, Saratov. Humorous stories with philosophical overtones "About Vasya". 2. Danila Davydov, 23 years old, Moscow. Book of prose "Experiences in Heartlessness". 3. Kira Laskari, 23 years old, St. Petersburg. Stories.

Short poetry: 1. Elena Kostyleva, 23 years old, Moscow. A selection of poems. 2. Vasily Chepelev, 23 years old, Yekaterinburg. Cycle of poems "Such intoxicating joy." 3. Polina Barskova, 24 years old, Prague. A selection of poems. 4. Kirill Reshetnikov, 24 years old, Moscow. Cycles of poems.

Dramaturgy. 1. Vasily Sigarev, 23 years old, Nizhny Tagil. Play "Plasticine". 2. Mikhail Pokras, 23 years old, Moscow. The play "Not Said". 3. Sergey Kaluzhanov, 20 years old, Moscow. The play "City Day, or Bomzhatnik". 4. Zalina Khadikova, 24 years old, Vladikavkaz. The play "A Streetcar Named Desire, or Things Are Getting Worse."

Tomorrow evening everyone is taken to the forest, to the Birch Grove boarding house. I'll be there too. The award ceremony will take place in a week.

And I can’t tell myself apart from my trousers taken off.

In the last issue , I blamed my colleagues from “NG” and its “ Ex Libris ” that, having published the jury of the Anti-Booker Prizes in the newspaper and having the “Anti-Booker” section in the table of contents of the site, these fucking colleagues did not bother to post the list online. Today, colleagues went even further. Having announced the shortlists of the entire anti-Booker bouquet yesterday (five awards), they did not publish them today either in NG, or in Ex Libris, or on paper, or online. Very witty. For now, you can look at Liza Novikova’s article in Kommersant, but there is not a list, but extracts.

Hungry verbs, naked verbs

The showdown between Dmitry Kuzmin and a group of coyotes (see links in the " Collection of Scandals ") took a new turn: Lev Pirogov suddenly composed a conciliatory essay . In which, in particular, he writes: “All sorts of stories about how “with a word you can hurt” or at least scare away a gang of immaturely spitting cynical teenagers, to me, who grew up in slums on the Chechen-Cossack border, seem decidedly dangerous to health . ”

Let me remind you where the Stavropol resident Pirogov came from: he started in my guest book (now there is God’s grace there, and once there was a raging horned pool), thanks to which he first became a popular online loafer, moved to Moscow (Saint Alla Nikolaevna Latynina warmed him up in the Literary Newspaper ), is published wherever he moves (with varying degrees of success - from RJ, let's say, he was quickly kicked out ), became a member of the jury of the Brothers Karamazov Award, lives (an apartment is expensive to rent) in the Pirogi club and is generally in its heyday.

Pirogov’s know-how: converting the cheeky (to put it mildly) intonation of guest books into literary criticism. I deliberately quoted about the Chechens and Cossacks. This is a very important message. It seems that Pirogov really perceives literary activity as a selfless and carefree game - hence the fantastic definitions like “Marietta Chudakova, my grand-niece” and the country’s at least records for rudeness (poke here - Basinsky would not dream of this, gynecologist Lamport, if anyone remembers this original author , I couldn’t do that). There is some kind of... well, purity in his boundless arrogance. Kuzmin can righteously rage, offer to fuck Pirogov at the radiator as much as he wants, but it’s funny that it was Pirogov who pulled Kuzmin into such open football, lifted some spells from Dima’s style - not always expressive. Helped Dima’s tongue turn in such a pleasant (is it pleasant - near a battery?) way.

But Pirogov can only be praised in subjunctive intonation: in the position of an unrequited fiery graphomaniac, nothing will shine for him, naked talent, the ability to sometimes (not too often, by the way) make sausage will not take you far in itself, through the guestbook intonation you can get to know everyone (which is already happened), but you can’t feed. Both Pirogov’s fiction and his critical texts cry out that the author does not control himself. So - something is driving. He has more than “nothing to say” - he doesn’t want to say anything. He wants to speak clearly. Message didn’t spend the night at Pirogov’s: just a piece of khara-mambura.

Pirogov is one of the brightest dead ends of postmodernism, which is actively ending, which - in some contradiction with its postulates - turned out to be “art for art’s sake.” Now - alas or hurray - art needs to be “for the reader.” And Pirogov’s readers today are Dmitry Olshansky (an enthusiastic person: he once liked the way Pirogov bends squiggles, and will continue to admire them) and Kirill Kutalov (who, it seems, is thrilled only by the fact that he is now with Pirogov something like a “literary group” "; Akhmatova and Gumilyov were a literary group, so are Leva and me!). These people are very nice, but it’s difficult to form an audience. That is, they do not constitute any audience. Serzhik from New York wrote to my guestbook: a self-supplying supercrest. Pirogov’s development was facilitated by excellent pretzels. I think Serzhik Pirogov doesn’t read now: the topics are alien, and the energy is not the same as in the hundred-letter guestbook replica. And Serzhik is more important to Pirogov than Olshansky, because Mitya is his own, and Serzhik is society.

Why am I so wound up? Yes, because Pirogov’s reconciliation before Kuzmin is an amazing text for Lev. This is the first time I know of him being in charge of a bazaar. He controls himself, speaks to the point, and not about Mengista Haile Mariam’s cowards. So he can. Which is extremely nice. Otherwise, this clearly gifted person is still writing garbage: the prose is bad, the academic studies are incompetent, and the criticism, in general, is not a fountain. The dude had no context. Now it is. It's time to pick up the tug. Kuzminsky recently suggested that Pirogov needs to write a novel. But a normal novel, like Bolmat and Akunin, and not about the sister-in-law Delka Metelkina.

Time is greater than space

It’s dumb, of course, to advertise Marat Gelman to me - hand washes hand, rooster cuckoo and all that. But I can’t remain silent either. In St. Petersburg, in the Marble Palace (Russian Museum), the second part of the exhibition “ Art versus Geography ” opened - current art from the collections of the Gelman Gallery with, as they say in RJ, bonuses from “Regina” and XL. The first case of global exhibition of contemporary Russian art in such a prestigious museum space.

That is, the second one: Marat feeds the people of St. Petersburg in portions. I was not at the first one (which had been hanging since October), but I visited the second one. On Monday, three exhibitions opened - “ Women of Russia ”, “ Beyond ” and “ Dynamic Couples ” (I wrote articles about the first two in the catalog: excellent articles, I highly recommend them). Gorlova shows her tongue, Christ of Vinogradov and Dubossarsky walks along the square. Mayakovsky, on the shoulder of whose monument Osmolovsky sits, the Fenso group eats rice with sausages, Brener scares the chimeras, the medical hermeneutics go into a rage, Kitaeva cuts Litvinova, the AESs turn their guts out. Everyone does their own thing, that is, their business. To the question “will Kulik and Antoshina stand the test of the main walls in Russia?” I received two answers at once: firstly, they will, and secondly, we have quite competitive and diverse contemporary art. Poorer than the West technologically - let's say, in the genre of video installations we lose to the bourgeoisie, like Lithuania to Latvia in hockey (there was a case five years ago when the Latvians beat the Lithuanians 27:0), but here we have to endure. And when it comes to photography, painting or simple installations, we are great. Genuine hip hip. If you're in Sanitary Petersburg, don't miss the exhibition. Aldy's "Art Against Geography" will travel to the Volga.

Oriental sweets set your mouth on edge

I once already wrote in Weekly that St. Petersburg literary mores are very different from Moscow: in the northern capital, people often hit each other’s faces at literary evenings. Here’s a fresh impression: at the celebration of the opening of “Art Against Geography” in the Kotletnaya restaurant, the historian and journalist L., after drinking vodka, began shouting at the female critic G. that she was weak-minded, things smelled like a fight, but then the thin poet V. approached, whom L. immediately began to really strangle his throat with his hands, at the same time explaining to those around him that V. had a disgusting rhyme.

The next day I drank beer at the publishing house "A", told the boys there this incident, and they told me that L. was the director of a classical gymnasium. I was surprised that the directors of classical gymnasiums were so radical in their everyday life. To which they answered: but the poet Z. is actually the rector of the Greco-Latin Academy. I asked: what about Z.? as cool? Well, of course, they answered me. So he went to Moscow to the Non-Fiction fair, saw an African-American waiter in “Pirogi” and immediately shined a light in his eye. Purely for skin color.

Metaphysics of St. Petersburg!

Swung to the left

The best literary club in St. Petersburg - "Amplitude" - which, according to previous reports, interrupted its activities for an indefinite period of time - interrupted it, it turns out, forever. told me about this The curator of the club , Dmitry Golynko-Volfson, . They say that everyone has already acted, new forms are needed. I’ll add on my own behalf: we still need a buffet. So at the Akhmatova Museum, where on the 16th at 16 o’clock Ilya Fonyakov presents an anthology of literary hoaxes (St. Petersburg: Znak, 2000), there is no buffet...

In food stores - crush and slush

December 19 in “ Avtornik ” is the evening of Sergei Sokolovsky , who has just won the “ Catch ” competition, December 21 in “ Classics of the 21st Century ” is the evening of Danila Davydov , one of the contenders for “Debut”. Authors of the same circle and generation, both write emphatically prosaic, alarmingly emasculated texts, both write purely “urban” texts - about little people wandering through a big city who knows where, reading books in the subway, drinking warm beer on a winter boulevard, taking off their hats in the cold , leaning his forehead against the poplars.

Only gratitude will be heard

And at the Zverev Center (Novoryazanskaya St., 29, building 4) on December 19 and 20, Dmitry Bulatov will present his collection of sound poetry from all over the world. Recordings will be played from 10 am, and at 6:30 pm Bulatov will give lectures - on the first day about the history of this very thing (in particular, recordings by Christian Morgenstern and Ilya Zdanevich are promised), and on the second day - about modernity.

Ink is more honest than blood

Stas Gridasov, editor of the Sport Today website , deputy editor of the Izvestia newspaper, periodically composes tiny, most lyrical stories. Lately he's been posting them in Playboy magazine. This was the case with “ Fork ,” and this is what happened with “ New Adultery ,” which has now appeared online.

“She was like a princess of a tiny kingdom who set out on the road and, caught in bad weather, asked to spend the night in the first house. She warmed up, looked prettier, unraveled her pale scarlet petals and smiled gratefully in her sleep. She ended up in a house where they immediately believed her on the word and did not put a pea at night to check if she was a real princess . "

This is our Playboy. Someone called it Tartu notes from glamor.

Can you hear them tap dancing?

I was visiting Andrei Levkin, eating vodka and herring. There is some kind of printout from the Internet lying under the table. He bent down - and this was Oleg Zolotov. A Riga poet whom I once knew and loved from Rodnik. Zolotov competed with Nikolai Kononov in line length , and I read at night, perhaps shedding a tear. And I completely forgot about him. There is no current memory on any shelf. And here is a printout - from the VessLv website . I tidied up the printout, put it on the table in front of me, typed in the address - nothing. There is no such page on the site, it has disappeared somewhere. What remains? Type a few words by hand. In general, the best form of love for poetry is copying it in a notebook.

All that comes here are homeless people, crazy people and the post office
Yes, a disability pension (for insanity), and as for “nothing sacred” - that’s for sure
It wasn't lying around here. Although I once wanted it.
You were very skillful in convincing us of our love,
I convinced myself so much that now I’m ashamed to admit
in error. But it was said (by someone very smart): “I picked up the tug, I shit myself -
and stop." Because to prove something and explain yourself -
pointless. Yes, and dangerous: it will inevitably lead to aberration
motivations. It’s simpler - see above - what’s in quotes.