Dmitry Bavilsky. Goodbye America, oh!..

Lately , many writers have been looking for the unclean. And if at the beginning of the year “Critical Realisms” spontaneously formed into a series of reflections on religious motives in current publications, then by the end of the year an increased interest in the forces of evil was revealed.

First - Dmitry Volchek with a completely satanic book "93!" ... In the previous realism, I wrote about Arturo Perez-Reverte’s novel “The Dumas Club, or Richelieu’s Shadow,” where I was touched by the following reflections: As for the devil, this is the heartache of the Lord God, and only Him; the rage of a tyrant caught in his own snare. A story told from the position of the victors." In Leonid Kostyukov we encounter a different approach, a different version of the structure of the shadow side of the world: " If you want to know, there is no uncle devil at all. The devil is a way of thinking, acting and organizational moves. Like an operating system. It's just pure optimality."

Already the very first phrase of “The Great Country” sets one in a very militant mood.

" At the end of ninety-seven, David Gurenko managed to earn a little extra money. Business partners advised him to relax a little in the Bahamas. There he had plastic surgery on his eyebrows and nose, and then, succumbing to stupid advertising, he changed his gender - temporarily, for the sake of thrills. After the operation and the adaptation period, Deila - that was her name now - turned onto the highway, stared at her own neat American chest and crashed into a billboard. The newly-minted woman pierced a five-meter glass of Coca-Cola with her head and, as you already guessed, lost her memory ."

After this, it seems that a cool action movie with a sophisticated plot awaits us, in which each page will include several unexpected plot twists. None of this will happen.

Having produced an energetic prominence in the style of an advertising blurb, Kostyukov switches the stylistic register. And although the “newly minted woman” is recruited by the FBI and meets a lot of exotic (and not so exotic) people on her way, you clearly understand: the main thing here is not the plot at all. More precisely, it’s not even him at all.

And if the attraction with gender reversal turns out to be in no way played out in the “Great Country”, what can we expect from other unfulfilled plot possibilities! It is much more important for Kostyukov to speak fluently, but on various philosophical and everyday issues that concern him.

So the reader needs to quickly, as the text moves, rebuild his feelings, otherwise disappointment and regrets about wasted time are inevitable.

Although it couldn’t be otherwise. The epigraph from Ivan Zhdanov should set the tone for this: “ Try to tell me that I am a phantom, and someone’s part that hurts at the same time ...”. Zhdanov is one of the most obscure and difficult to decipher modern poets; Zhdanov is a sign of a certain aesthetics, from which, to be honest, it is difficult to expect certainty.

The topic itself obliges. It seems impossible for our man to write a coherent and dynamic fictional text about America; tradition does not allow it. The difference between the two civilizations is so glaring that any author, even the most passionate about plots, strives to turn into a conventional Vsevolod Ovchinnikov or Farid Seiful-Mulyukov (by the way, does anyone know where he is now?) and give out a sociocultural express analysis.

" - Sorry, Maggie, but you Russians think we Americans are such idiots that it's just funny.

- Aren’t you idiots?

“We are idiots, but not like that.”

On this, by the way, Vasily Aksenov (whose American texts are very reminiscent of the current text by Leonid Kostyukov) got burned. The muse of one of our best novelists could not withstand the temptation of liberal democracy. And after the writer left for the New World, the sense of rhythm in his chest stopped knocking. And even “Island of Crimea,” let’s be honest, resembles a cauldron of boiled, gelatinous mass.

An amazing change, especially considering Vasily Pavlovich’s extraordinary ability to invent intricate stories. So, in my childhood, one of my favorite adventure books was the duology “My Grandfather is a Monument” and “The Chest in Which Something Knocks” , the dizzying plots in which were simply breathtaking...

So it turns out that genre literature, it turns out, benefits from the Russian cold. Because all sorts of freedoms and temptations of the capitalist world instantly draw you into essays and journalism, into “Round the clock non-stop.” "Looking for Sad Baby" Likewise, the film “Brother-2” loses to its own prequel, turning into a loose propaganda piece dismantled into a series of pop numbers.

Leonid Kostyukov, of course, hedges his bets: the subtitle of his prose—“metaphysical chronicles”—gives some room for genre maneuver. Yeah, since they are “chronicles”, and even “metaphysical”, don’t expect any good. But our people skip genre designations, immediately getting caught up in the dynamics of the first paragraphs, and then, when, a little later, Kostyukov slows down, he begins to get bored.

Moreover, the form chosen by the writer fundamentally avoids complex psychological motivations. Before us is a conventional space, deliberately conventional characters who strangely meet, never to appear again, and who tell inserted stories in the manner of Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie . Remember how any random soldier in a cafe could continue the flow of this great film with his random story?

So it is here. The name Vasily Aksenov comes to mind not by chance. Moreover, it pulls behind it a whole galaxy of conventionally rhetorical works, such as “Trout Fishing in America” by Richard Brautigan (a recent Russian translation published in the magazine “Ural”, 2001, #6) or the endlessly spiritual parables of Richard Bach, so sublime - and such weak-willed ones... And also texts of this kind (by William Burroughs or Georges Bataille of some kind), only with a sexually pathological slant , Mitya Magazine likes to publish.

Psychology here gives way to surreal transformations, and against the backdrop of general upheavals, a change in gender turns out to be such a small thing that it may well go unnoticed.

It seems that “The Great Country” is exactly about this - about a change in fate that affects entire worlds and peoples. What can we say about an individual and small person... It’s just that, apparently, in the life of Leonid Kostyukov there was an experience of a collision with American reality, and in order to somehow organize his impressions, he composed “metaphysical chronicles”.

Choosing the form of a parable for this. Which everyone has the opportunity to read in their own way, purely individually. It was this multivariate reading, apparently, that was important and dear to Leonid Kostyukov. It is clear that the change in gender of a former Soviet man turns out to be an accurate metaphor for the transformations that occur when changing place of residence.

However, much more important is the opportunity for the author himself, specifically Leonid Kostyukov, to build his own great country, somewhere in the interval between the island of Crimea and Zembla, the very America in which the feverish Shatov was ill and to which Danila Bagrov went for the truth. And if Khabibullin plants radishes in Russia, then Smith here brews punch, “ reminiscent of the liquid philosopher’s stone .”

And we, the readers, are called upon to be present at the creation of yet another superpower, no matter how great or speculative.

Metaphysical chronicles, as it was said. Because “ if you ask a person to arrange his own paradise, and the next day - his own hell, then the most cunning federal agent will not find ten differences there. Now consider what can await us there if not this sticky adorei, which you deserve with every inch of your shit body, smoothly passing into the soul."

So maybe the Devil is God, who performed gender reassignment surgery on himself?!