| Two opposing trends that emerged at the end of last year are reasserting themselves. The radically updated ExLibris NG, in the genre of a manifesto, proclaims the advent of the era of “post-intellectualism.” They say, everyone has been sick of postmodernism for a long time, smart words, thoughts and books in general are tired, and therefore “let’s grunt”: it’s easier for us (the writers) and it’s funnier for the reader. But the publishing “monsters”, who until recently were in a blissful “pre-intellectual” era and earned decent capital from mass culture, do not seem to have caught the fashion trends and continue to explore a new field of humanities literature. Following AST (where the next volume of socio-futurologist Alvin Toffler was published), EKSMO-Press also took up modern Western philosophy. However, the author chosen for this step is quite adequate: not some academic Jameson or Rorty, but John Fowles, who has long since become a “cult” among Russian audiences. In the “Anthology of Wisdom” series, his work entitled “Aristos” (translation by Valery Nugatov) was published - a book that, according to the author, “ was first published against the advice of almost everyone who read it .” Having made a name for himself with two great novels (The Collector and The Magus), Fowles, in the mid-60s, seems to have really decided to “set himself up.” Inspired by the ideas of Heraclitus (" opposite is beneficial ", " everything flows... ", " great knowledge does not teach understanding "), he tried to create a philosophical treatise reflecting the worldview of a Western intellectual of the second half of the twentieth century - an agnostic leaning towards existentialism. It is clear that professional philosophers should have regarded this as an encroachment by an amateur on someone else’s territory, and the mass reader was probably expecting another novel from Fowles. But, apparently, the need to express one’s credo not in an encrypted form, but in a direct form turned out to be stronger. Of course, the subtitle of the book (“ Reflections not included in the book of Ecclesiastes ”) can be considered pretentious (however, I have a suspicion that it was invented by Russian publishers), and many maxims dressed in an aphoristic form (such as “ happiness, in essence, - this is the desire to prolong life as it is; and envy is the desire to change it ") - banal. Nevertheless, acquaintance with the “philosophy of common sense” outlined by Fowles on four hundred pages should not harm eight thousand readers. Especially in the era of progressive “post-intellectualism”.
Fowles is also represented in the non-fiction genre in the January issue of Foreign Literature, where fragments of his book “Moleholes” are published in translations by Irina Bessmertnaya and Irina Togoeva . This collection of essays was published in 1998, but it contains texts from a variety of years - from notes about “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” (1969) and “The Odyssey” (1978) to an interview in 1995. “The Odyssey,” Fowles believes, “ must have been written by a woman ”: after all, the author “ is simply obsessed with things that usually belong to young women, but make husbands stay away /.../ the author is very important to the details of how guests are received, how they help them perform their ablutions, how they are dressed, what they are treated to... “I can’t vouch for the Odyssey, but close attention to the details of everyday life and their detailed description in modern women’s prose is an obvious fact. A handbag, gloves, a table lighter, pajamas with a pocket, a garlic knife with a wide blade, a layer cake, onion soup, a white sheep's wool blanket, Mexican roast beef - in all this web you can't immediately see what the actual reason is the suffering of the heroine of the novel by the Austrian writer Brigitte Schweiger, “Where the Salt Comes from the Sea” (translation by Ekaterina Narustrang ), published in the same issue of IL. And there are ultimately two reasons. One, immediate and poignant, is an unloved husband and an abortion from a lover. The second, deep and unclear, is a kind of excellent student complex. If you obey, happiness will come, they told the heroine from an early age; “ if you smile, you’ll get ice cream ,” and “ the picture will appear in the newspaper tomorrow .” Everything turned out to be a “ trick ”: there is no photograph in the newspaper, there is no happiness either, but there is ice cream, but it is melting.
Another example of current “Central European” women’s prose is the collection (1995) of the Swedish writer Inger Edelfeldt “The Amazing Chameleon” (11 stories, five translators, general editing by M. Lyudkovskaya , support from the Swedish Institute), which was published by the publishing house “Text” in the series “ For the first time." In “The Creak” (a paraphrase of “The Three Bears”), the lonely heroine regularly secretly enters the apartment of her neighbors in the stairwell (the key is “under the rug”) with the intention of stealing something. Detailed descriptions of interior details: piggy banks on the chest of drawers, magnets on the refrigerator, light bulbs from IKEA above the marital bed. “ You might think that all your hoarding and calculation is reality - ha ha, I say .” In "Helena Petren's Day Off", a lonely picnic in a city park (blanket, mineral water) ends with a sudden surge of hatred for the carefree world around her (" The dog barked, the couple kissed, the sun was shining, everything went on as usual ") causing Helena to rush home ( " Flowers, sofa with cushions, bath, bath extract, hot water, curl up in bed "). And so on. There is a radio, but again we were bypassed by happiness.
The situation is different overseas. A crushing blow to well-fed and notorious European women was dealt by New Yorker Tama Janowitz , who in 1996 revealed to the world the extravagant novel “On the Coast of Gitchi-Gumi.” Everything here is not like with people. The Slivenovich family, consisting of an unlucky mother and her five offspring aged from six to 21 years (all from different fathers), lives in an abandoned trailer somewhere in the middle of a remote American province. Mommy is sitting on a gin and tonic, six-year-old Leopold is preparing an egg soufflé for the whole family, daughters Marietta and Maude are ready to fight over any man with a “spindle” who happens to be in their field of vision, everyone is happy if they manage to get an extra ten or twenty, and dream of moving to California, where they can make a Hollywood career. Hell, nightmare, bottom. And gushing, unpredictable, dynamic, eccentric - in short, real - life. Self-irony, optimism, and a positive attitude towards the world turn out to be the best means to combat complexes, depression and despondency. This novel is primarily “conversational” (it’s rare to find 400-page texts in which at least 90% is direct speech), and the success of the translation largely depends on the adequate reproduction of the specific humor of the dialogues, where phrases fly between partners like a ball on a tennis table . For the accuracy of the hits, special thanks must be given to Vera Prorokova . And finally, we note that Tama Janowitz’s novel (published as part of the translation program of the Open Society Assistance Foundation Institute) opens a new series “Behind the Porthole” (compiled by Ilya Kormiltsev ), in which “ books by young foreign writers, already have won worldwide recognition and aspire to become tomorrow's classics ."
And who is Edita? - you ask. And what is a spindle? The main characters are, essentially. Alexey MIKHEEV
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