Mikhail Edelshtein. Consolation Booker

Consolation Booker
Mikhail Edelshtein

Publication date: December 24, 2002

According to Solzhenitsyn, the camp is hell, but I think that hell is ourselves...
S. Dovlatov

About eleven years old is quite a respectable age for a literary prize . And at least enough to try to draw some preliminary results . Moreover, over the past period, some points have emerged quite clearly.

So, Bookers are different. More precisely, three types. Type one is perhaps the most common. The shortlist is a solid gray blur. All the works included in it are similar to each other, like twin brothers, and who gets the prize no longer matters. I will allow myself not to give examples.

The second type, rapidly approaching the first in prevalence. One of the finalists rises above the rest, like Everest, thrown by the will of some supernatural tornado into the surrounding hills of the Central Russian Upland. However, they do not give him a prize, and for the award, apparently as an edification to the unlucky genius, they choose something that is as unreadable as possible. The most striking example is the situation in 1993 , when Oleg Ermakov was supposed to become the second Russian bukeriat, and as a result the award was given to “A table covered with cloth and with a decanter in the middle” by Vladimir Makanin - if my memory serves me right, the most boring, despite the relatively small volume, a text that has ever reached the Booker final (I’m not even talking about the fact that “The Table...” in its genre characteristics has anything to do with the novel, after the know-how of the jury in 1999 , when in shortlist leaked collection of stories by Yuri Buida , such trifles are inconvenient to remember). I will note in passing that the incident of 93 turned out to be fatal for the history of the Russian Booker. After the obvious mistake of the first jury, the second could correct the situation, set, if you like, a certain bar. However, the jury decided the way they decided, and as a result, everything went the way it went.

Finally, there is a third type, which is still having difficulty taking root on Russian soil. The initial situation is the same as in the previous case, however, whether by the will of the stars or the whim of the judges, the author of the best novel of the year becomes the Booker laureate. Due to its non-standard nature, such a situation causes confusion or even irritation among others. Critics express indignation, jury members publicly express dissenting opinions and convincingly speak about the danger of the decision just made for the fate of Russian literature. Something similar happened in 2000 , when the prize was awarded to Mikhail Shishkin for the best novel of the last decade, “The Taking of Ishmael.” The outrage over this decision has not completely subsided to this day.

This year, the Booker plot developed according to the second option. Although at first it seemed that the third one also had a chance of being realized. But first things first.

Of the six shortlisted novels, three - by Dmitry Bortnikov , Vadim Mesyats and Vladimir Sorokin - initially had no chance. Sorokin , in fact, got into the final for rather literary reasons - the jury decided to support the writer in his lawsuit with “ Walking Together ”. However, the chairman of the jury, Vladimir Makanin, also noted the literary merits of Sorokin’s “ Ice .” By what criteria were Bortnikov and Mesyats selected for the shortlist, whose freedom of speech, fortunately, is not threatened so far - God knows. I wouldn’t like to think that it’s for aesthetic reasons.

I started reading Sorokin’s latest novel with bated breath. Evil people talked about the creative crisis that overtook the writer, fans argued that Sorokin, on the contrary, had reached a qualitatively new level. Both of them agreed that the Sorokin we knew all these years is no longer with us .

To my horror, I discovered that neither friends nor foes had not only read Ice, but had not even opened it. Otherwise, where would rumors about the radical changes that the master’s writing style undergone come from?

In fact: “two heaps of dried feces” are found already at the end of the second paragraph. On the seventh page the hero “gasted”; on the ninth he already “smelled slightly of feces.” Less than ten pages had passed before “urine silently flowed into the vessel” (the nurse helping the weakened hero “skillfully held his penis”). It should be noted that it flowed for exactly five paragraphs, after which the “stream dried up”... In general, it was an exceptionally “healthy, positively charged text,” as Dmitry Bavilsky aptly described “Ice.” The main coprophile of the latest Russian literature is still in service.

Everything else is also in place. Enkavedash-SS heroics, Gnostic mythology , dissected at the level of some Porfiry Ivanov , Nietzsche , comprehended at approximately the same level... It seems, as usual, there is a little bit for everyone. The scene of the interrogation of Sister Khram in the NKVD and her subsequent dialogue with Colonel Lapitsky, for example, are suspiciously reminiscent of the corresponding fragment from “Black Ice” by Abram Tertz . And the concise presentation of the history of the Russian State from Stalin to the present day with Chubais in the role of brother Uf completely reeks, God forgive me, of Anatoly Kurchatkin’s “Strazhnitsa” (if anyone still remembers that one). In general, this is normal mass fiction with a youth bias. Lyudmila Ulitskaya will probably be more entertaining, but Polina Dashkova is definitely resting.

However, everyone should be happy. The Booker jury and V. Makanin personally expressed their civic position; Jury member Valentin Lukyanin, who objected to Sorokin’s inclusion in the shortlist, was given the opportunity to express his aesthetic position; Sorokin himself, having cursed Booker and not showing up at the award ceremony, once again attracted attention to himself - isn’t this happiness for a pop star? But newspaper literary reviewers were the luckiest of all. Against the backdrop of information about Sorokin’s inclusion in the short list, the rest of the bookeriad looked like just a side dish that was not the first fresh. To verify this, just go to the Booker website and open the “ Press about Booker ” page.

However, journalists are easy to understand. Reading other people on the shortlist is hardly more pleasant than getting hit in the sternum with an ice hammer. Therefore, the desire to limit oneself to Sorokin is quite forgivable. Otherwise, you will have to be treated with electricity together with Vadim Mesyats or, following Dmitry Bortnikov, suffer from Fritz syndrome.

Of these two, Bortnikov was luckier: the preface to his book was written by Yuri Mamleev , and in the annotation “Fritz Syndrome” is compared with the prose of Nikolai Kononov . If this is a PR move, then it is an extremely smart one - after such recommendations, naturally, you expect the worst, so it is no longer possible to be disappointed.

Indeed, there are no disappointments, the novel is like a novel, Kaledin’s “Stroibat”, decorated with verbal flourishes. Of course, Bortnikov senses Mamleev, and so does Kononov. So it’s not difficult to understand the author’s dark worldview: to be an epigone of epigones is an unenviable fate. What all three have in common is a clearly palpable taste of coquetry, constantly breaking through naturalistic descriptions and physiological revelations. This, by the way, distinguishes them from Selin, who is remembered in vain by everyone in the same annotation.

Bortnikov has so many horrors of all sorts, more in number, at a cheaper price, that the author himself gets lost in them from time to time and forgets what he was talking about earlier. For example, the hero was hit on the head with “a press the size of the universe,” as a result of which he “went deaf in his right ear.” The sad story of the right ear is repeated several more times, and after a couple of pages the same hero, being in the hospital, “lies on his right ear so as not to hear anything.” Wow! Bortnikov, however, can also be understood. His novel is not easy to read just once, let alone re-read...

I don’t know who patrons Vadim Mesyats and with whom the nameless annotators compare him. This is probably why “Electrical Treatment” made an even more painful impression on me than Bortnikov’s prose. The novel of the Month is simply boring, just like any work built on endless cloning of the same technique is boring. One hundred and fifty random Polaroids from the lives of people who are completely strangers and uninteresting to you. Their friends, their casual acquaintances, their wives, their neighbors, their pets... In the end, as usual, the plane crashes into the tower.

This ending was actually funny. The novel was started in 1999, and all these two years the author, it turns out, did not know how to finish it. This is just clear: there is no plot as such, and no matter what you end up with, everything will be somehow unconvincing. And then life throws such a wonderful ending. Of course, it has nothing to do with the novel, but how symbolic! So it was written - with a little help from my friends. Can be recommended to all other Russian-American graphomaniacs as a universal recipe.

However, I repeat, neither Sorokin, nor Bortnikov, nor Mesyats initially had a chance of winning the Booker. It was obvious that the laureate would be chosen among the members of the other three: Alexander Melikhov , Oleg Pavlov , Sergei Gandlevsky .

Melikhov is a good writer in his own way, although somewhat sluggish. His fundamental problem is that at one time, apparently, even before the start of his writing career, they played a rather cruel joke on him: they gave him a selection of essays to read and convinced him that this was what was called a novel. Since then, Melikhov has been writing like this: he talks about life - humanity in general and his own in particular - and passes off these discussions as fiction. What's most interesting is that most readers and critics believe it.

Melikhov has many admirers, mainly among very worthy people. For example, member of the Booker jury Tatyana Beck admitted her liking for his prose. True, she motivated this in a rather unique way: Melikhov, Beck said, writes about the inner world of a Russian half-breed, and this is close to me. This logic, I admit, is not entirely clear to me. The heroine of the novel of the Month is allergic to cats, and so am I, but I do not consider this a sufficient basis for awarding the Month any kind of prize.

With all this, Melikhov’s individual arguments in themselves are often not without interest. The only problem is that, thank God, there are a lot of smart people around, but there is a shortage of talented artists. That’s why many people write today like Melikhov. They all look like Melikhov, and Melikhov, in turn, looks like them. If we add to this that each subsequent novel by Melikhov (including “ Love for Fatherly Coffins ,” which, in fact, we are talking about) is indistinguishably similar to his previous works, which is long before Melikhov on the same material and in a similar manner worked Yuri Karabchievsky - a writer incomparably stronger and more genuine - then we will understand why Melikhov’s prose emanates an incurable aroma of derivativeness.

It is difficult and uninteresting to write about Oleg Pavlov. There is absolutely nothing to grab hold of in his smooth prose. The main feature of this author is the inescapable conviction that life experience is easily and seamlessly converted into literary mastery. The material is processed according to long-known recipes, and in general the feeling of derivativeness from Pavlov’s prose is stronger than from Melikhov’s novels. In the last paragraph, the hero of "Karaganda Nineties" Alyosha Kholmogorov "realizes with surprise that everything has already happened." Alas, the reader realized this much earlier and, once again, alas, without any surprise. Indeed it was, and even before Novy Mir published “ The State Fairy Tale ” in 1994 and presented the prose writer Oleg Pavlov to the city and the world. In Pavlov's novels, both Astafiev and Solzhenitsyn are clearly distinguishable, not to mention their more distant ancestors.

There are such student diplomas: everything seems to be correct, everything is right, the thoughts are not the stupidest, the necessary quotes are arranged in the right order, but there is no work as such. Writing reviews on them is hellish work: one doesn’t raise one’s hand to praise them, there seems to be nothing to scold them for, there seem to be no obvious shortcomings, nothing sticks out, doesn’t stick out, doesn’t hurt the eyes. The Volga flows into the Caspian Sea, a dog is man's friend, there is chaos in the army, and they beat you in prison. Anyone who has not yet heard of any of the above will be a grateful reader of Pavlov's novels.

The funniest thing about Pavlov's latest work is its title. It is called in full "Karaganda destinies, or the Tale of the Last Days." And the entire trilogy, which includes “The State Fairy Tale”, “ The Matyushin Case ” and these same “ Devyatiny ”, is also called “Tales of the Last Days”. Meanwhile, where this home-grown eschatology came from and why the described piece of army everyday life should remind the reader of the Apocalypse - God knows. There is not a trace of any “last days” in the text itself, except for the obsessive and completely alien titles of the chapters: “Genesis” there or “Those in the tombs.” A kind of metaphysical naturalism, and the metaphysical component here was obtained extremely cheaply.

Finally, the last of the shortlisted novels is “ NRZB ” by Sergei Gandlevsky. "NRZB" is a mysterious thing. Actually, its shortcomings are completely obvious. Moreover, they are just too obvious to take them at face value and focus on them. From the very beginning, one cannot leave with the feeling that “NRZB” is deliberately made with its shortcomings outward. Because these shortcomings end where what Gandlevsky’s novel was written for begins. The author needs not only the material, but also the design that forms it, only in order to identify them and move on. Hence the banal plot devices or conspicuous anachronisms. Neither one nor the other is important - all this is just an excuse for conversation, the conversation itself lies ahead. What are the complaints against the road sign for the fact that it conveys a symbolic designation of the type of area, and not a detailed landscape?

Working with the banal in general is in the traditions of the “Moscow Time”, a poetic association that included Gandlevsky in the 70s - let us at least remember the romance intonation of the early poems of Bakhyt Kenzheev . Only Kenzheev is softer, more romantic, or something: “And if there is a dream, it is simple and probably unrealizable.” Gandlevsky’s novel , in general, is about the same thing, only there is no longer any room left for this softening, reassuring “probably”: “of course, not feasible,” “naturally, not feasible.”

The key episode of the novel , in my opinion, is the one where the hero tells how his life with Anya did not work out: “It was not I who was annoyed at her forgetfulness during pregnancy, it was not I who became a victim of Anya’s irritability on the eve of her period, it was not me who was sarcastic about her ability , leaving the frying pan on the fire, gossiping with a friend on the phone... The country's pulp and paper mills may not keep up with my requests, if I undertake to scrupulously list in a letter what Anya and I are not, I will put Tsvetaeva in her belt." Gandlevsky wrote a one-of-a-kind apophatic novel , a novel about what is not, a novel about emptiness. About the emptiness in the place where the great poet Krivorotov should have been; about the emptiness in the place where the happy family man Krivorotov should have been. Now let's remove the last name. "NRZB" is a novel about the emptiness in the place where a realized person, a happy person, should have been. Trite? It wouldn't be trivial!

We know from childhood that suffering enlightens, that tragedy ends in catharsis. What about hopelessness? Does she enlighten? What about defeat, total defeat, which turns out to be the only outcome of life? The last, final defeat? What about life that turns out to be a rough draft without a white paper?

Gandlevsky wrote the most merciless Russian prose of recent years. "NRZB" is a novel about hell, the personal hell of every person, a hell that is always with you. Against the backdrop of "NRZB", Pavlov's touching conviction that it was he who wrote the "tale of the last days", his attempts to pass off dark army sketches as a description of the underworld even evoke some sympathy. Apparently, the humane jury, which ultimately awarded the Booker to Pavlov, was also imbued with this sympathy. Why not? Booker as a kind of consolation prize...

Maybe it's even for the better. Makanin presenting a literary prize to Gandlevsky is a very funny sight, if you please.