| The Belkin Prize reveals a good writer The recently announced shortlist for the Ivan Petrovich Belkin Prize has somewhat puzzled “professional readers.” In the top five best stories of the year, along with the opuses of the well-known Marina Vishnevetskaya, Andrei Gelasimov and Asar Eppel and Ilya Kochergin, who is in the “youth quota”, “Counter Movement” was discovered, hitherto, it seems, in the capitals of the unnoticed Yuri Goryukhin, a writer whose surname gracefully came back to haunt named after the award. As you know, the “late Ivan Petrovich” was his “publisher” A.P. made him the author of not only five glorious stories, but also the unfinished “History of the Village of Goryukhin.” Bearing this fact in mind and complaining about the sad stereotyping of relatively young Russian prose, I called the note about the “Belkin” competition “History of the village of Goryukhin.” Not at all referring to a writer unknown to me at that time, who was published in the mysterious publication (magazine? almanac?) “Belskie Prostori”. (Let me remind you that the list of laureates was “glued” to the already finished text.) As the same A.P. used to say after Stern, “strange convergences happen.”
The first thing that should be said about Goryukhin is that he was not included in the cohort of laureates for show. I don’t know what else the executive secretary of the monthly Ufa magazine (it’s true) “Belskie Prostori”, founded by the Cabinet of Ministers and the Union of Writers of Bashkorstan, wrote, but “Counter Movement” is a witty and charming story. I am sure that if the author had sent it to Znamya, October or Friendship of Peoples, a “counter movement” would have been discovered there. As for “goryukhinism” in a different sense, there is much less of it in the story than in the capital’s prose writers (or the day before yesterday, those who moved to Moscow). Some of Goryukhin’s numerous characters, of course, are in a bit of trouble (and many drink very thoughtfully), but there is no smell of total blackness and the “compassionate tenderness” almost inseparable from it for oneself, the beloved. As, I note in passing, many other provincial (by registration, and not by level of work!) writers - Nina Gorlanova (Perm), Alexander Khurgin (Dnepropetrovsk), Nikolai Yakushev (Volsk), Alexander Titov (Lipetsk region), Sergei Soloukha (Kemerovo), Yuri Petkevich (Belarus), well (too well!) aware of the hardships of today's life, but not at all inclined to pitiful whining.
Goryukhin writes about how the “Brownian movement” of the inhabitants of a large (but cramped) city turns (or does not turn) into a “counter movement.” Characters flash by, described either in a well-psychological or in a buffoonish tonality - a drunken teacher, a nasty boy, a pensioner, a burglar, an avant-garde artist, a saleswoman from a boutique, a crazy chess coach, an elderly car enthusiast, a doctor, girls with eternal bubbles chewing gum, a cunning journalist, an imposing beauty who knows her worth, a visiting organist... Of course, the crime boss and the police general will show up - what would a “modern story” be without them? Parade of attractions or ligature of everyday life? Chekhov or Kharms? Theater of the Absurd or muddy everyday life? Laughter and sin or “music of the spheres”? Explain who is smart. (Just figure out your own existence first.) Familiar, semi-familiar, completely unfamiliar characters every now and then collide anywhere - on the playground and in the monkey bar of the sobering-up station, on the tram and cafe, at an elegant concert and in the confectionery department of a grocery store... Life is not knows about his own plot, just as the handsome reveler Grogin (somewhat tired of the ease of artistic existence) and the beautiful Dasha (somewhat tired of the “correct” alternation of scandals and reconciliations with a husband indistinguishable from other husbands) do not know their mysterious destiny for each other. Or maybe this purpose is not there?
You guessed it right. After many “non-meetings”, Grogin and Dasha met - “on an asphalt patch, where trams usually release their weary passengers.” We smiled at each other. Grogin managed to notice the similarity of the girl with a nude photograph that he saw in the apartment of an artist friend - and not in vain, it was Dasha. And they separated. “Grogin stopped near a woman selling seeds and thought: where should I go next?” Where is this going? Follow her, darling, follow her! Besides Kharms and Chekhov, there is a lot in the world! I read, I suppose, in the midst of a noisy ball, by accident... The “open endings” today make me sick no less than half a century ago from the victory of the “good” over the “best.” Everything will come true - you just have to want it. Andrey NEMZER |
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