Mikhail Edelshtein. Rosbank filed for divorce

Rosbank filed for divorce
The Apollo Grigoriev Prize remains without an owner

Mikhail Edelshtein

Publication date: November 27, 2003

It’s good when in the newspaper in the morning - in the evening in a verse. It's much worse when it's the other way around. When “ Non/fiction ” starts at noon, and you spend several hours rushing from tray to tray, from a press conference to a presentation, then run about all sorts of “ Cossack ” affairs, and in the end you sit for three hours at a strange event called Grigoriev Readings and lies in the fact that various critics come on stage and express everything they think about modern literature. And just at the end of the end, closer to midnight, you return home and start somnambulistically tapping on the keyboard, because tomorrow everything you saw and heard should already be described, recorded and published.

But about the Fair another time. About "Kazakova" even later. Now - about Grigoriev's gatherings. This year they were held openly for the first time, in the large hall of the Central House of Writers. Everyone was invited. There were almost a crawling number of people willing. I invite those who imagine the scale of the room to be impressed.

The official theme of the evening was summing up the results of the outgoing literary year. The results have been summed up (hmm, the phrase was not without ambiguity, but it’s late, and tomorrow morning there will be a Fair again, I don’t have the strength to edit). However, the most interesting result seemed to sum itself up at the end, but more on that in due time.

To start, the new president of the Academy of Russian Modern Literature (ARSS) Sergei Chuprinin , who recently replaced Andrei Vasilevsky in this post, told why our main expert award is named after Apollo Grigoriev . The fact is, the editor of Znamya explained, that the great Grigoriev ended his days in a debt hole, and the academicians considered it right to remind his more financially successful descendants of this sad fact once a year.

After this short but impressive introduction, the audience was shown a new book by last year’s Grigoriev laureate Marina Vishnevetskaya, “Race, Crocodile!” Both the book, which includes a story of the same name, several short stories and the “Experiments” series, and its author were greeted with loud applause. Vishnevetskaya pleased the audience with the message that at the House of Books on Novy Arbat her collection was in the top 10 for some time, and modestly attributed this fact to the authority of the Academy and Grigorievka.

After Vishnevetskaya, Vera Pavlova appeared on the stage, who received the Grigoriev Prize two years before the author of “Experiments”. The applause gradually turned into ovation. Pavlova read several poems written over the past year - bright, talented, uneven, monotonous. “ About the same thing, always about the same thing ,” as Linor Goralik wrote on another occasion.

Following Pavlova, it was Andrei Dmitriev’s turn to solo, who also received the Grigorievka at one time. Dmitriev showed the audience another book, which turned out to be a collection published as a result of a meeting of young writers in Lipki. Having praised the poems of the Kostroma poet Ivan Volkov published in the collection, Dmitriev moved on to prose. The transition was accompanied by a small embarrassment: instead of the Grigoriev laureate’s rationality, his subconscious suddenly spoke. “This book contains an absolute masterpiece - the story of Dmitry Bykov ,” Dmitriev began and stopped short. He looked at the microphone in amazement for several moments, and then with the words: “This is just some kind of nightmare!” jumped back into the stage. “Novikov, of course, Dmitry Novikov ,” Dmitriev continued when he was able to return to his workplace. “His story “ Fly in Amber ” will be included in all anthologies of Russian and world prose.” I can’t say anything about “Fly in Amber” - I haven’t read it. But the two stories I came across by the Petrozavodsk prose writer, whom all the thick magazines suddenly fell in love with this year, were amazingly bad.

Dmitriev noted the desire to imitate rebellion as a frightening trend in modern young literature. Today's youth are following the path of Limonov , just as the debutants of the early 90s followed the path of Prigov , the writer stated. In fact, they do not want to remake the world at all; their goal is to get better in the society that surrounds them. A true rebel, according to Dmitriev, strives not to destroy values, but to affirm them. Therefore, the real revolt is the rebellion of Leo Tolstoy , not Mayakovsky .

The signal to start the discussion was given. Natalya Ivanova gently chided Dmitriev for his excesses, reminding him of the need for tolerance and pluralism. There are many points of view on modern literature. If, from the point of view of most thick-magazine critics, Prigov is somewhere on the margins of the literary process, then the “fat men” themselves are a hopeless periphery for Prigov and company.

However, the problem of authenticity and imitation raised by Dmitriev, as it turned out, worries Ivanova too. True, in her interpretation it was no longer about a riot, but about a scandal. According to Ivanova, Viktor Pelevin is a real scandal and real literature, but some Mikhail Elizarov promoted by “Ad Marginem” is a boring imitation.

In the end, Ivanova introduced an element of pessimism into her speech, recalling that over the past year Georgy Vladimov, Vasil Bykov, Semyon Lipkin left us, and instead of them Irina Denezhkina appeared in the literature - a replacement that is difficult to recognize as equivalent. However, everything ended on a positive note. “Russian literature is great, there are enough beds for everyone,” the critic concluded.

Following Natalya Ivanova, Chuprinin called Alexander Ivanov, director of the above-mentioned publishing house "Ad Marginem", onto the stage. The first thing he did was accuse Chuprinin of being a “set-up.” “I was preparing a serious report, but I found myself in a variety situation,” he said. Soon, however, the publisher cooled down and changed his anger to mercy: “I am not an avant-garde artist, not a radical, and not a fringe. If I were a fringe, I would break this microphone, but I’m not breaking it.” The audience applauded gratefully.

Then Ivanov responded to his namesake and stood up for Elizarov. True, he did it somehow strange. “It is not obvious to me,” he said, “that Sorokin and Elizarov are a fact of literature.” And he called his pets “centaur objects.”

From what follows it turned out that Ivanov does not like critics for the same reason that Martin Luther did not like priests - both of them perform mediatory functions. “The ethics of capitalism does not presuppose any intermediaries between the product and the consumer, so criticism today looks like an anachronism,” stated the head of a publishing house known for its anti-bourgeois orientation. If pre-market ideology proceeded from the fact that in the event of a mismatch between the reader and the book, the reader must be remade, then within the framework of market ideas, the conflict between the product and the consumer is resolved precisely by replacing the product.

As an example of the critical community’s lack of understanding of the tasks of the current moment, Ivanov cited the attitude towards the “ National Bestseller ”. The crowd turns their nose up at this award, the jury of which consists of non-professionals, while it is precisely this fact, according to Ivanov, that constitutes the main strength of “Natsbest”: the laureate is chosen by the same people whom the publisher focuses on when releasing the book, that is, readers , not criticism.

Having thus denounced the morally outdated critics, the head of "Ad Marginem" came to his senses and remembered his deeply anti-bourgeois essence. “The fight against capitalism must begin with oneself, with one’s own body. We must remake our vision and hearing in such a way that they do not succumb to the chimeras of capitalism,” he logically summed up and left the podium. That is, from the stage.

All those who spoke after Ivanov considered it their duty to testify to disagreement with his theses. Alexey Slapovsky did this more succinctly and clearly than others. He recalled that since the time of Marx, whom Ivanov quoted abundantly, capitalism has changed somewhat. In modern capitalism there is no dictatorship of demand; on the contrary, demand itself is actively formed by advertising, the media, and PR technologies.

Boris Kuzminsky spoke about the same thing. According to him, the most powerful impression of the year for him was the presentation of the latest novel by Günter Grass, which took place as part of the Frankfurt Fair and was staged on a scale reminiscent of a real performance. In a hall that looked like a discotheque, the performance of dance tunes alternated with the author reading short fragments of his text. The beautiful frauleins sang, Grass danced, and as a result, all the books brought to the presentation were sold out.

Having told this story, Kuzminsky invited the audience to imagine a modern Russian writer of Grasse’s stature, who, at the behest of the director of such an action, would agree to kick his leg and throw out his knees. Those gathered shuddered and refused to introduce themselves. Then Kuzminsky moved on to criticize his former colleagues at ARSS: “The Academy was created to raise the prestige of Russian literature. Six years after its creation, the situation has rather worsened. It is becoming increasingly difficult for a serious writer who does not create scandals and does not resort to PR technologies for self-promotion “I don’t want to talk about magazines; they are a separate sad story.” Several years ago, Kuzminsky explained, large publishing houses became interested in modern Russian literature, but quickly became disillusioned with its commercial potential. It turned out to be much more profitable to persecute average Western prose in bad translations.

However, in this trend itself, the critic found reason for optimism: a businessman always plays to average the level, and not to increase it, he explained, while Russian prose writers are more individual than their Western colleagues and therefore break out of the standard. In this regard, Kuzminsky, citing in advance the November depression, called for the introduction of book publishing quotas. I still don’t fully understand what exactly needs to be quotas. Apparently, the discussion was about legislatively establishing a mandatory proportion between original and translated literature. Depression is a terrible force.

After Kuzminsky, Basinsky spoke. There were fewer surprises here. Basinsky scolded Ivanov, Sorokin, capitalism, socialism, and his ARSS colleagues for their capitulatory sentiments. Finally, the critic called for the return of literature to the reader and left, grabbing a bottle of mineral water from the chairman’s table on the way. Nothing other than grief.

Evgeniy Bunimovich replaced Basinsky and told a couple of cute tales. First, he talked about how academicians ruined the life of Ivan Zhdanov by awarding him the Grigoriev Prize and the corresponding amount in dollars. The poet lost some of the money, and with the rest he bought a house in Simeiz. The roof of the house is leaking, which is why Zhdanov is now unable to perform at poetry festivals.

Then Bunimovich got to his senior colleagues and colorfully described the scene that took place at one of these festivals. “On the stage,” said the poet deputy, “three chairs were placed: for the poet himself, his translator (the festival was international) and the presenter.” Imagine the surprise of the organizers when, upon arriving at the hall, they discovered that all the seats on the stage were already occupied: Andrei Voznesensky, Alexander Kushner and Evgeniy Rein decorously sat down on the prepared chairs, in full accordance with their ideas about their own place in the poetic hierarchy, forming thus the presidium.

Here Bunimovich smoothly moved on to attack the members of the ARSS, comparing them with those very living classics sitting on stage: “You called yourself with the respectable word “academicians”, you chose a reputable hall of the Central House of Writers for your meeting, and poetry today prefers other spaces. It exists in parallel world." The style and tone of the denunciations revealed in the poet a seasoned “Yabloko” person with considerable experience.

However, at the end of his speech, Bunimovich moved to C major, assuring the audience that within the literary community the prestige of poetry is still very high today: even such successful people as Sokurov’s screenwriter Yuri Arabov, one of the most popular prose writers in Europe Michel Houellebecq or the author of “English” patient" Canadian Michael Ondaatje consider themselves, first of all, poets.

Having checked the “poetry” box, those gathered moved on to popular literature. Masslit duty officer Roman Arbitman , taking up Bunimovich's initiative, structured his speech as a chain of tales from the area under his jurisdiction, which, according to the critic, through the efforts of gentlemen publishers, turned into a natural kingdom of dead souls. First of all, it went to the “exmos” who, unable to come to terms with the sad fact of the death of the famous detective Nikolai Leonov, which happened several years ago, found a replacement for the deceased in the person of Alexei Makeev, who continues to regularly delight the public with the latest adventures of detective Gurov.

The next victim was the science fiction writer Vasily Golovachev, who released the novel “Magacitly” in the reporting year: the fruit of “abuse with special cynicism” of “Aelita” by Alexei Tolstoy. Further on Arbitman’s list were: the 25-volume “Anthology of World Fiction” from Dmitry Volodikhin and “Avanta Plus” and the publishing house “AST”, which got into trouble with Nick Perumov: “Taking advantage of the fact that the said science fiction writer once came up with a theme for some kind of Internet short story competition , "AST" quickly embossed the result, accompanying its cover with the surname of the commercially promising Perumov in a large header font (as the AST people later assured, the surname itself jumped to the cover from the wilds of the output data, and the font itself changed the size - why, they say , does not happen in the world of fantasy!)".

Having distributed earrings to all the sisters, Arbitman gave the floor to the director of the Moscow bookstore on Tverskaya, Marina Kameneva. Her performance was reminiscent of a therapy session for those suffering from particularly acute November depression. To begin with, Kameneva assured those gathered that the rumors about the reader’s death were greatly exaggerated: the buyer knows and loves modern Russian prose, and in terms of total sales in “Moscow” it is significantly ahead of detective stories. And with poetry, according to Kameneva, things are not so bad.

The story of the director of "Moscow" about the everyday life of the site entrusted to her was very much liked by the students present in the hall in a fair number. Kameneva’s words that her store, which is now open until one in the morning, can and should become a place of nightly meetings for intelligent youth, were completely drowned in the ovation given by these very youth. In response, Kameneva told the story of a smart high school student who, after reading Tolkien in the original and conducting a comparative examination of the translations, helped confused buyers choose the best one.

Alla Latynina returned the audience to a discussion that had been dying out about the specifics of capitalism at the present stage. The critic doubted that authors such as Marinina, Dontsova or Pelevin reached the top of the ratings as a result of sophisticated promotion, and recommended that the critical community pay more attention to successful books.

From the speech of Lyceum 15/25 teacher Konstantin Polivanov, who continued the therapeutic session begun by Kameneva, it followed that schoolchildren also love modern literature - and not only prose, but also poetry. Although, Polivanov admitted, Haruki Murakami’s popularity among students is still higher than the popularity of Russian authors.

After this, Chuprinin introduced the “fashionable literary agent” Galina Dursthof to the audience. Ms. Dursthof did not like the word “fashionable” and suggested replacing it with the word “successful.” Having dealt with the epithets, the literary agent involved in promoting Russian books to the Western market reported that interest in our literature is currently growing in Europe. The trend, unfavorable for Russian prose writers, was reversed thanks to the breakthrough of Lyudmila Ulitskaya and Alexandra Marinina into the German market. True, even greater success fell to Polina Dashkova, and now German publishers are queuing up to buy the rights to translate other Russian lady detectives for crazy money. But even in the “serious” sector, their own bestsellers appeared: “The rights to the first edition of War and Peace were sold to 12 countries, to Anna Politkovskaya’s book - to 10, to Sorokin’s Ice - also to 10.” Significant commercial success, according to Dursthof, can be expected in the West for the prose of Oleg Postnov, Ilya Stogov, Sergei Gandlevsky and especially Andrei Gelasimov. “I’m working on this now,” she assured those present. The Russian side needs to learn to approach organizational issues more responsibly than it did during the Frankfurt Fair, and also stop letting Viktor Erofeev go abroad. “Every time he tells the Germans that the mirror of Russian literature is broken, but the Germans take everything literally,” Ms. Dursthof complained.

Andrei Nemzer , of course, summed up everything that was said during the evening. He pleased the audience with the message that over the past year, many worthy things have appeared in Russian literature - both in poetry (the names of Inna Lisnyanskaya, Maxim Amelin, Oleg Chukhontsev were heard) and in prose (Marina Vishnevetskaya, Andrei Dmitriev, Irina Polyanskaya, Valery Iskhakov, Alexander Khurgin, Evgeny Shklovsky). The critics who “love and build Russian literature” were not forgotten either.

But the main event, as promised, took place under the very curtain. It turned out that all the way in the bushes a huge piano pierced and only now they finally decided to introduce it. The representative of Rosbank Anna Parshchikova announced that since this year the bank has stopped financing the Apollo Grigoryeva Prize. The banking beauty did not explain the reasons for this decision, limiting himself to a proposal to remain friends (somewhere I read that the spouse most often pronounces this phrase, offering her second half to divorce).

“Do not speak with longing: they are not, but with gratitude: they were,” - resorted to the help of the classic Chuprinin, looking after the representative of Rosbank. Then he suggested holding the draw and choose the next "Grigorievsky" jury. Natalya Ivanova, Pavel Basinsky, Valentin Kurbatov, Samuel Lurie were consistently extracted from Nemzer's cap. The name of Alexander Genis sounded even earlier. The chairman of the judicial board fell to be Basinsky.

Judging by the somewhat oxymoron composition of the jury, the seventh "Grigorievka" promises to be interesting. You look, and there will be money. But no - so on Friday the Andrei Bely Prize is awarded. Surely the organizers after the ceremony will remain in the bins of a pair of bottles of vodka and several apples. Will share with colleagues.