Mikhail Maikov. Heavenly supermarket

Heavenly supermarket
Mikhail Maikov

Publication date: November 28, 2003

The main positive impression from the current Fair is that after the fifth time we finally managed to solve the problem with the wardrobes. In previous years, when looking at the hall of the Central House of Artists during the days of “Non/fiction,” one always got the impression that someone took the bonmo about the theater and the coat rack too literally. And suddenly it became clear that there was no need to hang around the locker room for an hour or two waiting for a free hook - additional stands appeared out of nowhere, and the problem that had tormented book lovers for so many years was solved. True, it is unknown what will happen on the weekend, when the number of visitors is expected to double. But you can’t demand too much from the organizers.

Moreover, as it turned out at the press conference preceding the opening of the Fair, “Non/fiction” is still bringing complete losses to its founders, the Expo Park company. Even though the number of participants is constantly growing. This time it has grown, from 140 to 160. We came from as many as 11 countries.

But the most important country is Japan. She is the official guest of the Fair this year. For what reason, a lot of local writers flew to Moscow. True, not a single one came from Murakami, but others arrived, and, according to the Japanese, no worse.

Moreover, it must be said that the Japanese are almost invisible at the Fair. I always wondered how they fit in so many on their tiny islands, but now I understand. Very compact people. Everyone will sit in the conference room and read poetry. Tanka or haiku. I listened. They sound in the original language, I must say, exactly like in Russian. Beautiful and incomprehensible.

The natives (that is, we) also organized several counter events in honor of the Land of the Rising Sun. Russian publishers discussed the image of Japan in modern Russian culture (the image turned out to be attractive), Russian artists presented their illustrations for Japanese literary masterpieces (and the illustrations are good, and I have loved masterpieces since childhood). In general, the Japanese were greeted warmly at the Fair. True, they didn’t give up the Kuril Islands, but the guests were satisfied anyway. Or did it just seem to me because they smile all the time?..

But even before any Japanese there was a grand opening. The solemnity consisted in the fact that a procession of musicians dressed as clowns, with brass and drums, burst into the hall, and, without ceasing to blow and drum, walked around the perimeter of the pavilion. According to the directors, the spectacle should have been reminiscent of Fellini, but instead Verlaine spontaneously popped up in my memory: “My voice, shrill and false.”

However, wardrobes, a press conference, musicians - these are all side dishes. The last drums died down and it was time to try the main course. Understand how things work with books at a book fair.

And the situation, we have to admit, is not in the most brilliant way. That is, it’s not that bad, but it also brought a lot of joy to the kids - that would also be a bit of an exaggeration. Let's start with the fact that not all publishing houses operating in the intellectual literature market participate in the Fair. There are no "INAPRESS", "Helikon", "Dmitry Bulanin", a number of others here (I am only listing those whom I intended to visit for my own book needs). Particularly annoying, for my taste, was the absence of the “Summer Garden”: they bought from the “Academic Project” the entire edition of the monograph of the largest German Slavist Age Hansen-Löwe ​​“Mythopoetic Symbolism”, and now the book is not at the Fair at all. Traditionally, regional, including university publishing houses are poorly represented.

But the participants did not prepare anything supernatural for “Non/fiction”. There are not many new books in the Central House of Artists room at all. The main event of the current Fair: “Symposium” released the fourth and last novel by Umberto Eco “Baudolino”, which is considered more successful than the previous work of the famous Italian “The Island of the Day Before”.

“Amphora” quickly combined under one cover the old translations of two novels by the latest Nobel laureate, Joseph Coetzee: “Waiting for the Barbarians” and “The Life and Times of Michael K.”. However, we can consider that both novels are being published in Russian for the first time - few specialists will remember which publishing house pressed these translations in the book chaos of 1989. The Amphora edition has one drawback: the book was published in a series with the stupid title “read [fashionable]”, which is completely unsuitable for Coetzee. Moreover, two months earlier, in the same series, St. Petersburg residents squeezed out Saddam Hussein’s masterpiece “Zabiba and the Tsar.”

There are no high-profile new products at all at the stand of the third St. Petersburg grandee. "Azbuka" is actively adding to its new series "Orange Key", but who would call the books of Graham Joyce or Anita Mason, practically unknown in Russia, an event of the Fair? The situation in “Foreigner” is a little more interesting: a new Nick Hornby, a new David Lodge...

Perhaps brighter than all the great and terrible, “Science” unexpectedly appeared, presenting the publication of “Don Quixote” in “Literary Monuments”. At least the two-volume edition was sorted out on the first day.

The luminaries of non-fiction without quotation marks also did not prepare any special new products for the Fair. I can’t remember the last time the OGI assortment was updated in any significant way. True, there are several nice recent postcards from Elkin. One that is especially good is the one where Putin sits and reads a book with “Putin” written on it, and the whole world around him looks like Putin. A dog like Putin under the table, a cactus like Putin on the window, fish like Putin in an aquarium... An amazingly accurate and subtle metaphor for today's reality.

RSUH presents the book by Andrei Sinyavsky - Abram Tertz "The Literary Process in Russia", which includes the most significant works of the author (authors?) on Russian literature. The collection includes articles from different years and varying degrees of scientific content: from New World publications to essays from “Syntax”, from the textbook “What is Socialist Realism” and studies on Pasternak’s poetry to notes from recent years. Another new product from the Russian State University for the Humanities is a collection of materials about Sapgir “The Great Henry”.

The UFO Scientific Library published a collection of articles by Mikhail Weiskopf, combining the works of the Israeli scientist on the history of Russian literature of the 19th-20th centuries. The monograph on Mayakovsky, “In Full Logos,” which forms the basis of the book, has already been published in Russia, but some articles are being published for the first time.

The St. Petersburg “Publishing House of Ivan Limbach” has published an excellent volume “Rilke and Russia” - the result of many years of Rilkean studies by Konstantin Azadovsky. The huge book includes the poet’s correspondence with Russian correspondents, memories of his Russian friends, as well as Russian works by Rilke himself.

Solzhenitsyn's "Russian Way" republished the famous collection "Russian Berlin: 1921-1923", prepared 20 years ago by American Slavists Lazar Fleishman, Robert Hughes and Olga Raevskaya-Hughes and previously published only in the West. The collection is compiled from materials from the archive of the New Russian Book, a magazine published by Alexander Yashchenko in Berlin in the early 1920s.

"Republic" has published the next volume of Rozanov's endless collection. It seems this one is already the sixteenth. The book, entitled “Near the People’s Soul,” includes Rozanov’s newspaper speeches from 1906-08.

Traditionally, the publishing house "Ultra. Culture" has been actively participating in recent book forums. At the September exhibition-fair, the “ultraculturists” rented a plane standing in the middle of the All-Russian Exhibition Center, put their director Ilya Kormiltsev there and gave him a supply of vodka for the whole week. Journalists went on the plane to check whether Kormiltsev had enough vodka, and then talked about it in their newspapers. Ultra. Culture did not have any new books at that time, but despite this, they wrote as much about the publishing house as about all other MIBF participants combined.

There are not many new book releases this time either. And the plane was not found near the Central House of Artists. But the ultras stand is still fun. There are always guests there. Tomorrow, say, they promise to present the real Limonov to the people. Today Alexey Tsvetkov Jr. flashed. And yesterday they showed Heydar Dzhemal himself. The ideologist of the Islamic project, by the way, unexpectedly turned out to be very thin; on TV he somehow looked thicker. So trust the electronic media after this! But before I had time to think this thought through to the end, the reasons for my thinness became clear. It turned out that Dzhemal left a long time ago, and the one who sits at the Ultra. Culture stand and signs books for everyone is actually Dmitry Prigov.

That's when I left. I decided that if I had not been able to meet the Islamist, then it was time to find out what the Jewish publishing houses had prepared for the fair. Jewish publishing houses, by the way, performed well. “Bridges of Culture” published the memoirs of Polina Vengerova, the mother of famous writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Semyon and Zinaida Vengerov. The memoirs are written in German, from which they were translated by the author’s great-niece Ella Vengerova, known to the grateful masses of readers for her translation of Suskind’s “Perfume”. Such is the dynasty.

At the stand of the House of Jewish Books an anthology of Jewish drama was discovered. The main value of the collection is that it contains the publication of S. An-sky's play "Between Two Worlds", which entered the history of Jewish theater under the Hebrew name "Dybuk". The Russian original of one of the most famous works of Jewish drama was considered lost for a long time. Now it is published for the first time by Vladislav Ivanov in a textually correct form based on a censored copy.

The second day of the Fair concluded with a Booker press conference. In a week we will be given another booker, but for now the press was warmed up by meeting with the race participants. On the way to the conference room, I met a member of the Booker jury, and also the commercial director of the Symposium publishing house, Maxim Amelin. Amelin flatly refused to give out the name of the future Booker laureate, citing the fact that he allegedly did not know him yet. “You’d better write about Umberto Eco’s The Poetics of Joyce,” he said and led me to his stall. Writing. Good "Poetics". Andrey Koval's translation is simply wonderful. And it was published beautifully. They are great guys there at the Symposium...

I ended up being late for the press conference. Thanks to which I arrived just at the beginning. Natalya Galkina and Leonid Zorin, announced in the program, could not appear, and Natalya Ivanova was seated at the table instead. Next to Ivanova were shortlisters Elena Chizhova, Afanasy Mamedov, Leonid Yuzefovich and the literary secretary of the Russian Booker Igor Shaitanov. For reflection, participants were offered three topics: “the novel in modern literature,” “serious and popular literature,” and “to what extent is your work adequately perceived by critics and readers?” The wording of the third point seemed somewhat cumbersome to me. The question “to what extent is your creativity adequate?” would have looked much better. But the program compilers did not consult with me.

Those gathered came to the conclusion that the novel is alive, and the division of literature into serious and mass literature is lame due to the vagueness of the criteria. Chizhova likened a real modern novel to "Rashomon", where no one knows the real truth. Yuzefovich compared Pasternak with Isakovsky (in favor of the latter) and suggested that good prose be considered that which, after some time, can become a historical source. “Unfortunately, mass literature today copes with this task better than elitist literature,” stated the author of “Cazarosa.” And it’s hard to disagree with this. With one small addition. Elite literature fails to cope with this task for the simple reason that it does not set it for itself. Because, unlike mass literature, it has already matured to understand the specifics of literary creativity.

Let's move on to the critics. It turned out that Yuzefovich doesn’t read them, appreciates Chizhova (especially Irina Rodnyanskaya, who very critically analyzed “Lavra” in “The New World”), and without two minutes Booker laureate Mamedov doesn’t like them. Moreover, he mainly dislikes online critics, read RZhshnykh. Without the risk of making a mistake, I will say that the exacerbation of chronic dislike was provoked by Petra Aretina’s recent review of Mamedov’s “Frau Shram”. It was Aretina, as I understood, who was dedicated to the heartfelt passage about critics who cling to a writer and don’t let go until they bite them to death: “It seems that this bulldog grip is beneficial to someone. But I’m not at all interested in figuring out who exactly,” - summed up Mamedov. The option that the critic simply did not like the novel was, apparently, not taken into account. From Mamedov’s further speech, I managed to write down one beautiful aphorism - “As a result, the neighbor’s cow died, and the critic had catharsis,” but I did not remember at all what exactly he was referring to.

The premium storyline continued on Friday evening. First, the jury of the Andrei Bely Prize settled in the seminar area. The ceremony was opened by Gleb Morev, who explained why this award is better than all others and why it should be considered “the absolute leader in terms of cultural weight gained.” It turned out that the Bely Prize has 100% accuracy and synchronization of hits, which other awards, of course, cannot boast of. Having made fun of those prizes, the significance of which depends on sponsorship, Morev presented the traditional Belov prize: a bottle of vodka (the label featured the famous silhouette of Andrei Bely by Kruglikova) and a large green apple.

In the Poetry nomination, this set went to Mikhail Aizenberg for his selection in the March Banner. In the "Prose" category - Margarita Meklina for the book "The Battle of St. Petersburg" (UFO, 2003). Regarding the second decision, jury member and editor of the UFO magazine Irina Prokhorova considered it necessary to provide an explanation. From her words it followed that, in fairness, the prize should have been awarded to Viktor Pelevin, who was included in the short list with his latest novel. Pelevin, they say, is next to other contenders - like Leo Tolstoy is next to Pupkin. But the jury members were not looking for easy ways and therefore decided to perceive Pelevin’s prose as a kind of tuning fork, which is used to verify the quality of the work of all other applicants. In Pelevin's neighborhood, it was Meklin who looked the most worthy, according to the judges, and as a result, vodka and apple went to San Francisco.

I expected that the judges would behave in a similar way when choosing the winner in the Humanities Research category. But there the prize, quite predictably, went to the classic of Russian philology Vladimir Toporov for the collection of works “St. Petersburg Text of Russian Literature,” published by Art-SPB. But they could well have awarded, say, Arkady Blumbaum, whose monograph “The Construction of Imaginary: On the Poetics of Yuri Tynyanov’s “Wax Person”” is not lost against the background of Toporov’s book.

Finally, Andrei Monastyrsky, one of the three founders (along with Boris Groys and Ilya Kabakov) of Moscow Conceptualism, was named laureate in the nomination “For Special Services to Russian Literature.”

Immediately after the Andrei Bely Prize, it was the turn of the awards presented by the French Embassy. Mikhail Yasnov was recognized as the best translator from French for his translations from Guillaume Apollinaire (Maurice Waxmacher Prize), the best book about France was considered the monograph by Elena Grechanaya “Literary interaction between Russia and France in the religious context of the era (1797-1825)” (Anatole Leroy Prize). Beaulieu). The publishing house that is more successful than others in the market of translations of intellectual French literature was called "Languages ​​of Slavic Culture" - this is how the books they published by Fernand Braudel, Georges Duby and Jean Starobinski were evaluated...

At a press conference before the opening of the Fair, the director of the publishing house "Ad Marginem" Alexander Ivanov called "Non/fiction" "a heavenly supermarket where they sell yogurts of dreams, diapers of illusions and balloons of hopes." The image seemed too radical to those gathered, and the head of the Glas publishing house, Natalya Perova, called for viewing the Fair as “an exhibition of the achievements of intellectual economy.” But I liked Ivanov’s version better. “VDIKH in the Central House of Artists” - no matter how you look at it, it doesn’t sound like it. Or rather, it sounds, but somehow very Soviet. In the early Soviet way. In 1919 they loved these holes-bulls-schyly. The “heavenly supermarket” is a completely different matter. Modern. And even a little Japanese. That is, it is beautiful and incomprehensible.