Putting the literary process - the analytical portal Polit.ru

A few years ago, everyone decided that to save the literary process, as a result of a vague post -perestroika decade, acquired the most bizarre forms should be with the help of Maynstim. We will create, they say, a weighty custody of good, albeit inaccessible authors, we will publish a hundred, say, good, albeit unremarkable novels - that’s the global heyday. First, a man from the bazaar will not carry Bushkov with Dashkova, but a Bolmat with Elizarov, and then from the Mainstream will hatch if not Dostoevsky, then at least a new Dovlatov. The publishers rushed to publish second -bit Englishmen, the jury of all kinds of “debuts” and “National Bestes” began to look for the domestic clones of Bret Ellis and Douglas Copland.

It did not work out. Clones remained clones, Bolmat, flashing a little, successfully sunk into oblivion. It seems that the mainstream cannot be created directively. So it is not surprising that recently the organizers of the literary process have hit another extreme - the domestic literary landscape began to revive radical methods, its marginalizing it.

One example of this is the emergence and successful existence of the publishing house “Ultra. Culture”, which specializes in all kinds of radicality. The main products here are novels about skins, semi -fascist utopias, autobiography of prominent terrorists. The last achievement of the publishing house is the semi -artistic memoirs of Alexander Shulgin (and his wife Ann Shulgina), with the interesting name “ Fenetylamins that I knew and loved ”. The American scientist, a descendant of Russian emigrants Shulgin is a cult character in the back streets of modern culture, devoted life to the spiritual development of mankind and for this purpose synthesized many psychoactive substances. It was he who invented the so -called “AIDS” in the 60s - a powerful and rather terrible drug with an unpredictable (often quite traumatic) action; It was he who later created MDMA, and ecstasy in expansion.

Shulginsky memories are a cross between Timiryazev’s “plant life” and “my life in the art” of Stanislavsky. On the one hand, the constant “take a cone, prepare the drug”, and on the other - present on each page, not a reflected pathos of the revolutionary of the spirit, which is Schulgin himself (the wife with him completely agrees); The same semi -parodic as that of Stanislavsky, confidence in its large world significance. Tolstoy - in more than 700 pages - Tom is full of rather primitive or mystical, or Freudian revelations, as well as complaints about human misunderstanding of the importance of psychedelics for universal harmony. It is difficult to read it incredibly boring, but the general radicality is observed - it is difficult to recall such a powerful apology for drugs in the domestic literary market.

“Ultra. Culture” is not the only publishing house specializing in radical themes. Much cooler, for example, Kolonna. Previously, here they did not orient themselves to the general public - releasing, for example, overwhelmed by obscene metaphysics of Shisha Bryansky. Now, it seems, Kolonna decided to go to the masses by publishing the novel by the debutant Andrei Goncharov “Daily Handsome” , a thriller turning as a result of sadomasochist mysticism. The plot partly resembles the corresponding film by Bunuel (quite, as they write in erotic ads, the master is arranged to work as a prostitute); General stylistics wanders between the recent “puzzle” of Garros-Evdokimov, Mamleev, Sorokin and God knows who more. The standard bourgeois glossy glossy contrasts the blood pressure of various sexual perversions, coming as a result to the conclusion (as far as one can understand) about the hopeless unnaturalness of human life in general. Three years ago, such a novel would have replenished the catalog of the gay literature and would be perceived at best in the context of some Yaroslav Majatin; Now, the saga about the underground passions of the secret homosexual has turned into a closed, even with indispensable conspiracy the triller for general use.

Against the backdrop of drug addicts and pederastical revelations, solid prose, continuing to come to us from the West, looks quite helpless. The “ psychiatrist ” of the Canadian Mark Fisher , released by the “alphabet -classic” - maybe not such a bad book. Maybe until recently, she would even shock someone-in the end, a detailed description of the rape of a beautiful girl with the help of a Mongolian tushka was not so often found in world literature. However, you can’t cook porridge from one tushka. Unremarkable, completely cinematic, albeit disgustingly written (or translated, but rather, both one) about the adventures of the persecuted psychiatrist, who himself did not remember whether he raped or not, and along with his memories and great love, looks old -fashioned today, like a “Saga about Forsytes”. The Western Mainstream, which until recently, was betting with us, it seems, is exhausted. There is a strong suspicion that in the near future he will be completely exhausted; And we will have to be comforted with total, more and more familiar and less and less exciting marginality.