Quiet flight is easy

In a combination of circumstances, Paul Oster could well become a cult author of not only advanced literary users, but also the widest reading masses, replacing (replacing) with their better books with poppy muraki and Coelho. However, this does not happen; He is too special, this writer, one leg - in our common literary centric past, and the other in the space of modern media technologies.

Because the 56-year-old Paul Oster is an orchestra . In addition to the novels and collections of the essay, he writes scripts, shoots films as a director , records records, sets photos and a short -haired dismemberment of his own films. Yes, and his books are unmeasured - in the Paris "Fiac" I saw a whole stand dedicated to the creations of Oster and clamped between the departments of books and video tapes. The name of the prose writer looked at this stand as the name of the fashionable house of models, as a completely promoted brand.

Oster's expansion to Russia was, in contrast, slow and sad. His first two novels entered our reader through "foreign literature" and remained almost unnoticed. In 1997, the conspirological detective “Glass City” , the first part of the “New York trilogy” (1985; debut and, according to American critics, the best creation of the writer), in 2001- the existential drama Timbukt (1999), where the narrative is conducted on behalf of the dog. A little later, Timbuktu and the Luna Temple (1989; the best among the Oster text translated into Russian) published the Publishing House of Thornton and Sagden. Then a small pause was hanging, during which separate chapters from the novel Leviathan appeared on the Topos website (1992). And now the line of Mr. Vertigo (1994) and the Book of Illusions (2002) came up.

Paul Oster seems to me like John Apdike , his modern reincarnation: increased responsiveness to the metaphysical questions that arise at the intersection of truth and fiction, growing incomprehensible from where, closed on everyday life ... but there is also a significant difference: an upyck, according to the specifics of its time, sought to truthfully describe the middle class, while an oster that arose in a situation of post -industrial Society is trying to mythologize this middle, middle class.

Oster is incredibly met in everything that regard details, almost all events in his books seem quite natural and explained. Woe, a feeling of loss, search and acquisition of relatives, confusing love relationships, terrorism, creativity. Injustment (myth) arises at the level of the composition, when numerous plausibly described events are built in a causal chain.

Then it turns out that this chain is saturated with symbols and is too dynamic. What is happening at the Oster already on the first pages, another author would have been enough for a couple of volumes. Not that - Oster, he is a simple and specific guy. Distracted intonation, light, without elaboration (I wonder how it is like to translate - is it difficult or not very?) Style. The minimum number of subordinate clauses. Only in fact, only if words play the disclosure of the root metaphor. And in the end, the sensation of reality leading the reader through the text is scattered, leaving the aftertaste, for which everything, in fact, was started.

By the way, the Spanish writer Javier Marias differs in a similar manner of manner (two of his novels have been published in Russian), the chubbying main plot adventure is already in the first paragraph, after which it seems that there is nothing to add. And here the most interesting begins - Marias begins to walk around the bottom event, increasing everything and increasing the size of the plot. Oster has a different method - by identifying the “main” at the very beginning, then he then builds up from this “main”, as from the coast, gradually depriving him of the status of a “main event”. Marias is intense (deep into, deep into), but the osster extensive, like the Soviet economy of Brezhnev times: the movement of the text is carried out due to quantitative increments - people and conflicts that cling to each other, like a loop and hooks, forming exquisite patterns.

Like classic plays, Oster's novels begin with an incident, after which the former existence of heroes becomes impossible. In the eyeballs, characters go through the experience of global losses. Oster's texts - attempts to overcome complex, borderline situations, survival instructions, typical dead ends maps, from which, it would seem, there is no way out. David Zimmer, a narrator from the "Book of Illusions", loses his wife and two children in a plane crash. The young Gopnik Walt (Mr. Vertigo) is disadvantaged - he has neither a family, no place in the sun, nor classes that can feed.

And then the countless circumstances and subscriptions, as if fate, mocking a man, hold out his hand, surround him. Zimmer is fond of dumb comedies and begins to write a book about the comedian who disappeared in the 1920s (which ultimately turns out to be alive). Walt meets a master who teaches his ability to fly and walk on the water. The pathos of the writer is understandable: never despair, just look more intently into reality, guessing on it, like I-Tsing. Do not feel like a victim, meet people, change the place of residence, work. In short, feel yourself an object, and not the subject of your own history.

Reading, according to the oster, cannot be idle. Against the background of encyclopedias of practical guidelines ("How to get rich with the help of the Internet"), Khudolit loses the remnants of influence. In order to become necessary again, literature must solve, including specific, mass problems (recall the "Bridget Jones Diary"). That is why Oster as a purely pragmatic person describes the experience of overcoming borderline situations.

But here a small contradiction arises. The heroes of Oster are saved with the help of art . Zimmer - silent cinema, Walt - fair performances, from which the car of American show business will grow after eternity. Both of them, both Zimmer and Walt, compose autobiographical books. This helps them structure time and knock out grandmas under the experienced.

Denying the original personality and utilitarian significance of literature, Oster nevertheless leads his heroes to the need to write. Or read, watch, listen. However, the experience of aesthetic experience, and even more so - artistic practice by definition is not massive. This is always a piece business, there are no generalizations on this field and cannot be. It is unlikely that the specifics of filming silent cinema or circus levitation will be available to the broad masses. (O'Kay, levitation is only a metaphor for the Walt -Universality, which, according to the oster, does not save from the routine of existence: having forgotten how to fly due to hormonal changes associated with puberty, Walt turns into an ordinary person. Such as everyone else.)

Aesthetic experience is unique, artistic practices are purely individual. Salvation of the skill is unattainable, you can survive only alone. In this tragedy, the choir perishes, creatively active units survive at Oster. Therefore, Oster's novels are by no means real tragedies. The game of imagination, the energy of error, attempts to put Shakespeare above the boots, entertain, once again leave on the craft, on technical perfection.

These are not sincere books, reader.