Yulia Belomlinskaya. Behavior

Behavior - oud!
Notes on modern Russian men's prose

Yulia Belomlinskaya

Publication date: February 20, 2004

...Comrade man,
how tempting it is
your position...

Okudzhava

You can’t really say that the guys left unnoticed, in English. No, there was a lot of noise: bonfires in the square, trials, indignant old women “ walking together ” at Sorokin’s - it was very loud, but maybe even louder - chilling silence Pelevin’s .

But they left. Not from Russian literature - they can’t be removed from there, not from the mass media chatter of glossy magazines: glossies, as you know, are always a little late, they, in their blind confidence that people are eating (from their spoon), refuse to notice, that the baby people has grown up and his tastes have changed a little. And he has grown up. And tastes have changed. That’s why Pelevin and Sorokin left, that’s where they came from: from folk writers.

They were indeed exchanged, just as the “Going Ones” had planned, not for Boris Vasiliev . On Stogov . To start.

Next - there will be Bykov , Kuritsyn , Krusanov , just give it time. This is my prediction.

I am watching with interest how another new style comes to Russian men's prose.

I’ll try to look at this process through a narrow gender gap (sorry - that’s a barracks joke again), that is, I wanted to say, from a high gender peak... but what is this! Whatever you say, it all comes out as pure indecency. "...Sorry, doctor, I always think about her..."

Yes, in general, our entire life, from the moment of original sin, is complete indecency. From birth to the grave and from antiquity to the present day. But, for example, in one particular country, indecent things were allowed only recently.

And the people began to master it - the dear Indecent, as it should be, from the beginning. from the word UY, visually familiar from the fences, but unclear for the time being in meaning, but from a word known almost from birth: it usually appears in our lives immediately after mom , dad , baba and dai before grandfather Not , but even . This word is kaka . It’s a bad word that exists so that girls can’t say it, but only boys who are bullies can say it. Then the word grows a little with us and is already called ge , which is how we girls are supposed to speak. But all letters are not possible.

The writer Sorokin - he forever remained not only a child, but also, of course, a girl, and this, in fact , he never mastered. Sorokin is generally childishly and femininely bashful in his language. His poop is always some kind of scientific feces , all sorts of it and heh - he turns out - genitals ... such a shy country girl from a good family, slowly mastering this world.

In Sorokin's books there is always a game for preschool age. Films of Alexander Rowe . Or Spielberg - for a family visit. Monsters, fears, blood flowing like a river - but for anything that makes children sick is a no-no. Sorokin is a nasty preschool girl. Pelevin? This one is definitely a boy. And older. It's already nine o'clock. Or maybe eleven, but all this is certainly still a period - pre-masturbation .

These are the heroes of the nineties. The realm of fantasy for both is beyond the relationship between the sexes. Beyond love. Beyond sex, beyond women. And not for women. I could never love them, although I understand very well what they do in terms of mastering the craft. After all, writing is a craft no worse than others. And I certainly enjoy well-crafted prose. But the feeling that something is not for me. Not for me. Because for them there is no me. There is no me: a depression, a hollow, a frost , that same crack, a crack in space and time, into which from time immemorial everything masculine has been poured. Including creativity. For Pelevin and Sorokin, a woman does not exist. And they in no way try to position themselves as men. It's not good or bad - it's just like this: I don't want to be this. Male. I don't want to fulfill his duties. And the male has responsibilities. Find yourself a female. Copulate. Give birth to babies. Somewhere in the middle take care of a hole. And all around there is a flock, a jungle. Laws of the pack. Laws of the jungle... the man is entangled, tied hand and foot. And here is the nineties: chaos all around. Who my pack? Where is my jungle?

And who throws himself on his shoulders? Yes, it seems that they are not wolves - jackals... and this is completely offensive.

Athletes go to the Olympics - without a flank and an anthem. The men are without work. The women, as always, are harnessed and plowing. But they don't give birth.

Once again, it seems like the country is not a country, and I am not me, and the hat is not mine, and more than anything in the world I want to put this (not my) hat in my sleeve and somewhere far away from here, but you can’t have enough sleeves for everyone. I got into trouble . I’m sitting in Neponyatka, the only thing that is clear is that no such ancient words like homeland or men and women , again love , are no longer appropriate here and there is no need to remember them.

Why do these men and women, why call themselves that, why rub their souls and loins into each other - if they can’t give birth? But you can’t give birth because there is nothing to feed you. And it's scary all around. Tomorrow, like a star, it will cover everyone at once. Better to hide. Get into the dugout. And play there as if we were children. We sit, talk normal children's conversations: all of Sorokin is children's conversations - at night in the dark, about what is not allowed . Horror stories. Indecent. Poop like a river. Blood too - boys and girls with cut off arms and legs. Poems.

"...I'm going to fart in the sun..."

"...In mine, in the village, god
Come to the door!"

- And the guy took this girl and stuck his iron gun right in her head... heck ! The girl was covered in blood and died. Shhh! Scary. Good and scary. It’s even somehow cozy from all this.

Pelevin is an older boy. He is joking. He's kind of witty. And generally a skeptic. He makes fun of the confusion that has arisen around him. But it’s also not like an adult. At the native third grade level. No, it's well done. Just not for an adult. And men, of course, love him. Especially the young ones. In men, the child gets stuck for a very long time. Maybe around the age of forty you begin to grow up.

These are the heroes that emerged in the post-revolutionary decade. And how much screaming there was around them. And they were exactly as they should have arisen in that confused, incomprehensible space and time.

And it’s funny to watch how the landscape around is gradually changing, and the heroes of the nineties are being replaced by new Russian male writers.

It seems to have stopped downloading. The bombers flew away. The people have been in the field for a long time , but then finally the man slowly crawls out.

Yes, here it is - me. And this hat is probably mine. And, most importantly, here she is - mine ! Mine that is! Don't be afraid, honey. I didn't give up this machine gun. The banner there, the wounded commissar - he threw it all away, did not take it to his own people , because he finally understood: here with us it is almost impossible to go out to our own people . A hundred years ago it was still possible to determine who was mine , but now... But mine I saved . Hold it! Well, hold on for a while, get the pigeon to speed up, and then I’ll do something on my own.

In general, he came out - a man. Red, Green, Golden, completely indefinite color, because it faded in everyday storms. But still with the same Inflexible, still with the same Vanka-Vstanka, with a gun at the ready, a bayonet at the ready. And he probably doesn’t have any other treasures. Is it natural resources? Yes, Russian literature.

This one who came out, he is not a hero yet. That is, everyone still hasn’t figured it out. They don't consider him a hero yet. And if the author of “ Mitki ” Volodya Shinkarev once introduced the term heroic drunkenness , then the term heroic rowing is still unknown to the people. But the Russian writer, the prophet, who was supposed to lead the people, came out first.

Got up. Got it. Pulled. In general, the Season of restoration work to save the People’s Gene Code was declared open.

These are male voices. The hero-Kindergartener and the hero-Junior Schoolchildren were replaced by a hero-a Man of Conscription Age.

He, of course, does not want to be drafted, but he is ready to get married. Here he is, look - curly. With harmonica. His oud is cheerful and tireless, blazing with a red banner and curling like a biblical serpent. As my friend, St. Petersburg prose writer Sasha Etoev , wrote : “He calls young girls both to dance and to sin” ...

Hey, Marusya, go to a square dance!

with Sorokin and Pelevin Not a single one will work . No, it's not about appearance.

Today's heroes - Kuritsyn, Bykov, Krusanov, Stogov - do not shine with any such beauty. Bykov is a fat chest of drawers, Stogov is himself, the spitting image of Ud in his youth - pink, bald, with lively black eyes, Krusanov is generally a shaggy scarecrow with an immature face, Kuritsyn is a Tatar with an Asian woman's face , practically one worse than the other. Yes, I have my own fiancé. True, he is not a prose writer - a poet, but it is also impossible to look at this creature without tears. It does not in any way resemble the cowboy from the Marlboro cigarette advertisement. However, for an incomprehensible reason, I begin to shed tears not when he appears, but precisely when the time comes to part with him.

And all of them, the current ones, are liked by women. Moreover, as an insider, a person who observes the lives of the above-mentioned writers, I can testify that almost all women like them. with them, the current ones Anyone can go . Theoretically, anyone would agree to give birth to them. It probably has nothing to do with appearance. It doesn’t matter - fat, small, bald, this, that... Their eyes are burning. They have Oud - clicks .

But for those from the nineties, no.

Sorokin seems to be prominent. Handsome, tall and... no. There is no yang - male essence.

Pelevin too.

All this happens not only in life, but also in prose.

Each of the current ones in his works is always a Lover.

Sometimes - Husband, by the way, often - Husband (Stogov, Krusanov). Sometimes - a Womanizer, but a Womanizer is not a meaningless collector, but rather a polygamist, that is, again - a Husband. And even when it all starts with the image of a Male Gigolo, like in Kuritsyn’s last novel, the Husband, the Protector, still emerges. Hope and Support.

A modern hero agrees to get married. I agree to lie on a woman. To know her, to be born with her. And, completely confused about who are the Germans and who are ours, he, although he does not want to go to war, because any war now is not his war, is already ready to protect this own woman, if necessary. That is, in addition to the Oud, he is also equipped with simple weapons. A stick, a spear, a stone ax...

Because he loves . They learned to love again. In an adult way. With full responsibility. They write about love again. We remembered the old words. And we found many new ones. Modern Russian prose has finally started talking about physical love. For the first time after the senile eroticism of Bunin, the pedophilic extravaganza of Nabokov and the unsteady, with an eye to English-language literature, successful attempts by Vasily Aksenov in “Burn,” our boys suddenly spoke easily and freely. Instantly overturning numerous theories that our language is not good for this , is not able to talk about it , that only UY On the Fence we have and the Medical Encyclopedia. But the Japanese... and the French...

For many years, the area of ​​physical love - indecent - was closed. To the table, everyone to the table, please. Shake it into a glass and I'll drink it in the morning . How sad it is to drink into a glass - about love. Well, where did it come from - in words, if all these years write about it only South Russian Jews living in Israel and Europe could allow themselves to heroically (in America - it’s no longer possible, it’s a puritan country; they refused to print “ Edichka ”).

These South Russians, my dear brothers, they are amazing guys, and they honestly and conscientiously described in the past difficult times - everything as it was . And how I lay down , and how I inserted , and how I planted him to the very ears . And about High! And they wrote about the lingonberry papillae , who are no strangers to beauty, and about the cherries of the navels , not to mention the buds and roses there... silence, silence! Yes, in general, these were honest writers . And honest lovers. It is not their fault that when crossing borders they were given Freedom of Speech, but this word itself was not given. Someday, all this Jewish Russian Eros, which created the myth about the unsuitability of our language for bodily love, will be collected into one big thick book, and believe me, it will be a very funny book.

By the way, Limonov in “Edichka” has the same monstrous style every time he tries to write about it . These are the worst pages in his poignant book. Even the story with the black man on the beach is interesting solely because of the fact that the person decided to tell us about it. And that the person admits that at this moment he is having a blast. We mistake culture shock for delight in prose. And the writing is terrible. Still the same Efraim Sevela and Eduard Topol . When I read “Edichka” my first reaction was: genius! If only he didn’t write anything about p...u...

But for the current ones, everything is slowly working out. They seem to agree to take this - yet endlessly tempting - position: Man. They are back. And they want to talk about love. About it . Of course they will find the words. They will find a lot of words. The tradition of Russian erotic prose, love prose, timidly begun at the beginning of the last century, will be revived. A thread has already stretched from those boys to ours.

Such are the times. He must find the words to tell her how good it will be if only she fits in.

Probably no one has yet noticed this new tradition of modern male Russian prose.

And I noticed. Soon she will notice too. And, of course, she will fit in. Will forgive the nineties: Misunderstandings, Sorokin, Pelevina... will forgive everything. He'll lie down. He will love with his ears. To start. Then with the rest of the body. And she will be fine. Yes, in general, it will be good for both of them. But in the beginning it is necessary - the word ...