| It seems that publishers are deliberately hiding their main trump cards until the end of the year, because in December about a dozen aces are found on the shelves of bookstores, unfortunately, from the same battered deck. This is due not only to the upcoming New Year celebrations, but also to the growing popularity of the Non-Fiction book fair. Initially conceived by the organizers as a specialized fair of “non-fiction,” it can now safely abandon the negative particle in its name. In order to present their new creations to the Russian public, such youth gurus as the Norwegian Erlend Lou and the main French dandy Frederic Beigbeder came to Moscow.
As for Lou, his new book “Four Tales of Kurt” (Azbuka Publishing House, translated from Norwegian by Olga Drobot), equipped with funny pictures by Kim Yurthey, may well be included in the “children’s prose” section. Four stories about the adventures of a cheerful truck driver are written in the “naive” style of writing characteristic of this Norwegian. Together with his family, Kurt travels around the world on a giant fish, runs for prime minister, vacuums the planet, rescues the Norwegian king from the sea and performs many ridiculous and noble deeds. At the end we get a funny mix of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Tove Jansson and the animated series “How the Cossacks rescued brides, helped the musketeers and met aliens” (the main character Kurt, in the interpretation of the artist Yurtkhey, for some reason turned out to have a forelock a la Taras Bulba and long Little Russian mustache).
Eight years ago, in the “programmatic” novel “Naive. Super” Erlend Lu formulated his concept of “infantile” literature: since the modern reader, even a well-educated one, grew up in a consumer society, is accustomed to the availability of any product and ease of use, the writer is simply obliged to take a step towards him. In a word, the consistency of the literary text should be close to that of a light “Miracle Cottage Cheese,” and rare references to humanitarian authorities should play the role of “pieces of fresh, natural fruit.” It’s even funny to read one novel written in such a “diet” manner. But you won’t be satisfied with just the curd mass. However, judging by the number of fans, many are getting hooked.
If the phlegmatic Norwegian Lou consciously refuses intellectual pretensions, then the French snob Frederic Beigbeder , on the contrary, is looking for any convenient (and inconvenient) reason to demonstrate his author's self. Such costs of literary “dandyism” could still be tolerated as long as he acted as an expert on “glamorous” issues, casually grumbling about the injustice of the modern world order, and wringing his hands about the fragility of earthly pleasures. His previous novels were the crystalline embodiment of "glossy" vulgarity, with the exception of "99 Francs", which can be assessed as a brazen but elegant compilation.
His latest creation , Windows on the World (if you want, translate literally as “Windows on the World”, if you want, delve into simple analogies) the publishers accompanied the following annotation: “a year after the terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York, Frederick Beigbeder painfully searches for words that can express the inexpressible - the horror of reality, which has surpassed the darkest Hollywood fantasies" ("Foreigner", translated from French by Irina Staf). This is followed by a verbal eruption of more than three hundred pages, preceded by a pathetic quote from Marilyn Manson: “The task of the artist is to plunge into the very heart of hell.”
Taking the dubious axiom of a “malicious” rocker as a guide to action, Beigbeder coolly and in detail describes the New York tragedy from the point of view of a man at the epicenter of events. Such a literary device, as you might guess, is not new. Back in the 1980s, Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska described a street terrorist attack from the point of view of the terrorist and the victim. The first part of “Windows on the World,” which begins with the words: “This story is unusual in that everyone will die at the same time and in the same place. Maybe death brings people together? - can be assessed simply as bad, opportunistic prose, packaged in a pretentious wrapper. Here Begbeder appears in his usual role of a kind of fussy turd who always strives to emerge first.
Perhaps a year after September 11, his opus really outraged and shocked someone. Now, in relation to these events, a sufficient distance has been gained, allowing for the possibility of calm reflection. Moreover, quite a few smart monographs and novels have been published, starting with “Why People Hate America” by Sardar and Wyn Davis and ending with Will Ferguson’s cheerful dystopia “TM Happiness.” Beigbeder clearly counted on the fact that no criticism of these events was possible (except his own, of course). Otherwise, it is impossible to explain the stream of nonsense and banality that he unleashes on the reader in the second part of his opus, in the so-called author's comments. “Ever since I stopped snorting cocaine, I see white lilies everywhere. Are there still human ashes left in the New York air? Every citizen knows that they have a piece of the World Trade Center in their lungs.” Everyone, from journalists to politicians, is ready to earn dividends on a fashionable topic (even if it is a terrorist attack). But such pretentious nonsense is, in my opinion, simply immoral. Maybe someone is interested in what a Frenchman, “stoned” with narcissism, drinking red wine and chewing a fat frog, thinks about global terrorism and the fight against evil, but this is not at all a reason to print his narcissistic nonsense in mass editions. Natalia BABINTSEVA
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