| Applicants for the “National Bestseller” have been named The list of candidates for “National Bestseller” can be included in textbooks. It has everything. Even one strong text is the charming, intelligent and delicately structured novel by Oleg Zayonchkovsky “Sergeev and the Town” (M., “OGI”). This elegant composition of “ordinary” stories from Moscow region is unlikely to receive an award. Is it a great honor for Zayonchkovsky to be included in the top six of “Natsbest”? This is quite a question. But his novel brings a bit of nobility to the image of the provocative prize - look how objective we are, we even give a chance to a writer smeared by the disgusting liberal-bourgeois Booker (Sergeev and the Town was included in the last Booker shortlist)!
The chance was given to the thrice “sinful” Mikhail Shishkin, who, firstly, was not only a competitor, but even a laureate of the insidious Booker (“The Taking of Ishmael”, 2000), and secondly, writes his refined and hysterical prose on the shore of Lake Zurich, and thirdly, it publishes “Venus Hair” (like everything else) in the most “fat liberal” of the damned magazines, in “Znamya”, which, as the ideologists of “Natsbest” and their friends have repeatedly stated, in principle cannot squeeze out a more or less tolerable opus. I’m keeping quiet about the edibility of Shishkin’s novel for now - if I don’t fall into a lethargic sleep, taking into account this dull, hysterical and predictable hulk in every twist (No. 4-6; the June book has not yet been published), then I’ll have to crow something.
And I’ll definitely report on Dmitry Bykov’s “Tow Truck” in a few days. Pumped up to the desired volume and equipped with, at the very least, a tailored intrigue (which the author seems to consider a masterpiece of plot-building), the body of Bykov’s wisdom about everything in the world was released by Vagrius, whose rotten liberalism has long been equated with that of a “thick magazine”. Here, however, there is no need to admire the “openness”: Bykov, who invariably complains about the general hostility, will fit into any interior (if he wants), and is on friendly terms with the architects of “Natsbest”. It looks like he will receive a bonus.
Shouldn’t we reward Oksana Robski for her Ruble-Uspeniya series (sorry, Causal)? Perfume is a useful ingredient, but you have to know the place. Other smells come at a price - blood, gunpowder, vomit, sperm, gasoline... And you can wait a bit with the harsh, leaden Zakhar Prilepin (his “Pathologies” are currently known only to the online public). Of course, Chechnya is a cool object, the OMON biography and the reputation of the National Bolshevik suits “Natsbest”, and Prilepin writes (judging by the magazine texts) firmly, squeezing out what he deserves from difficult life experience and knowing how to melt the soft hearts of intelligent writers, but... It’s one thing to criticize “alien” juries that crush “young people” and push them into “names”; it’s another thing to hand out their awards.
So, order. The suffering foreign sage Shishkin, the glossy girl Robski, the stocky provincial Prilepin, the all-round turner Bykov, the writer Zayonchkovsky (oh, Booker screwed up - how the “discovery” will not work!), and for the set, as it were, the feminist Tatyana Moskvina (“Death - These are men."
The seven-headed jury will have to sip this village woman: ex-champions of “Natsbest” Leonid Yuzefovich (honorary chairman) and Viktor Pelevin (clever Bykov sniffed out “The Sacred Book of the Werewolf” in “Evacuator”; now no matter how Pelevin votes, there will be something to dabble about), TV presenter Svetlana Konegen, writer (not to be confused with the prose writer!) Andrei Dmitriev, director Kirill Serebrennikov, editor-in-chief of the Book Review Alexander Gavrilov and deacon Andrei Kuraev. Appreciating the intelligence and taste of the chairman and the three final members of the jury, I offer them my condolences. Maybe in vain: if Zayonchkovsky is awarded, it will turn out beautifully. Andrey NEMZER |
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