Translated material
I need other paintings. And conversations
Nothing, nothing. Fortunately, I don’t have any shortage of interlocutors. As he did not experience in those fabulous years, when His Excellency still loved poultry and took pretty girls under his protection . That is, he demonstrated to me (and then to the literary critic) his goodwill in long telephone conversations, transferring compliments with selected aphorisms (at least now bring them to the magazine) about war, peace, good, evil, the end of human history, love, poetry, public service, postmodernity, the insignificance of magazines, the corruption of literary morals and his own noble independence from everyone and everything. And for some reason he never asked whether I had read his books (which generally caused polar reactions) or sucked reviews of them (more than just “positive”) from my middle or someone else’s index finger. Actually, I didn’t learn anything new during our, I hope, last personal meeting. This is genius and villainy - two incompatible things, but talent and an explosive mixture of complexes, arrogance and rudeness can easily coexist in one character. I’m not drawn to join the new creations of the hysterical general who put me in the place, but where can I get away from them? His Excellency has a quitrent journal, where every set of letters that comes out from under the golden keyboard is embossed. And if at some time the letters turn out well (which is quite possible), then I will only be glad and, of course, I will not hide this pleasant fact from the readers of the newspaper. Well, if another courtly-guignol abracadabra shines - excuse me, without me. There will be regular detractors and regular heel scratchers - either those who have read this text, or who already know what to crow (coo) about it.
It's not about my former acquaintance. (Although, of course, in my younger years I should have been smarter, kept my distance more rigidly: not assented, sparing the then bubbling pride of my interlocutor, not looked for excuses for any of his paradoxes, more consistently defended those colleagues who were then mixed with dirt by him - but this my personal problem.)
The street scene brought my already quite strong dislike of what is called “negative feedback” to a boil. Why, one might ask, should I inform an innocent reader about opuses that I myself overcome out of a sense of duty? (The duty is double: that of a literary historian, for whom there are no texts “not worthy of reading,” and that of a salaried columnist, who is obliged to navigate the terrain.) Yes, there are hopeless situations. This is if the writer, on the one hand, is inflated by PR people to the point of indecency, and on the other hand, he is still worth something, he brings some kind of, albeit unpleasant, but significant thought to the world, some kind of, albeit, in my opinion, pretentious, but characteristic masters writing techniques. Here you can’t get by with “expressive silence” - after all, I work for a newspaper, and I have to “meet” the demands of the public (already imposed on them). (And that’s why I’m especially happy when authors who usually irritate me, to say the least, come out with works that are alive, from my point of view.) However, quite often I eluded the discussion of “idols.” For which he was reproached by his sharp colleagues: he is contemptuously, they say, silent about the true titan of the spirit . (Everyone knows! Or maybe my eyes are wide-eyed with delight and my lips are speechless? No, I’m kidding. The connoisseurs of literary life wrote about me the pure truth.) Yes, I was silent in hope - sometimes in vain, and sometimes no, that “will resolve itself.”
But our samovar stars do not remind us of themselves every day. Usually you have to work with normal books and magazine publications. I recently became acquainted (among other things) with two weighty creations. One is a young debutant, from whom, it seems, they are trying to make a star. The other is an experienced writer, welcomed by eminent brothers (one master wrote a marmalade preface, the second wrote an even more chocolatey text on the cover). There is good reason to believe that the two dissimilar novelists are likeable, decent people with good intentions. I can’t go any further! I can’t write about the plot tediousness of a seemingly “fascinating,” seemingly “phantasmagorical,” seemingly “adventure” novel, nor about its far-fetched mannered language, nor about its penniless philosophy. And I can’t talk about naive melodrama, equally naive confusion in historical and cultural realities and the colorless style of a memoir novel. True, the second author demonstrates extraordinary knowledge in... say, for example, museums (or motorsports, or hunting - I won’t name the true subject of his powerful and worthy passion). So let the museum workers (racing drivers, huntsmen) take it apart piece by piece. With admiration (I hope) or indignation. I don’t see a literary event here—even though I really want to, I admit. As in a dystopian fairy tale by a debutant, which will certainly find adherents in the infantile fantasy district.
I am not the grandfather of Russian postmodernism (who skillfully applied this method when there was no rumor of it), who, deeply despising all (with rare exceptions) literature, with mocking drive elevates literally any text to the “pearl of creation.” (In my opinion, there is no worse fate for a writer than to become an exhibit in the collection of our “first critic.” However, there are exceptions in his practice. But they are very few.) I don’t want to spoil the mood of writers who are not close to me and/or just weak (option: whose books I haven’t missed). But I also don’t want to update, promote, or introduce their work into the literary process.
Just as I don’t want to participate in discussions about this very process (either lost, or scattered in different directions, or a single, indivisible) process . Even though we have almost no more or less intelligible and reliable human stories, the name still moans about the dominance of “realism” and the indifference of magazines to subtly artistic (experimental, brutal, total and diagonal) literature. (A fresh example.) And another - very spiritual - name, raising his eyes to grief, announces that very different (if you think about it a little) writers, who, they say, thundered in the disgusting irresponsible 90s, have died today, just like the old ones. He glorifies the “triumph of justice” that has been achieved, although fifteen years ago he himself was hammering the same writers with the same enthusiasm, and the objects of his censures (some reasonable, some far-fetched) are published (discussed, “participated in the process”) today, not less, but more, than in these years. (And this example is not from a refrigerator.)
Cross-pollination (one will write nonsense, another will analyze the nonsense) , perhaps, in principle, is useful for literature, but not always. I'm tired of it to the extreme. I don’t renounce the sum, prison and polemical backlashes (sometimes I still want to shake up the old days, stop the demagoguery and call the cat a cat), but in general I need other paintings. I am interested in the living words of rare (always, not now) real writers. My job is to maintain a connection (the possibility of which is shrinking before our eyes) between such writers and their potential readers. For those who are wondering, do we have literature? I’ll answer briefly: it’s not going anywhere. For example, all the anonymous participants in this note are writers with names. To deny the fact of their existence would be equally unconscionable and stupid. Another thing is that not all of us are like that . A wonderful writer responded to my “street” story with this maxim. I spoke very harshly about whose recent works. He, doing without well-wishers-earphones, read my “malice” himself. During meetings, smiling, he would involve me in an argument, defend and explain his decisions, try to convince me, listen to counter-arguments - he had (and I hope there will be) something to talk to me about.