"Absolutely hallucinogenic text"

Ex Libris Pavel Lungin

Film director Pavel Lungin - about novels where the most incredible fantasy is intertwined with absolutely accurate details of modern life

I like to read books in printed format. The exception made Mikhail Elizarov for the “librarian” : her comrade was just jokingly for me, showing how to do it, downloaded to the iPhone. The next day I flew to Bali, flying for 12 hours, there was absolutely nothing to do, and I started reading in an iPhone, for the first time in my life. It was so interesting that he could not tear himself away. Soviet mythology, mythology of our time, reasoning about how they are weaving, how they live at the same time, fall into another ... The next book by Elizarov, which I read, was a collection of stories “We went out to smoke for 17 years” -memories from childhood. It must be added that Elizarov is generally a very interesting author, writes songs, something between the zongs of Brecht and the songs of Galich are monologues that amaze with their accuracy.

I read the "Germans" by Alexander Terekhov . An outstanding novel, perfectly written, amazing language, with some completely new expression. Exact dialogs, exact images. The combination of a fantastic vision of life and extraordinary scrupulousness in details. The author describes the functioning of the administration of the same Moscow council. And through this inner world of the council and the story of the hero’s life, we will receive, I would say, the philosophical idea of ​​the way of the existence of all our administrative supervisor. And his second book was published recently, in December or January. “Germans” is a big novel, and this is rather a story, called “a fighter trained to win” . Absolutely hallucinogenic text. It is written on behalf of a person who catches rats in a small provincial city. I will not tell anything else, so as not to spoil the pleasure of those who will read.

It is interesting that although these two writers have a completely different vision of the world, different artistic style, both have an unusually accurate knowledge of modern life and modern people. Behind every word, each character feels a deep truth. This is fantastic realism and at the same time deeply Russian - not Marquez and not classical realism. It seems to me that these authors will still surprise us.

From philosophical and political literature, which impressed me, I will name Igor Yakovenko’s book “Cognition of Russia: Civilization Analysis” . An attempt to find and designate the place of Russia in the general world scheme. As far as I understand, the impetus for this book was a simple feeling that we were clearly different from the rest of the world, but no one can fully determine what. Yakovenko, as a historian, explains why Russia is so difficult to give, why the country breaks up in two, why such a complex attitude within Russia to the intelligentsia, to progress ... The book is thick, fundamental, almost 700 pages, published by a very small circulation, so it must be bought, it is interesting.

And another very curious book - the last Nobel laureate, Chinese writer Mo Yan, “The Country of Wine” . Also a strange essay ... Apparently, the time has come when it is impossible to comprehend the reality surrounding us through a simple realistic story. This is the story of a police inspector who goes to the deep province of China to explore terrible events: they say that they eat babies. And they raise them specifically for this. A huge number of poetic associations, retreats to Chinese poetry and culture are interspersed with an amazing realistic description of the half-abandoned factories, completely killed by the work of workers, some officials. In parallel, there is a fictitious correspondence of the supposedly author of this novel with Mo Yan - as if Roman was sent to him by a certain crazy lover of literature.

In general, all the art books that I spoke about are for those who feel the beauty, texture, and unusual of language fabric.

Photos: Igor Starkov