It is not clear how to seduce

Interview

Alexander Melikhov, presenting his new book “Through the Triangle” in Novaya Gazeta, teaches the basics of writing, gleaned from the biography of Ilya Ehrenburg: “He tried his whole life to bring European culture and European humanistic values to the country, but in conflicts performed on the side of his state, even if he considered it wrong. He understood that in a situation of confrontation, any word in favor of the enemy would strengthen the suspicions of not only power, but, which is much worse, and the people: yes, the intellectuals, Jews, Westerners cannot be trusted, these are agents of influence in our ranks. He was reproached and reproached for cowardice, and it was political wisdom. He did not directly support the West, which did not need his support, but protected the influence of Westerners within Russia. Until better times. Who either leave, then come again, and it is quite bad when there is no one to meet them. Now the difficulty is different: it is not clear how to seduce. ” The reasoning of Mr. Melikhov is also attached to a symmetrical comment left by one of the indifferent readers: “I think, the people grow from ancient times in the people. The Slavs were supplanted from Europe into wild eastern forests, in incredibly difficult natural conditions, why it happened, no one knows. And, perhaps, from those times, almost a genetically fixed resentment against tribes remains in more favorable conditions of residence and in this regard, who got the opportunity to develop more dynamically. ”

In the Rossiyskaya Gazeta there is an interview with Vladimir Makanin - but it is rather “about nothing”, a set of simple answers to simple questions.

Suddenly - bonuses

On July 15, the receipt of work for the prize named after Pyatigorsky , which is planned to be presented for the best philosophical novel of the year. There is some problem here, since there are almost no philosophical novels in modern Russian literature, and those that are, belong to various traditions and production: in addition to the writer’s samples of the philosophical novel, the “Vienna, the operating system” Andrei Levkin, who does not seek to directly copy the model of the modernist philosophical novel (mann and mann and mann. etc.), to which the founders of the award are guided, but writing his text on top of this tradition (not in vain in Vienna, so many thoughts about the museum arise). It seems that this is much more important and interesting than the exhausted reasoning a la Anton Ponizovsky, who is also predicted by the appearance in the long list of a bonus.

And Pavel Basinsky, meanwhile, rejoices that Roman Senchin awarded the Prize of the Government of the Russian Federation. Indeed, in his novel of the Eltyshevs, he showed the collapse of values, especially family ones, while he himself continues to grope at traditions (apparently, a prize for this). Basinsky also draws the genealogy of the Senchinsky prose - naturalism, cruel realism, that is, those approaches that have been able to say anything about a “modern” person for more than half a century.

Actually prose

The most important events in Russian prose for the reporting period are two.

The first is the publication ( here and here ) by Vladimir Sharov’s new novel “Return to Egypt”, which is a set of epistolary documents around Nikolai Gogol (not to confuse C - although there are quite a lot of relevant reminiscences), which ended up in the post -staging years in Kazakhstan, where his rehabilitated father settled. Sharov again turns to the topic of history, inseparable from the notorious “family thought”, which it seemed in the Soviet years. At first glance, the romance of Sharov can be dialogical in relation to a number of texts created in the 1950-1970s and called up in addition to the revelations of the Stalinist repressions to identify the intercoral break between the corruption generation and their children: one of these texts is the “burn” of Vasily Aksenov. However, Sharov sees his task somewhat in another. This is how he formulates her in a long -standing interview with Elena Ivanitskaya: “There is a story that we study at school, the history of facts and events. But there is a story - there is really! - Which does not fall into any textbook. <...> I write a completely real story of thoughts, intentions, ver. This is the country that was. This is our own madness, our own absurdity. ”

The second is the publication of the text of Pavel Ulitin (1918-1986), prepared by Ivan Akhmetyev, entitled “Xenophob” , written “in the early 1970s”. “The ashes of the burned out thought flickered and disappeared into a pile of stitches of the old transcript. That's how all this happened. I and the Appadik reprinted on a typewriter. That was the worker. The laborer grabbed the laborer by the leg or by the handle. From such nonsense grew bitterness and even uncertainty, which is worse. The completeness of such convictions is caused by a legal protest. You read the Holstomer out loud and you will see how the artist Bunin was right. All in the past. On the Cretaceous Gora and the Don on the sand and on the street after 16 years, three conversations and one retelling of the book “One -story America”. It responded. His daughter remembers how she recorded an oral translation of the report on Shtillere in German. Here is the trace. The trace of Tarasov was found. Once again about "16 pages - it was a tedious procedure."

It is recommended to pay attention to the story of Sergei Zhadan, published in the New World, “Sellers of Happiness” , which is formally located outside our column (because it is a translation from Ukrainian). The small story of Evgeny Shklovsky “Alien” , published there, also deserves attention.

With some caution, I recommend for critical reading the texts of Vladimir Berezin from the Russian Classics and Politics cycle: in the devoted to Nikolai Leskov and Boris Zhitkov , Essay Berezin carries a narrative curtsy in order to give out a fairly obvious conclusion in the finale.

Disgrace

Unfortunately, I can’t choose another word to designate the story of the young author Sergey Kubrin “Continius” , published in the seventh issue of the Urals. Stroke characters falling into even more stroke situations; Total inability to use the possibilities of direct speech, dialogue, etc.; Finally, some deeply layered disgusting of the heroes of the text, a kind of belching of "new realism." The inability of the prose writer (realist?) At least minimally get used to their heroes, to understand their inconsistency ... I have already written a little review about the poetic texts of Sergei Kubrin-I think now it remains only to shrug ...

Shcheglov

In my opinion, considerable interest is the last book of Yuri Shcheglov, “The Squared Bochkotar” by Vasily Aksenov. Comment ”, dedicated to the analysis of Aksenov’s story.