Deep Sea Reading Public

XXVI International Book Fair - as a pocket mirror of social thought

The 26th International Book Fair passed quietly. Especially the first, professional days. At the beginning of December, there will be more faces, events and conversations at the stands of the Non/fiction intellectual literature fair. And this is a social symptom: the “deep reading public” in Moscow has clearly replaced the broad reading public of the late Soviet era.

The main fair passed quietly. Especially the first, professional days. In early December, the stands of the Non/fiction intellectual literature fair (originally conceived as an "agora and forum for professionals" - as opposed to September's "fair for people") will certainly have more faces, events and conversations. And this is a social symptom: the “deep reading public” in Moscow has clearly replaced the broad reading public of the late Soviet era.

This is a predictable result: for 20 years, the golden mean of the mainstream has been stubbornly washed out of the publishing repertoire - books that are intelligible to any thinking compatriot. Our real mainstream of recent years, spread out on the fair counters of the All-Russian Exhibition Center, is ridiculously carefully selected high-quality detective stories from Europe, complete collections of works by J. Grange, F.D. James, Y. Nesbe, D. Leon, W. McDermid… Range: from Italy to Norway! But the genre is one.

These books are much more decent than that poisonous mixture of Marina Serova, Vedic cooking, an alternative history of everything (sometimes with Stalin, sometimes with Kolovrat on the cover) and morocco covers with gold embossing and grammatical errors that squelched and seethed at the book fairs of the All-Russian Exhibition Center for 10 years back. But the publishing offer of the fall of 2013 very convincingly confirms that the book has finally become entertainment for us. Both the reader and the publisher are emotionally burned out - to the ashes of 50 shades of gray.

However, in the history of social thought (and every book fair is hers, yes, precisely hers, a pocket mirror!) There are hardly any irreversible processes. We, who did not publish Dostoevsky and Kuprin from the 1920s until the end of the 1950s, know more about this than many. According to the most interesting novelties of MIBF-2013, according to the editions of 2012, which received the Book of the Year award, there is also a tendency towards self-rescue. These are the mainstream texts and projects.

The Book of the Year award is traditionally presented on the first day of the Autumn Book Fair. On September 4, the laureates were announced at the Novaya Opera. In the nomination "Poetry of the Year" the series "Poet" "Lenizdat" was awarded. That is, 8 voluminous volumes of selected laureates of the "Poet" award - Alexander Kushner, Oleg Chukhontsev, Viktor Sosnora, Evgeny Rein, Timur Kibirov, Olesya Nikolaeva, Inna Lisnyanskaya, Sergey Gandlevsky. (The price of volumes is also quite mainstream: about 200 rubles.)

Alexander Arkhangelsky became the winner in the Prose of the Year nomination. His novel The Museum of the Revolution (M.: AST, Revision of Elena Shubina) combines "estate chronicle with execution shooting" - as well as with holographic projections. The Priyutino Museum-Estate, which in the 20th century managed to visit both a sanatorium for venereal patients, a rest home for Chekists, and an art residence for peppy scumbags of the newest formation, is becoming a knot and symbol of the history of Russia in the 20th century. Infinitely different people of the 90s and 2000s converge on this piece of Russia, fighting “for Priyutino”: and in this cycle of vectors, wills, interests, destinies with carefully and vividly written details of village cemeteries, Khrushchev, offices and Kremlin corridors, a stereoscopic portrait is created countries. A calm, coherent, well-written book has many layers. And it is clearly intended for general (as far as it is possible now) reading. And comprehension.

In the nomination "Electronic book" the educational project won. In the 4-volume anthology of Russian poetry “The Circle of the Lord’s Summer” (compiled by Arkady Levin), the Orthodox Menologion, poems by Russian poets and a well-chosen pictorial series (from chronicle miniatures to Kustodiev from provincial storerooms) made up a single powerful stream of tradition. The "paper" "Circle of the Lord's Summer" was awarded the "Book of the Year" award in 2011. These volumes had one drawback: the objectively high cost of printing. And that means the price of the publication.

In two years, the anthology has turned into a multimedia project “Living Poetry” (M.: Center for Cultural Initiatives “Sretenye”, 2013) – and now this project has been awarded the Book of the Year. The best actors of Moscow of different generations (from Igor Yasulovich to Maxim Averin) read poetry, about 700 texts. Painting gently comes to life in animated films directed by Irma Komladze. The music of P.I. Tchaikovsky and quite modern composer Anton Viskov sounds. All this exists in several formats. Has his own Facebook page.

Now in the AppStore multimedia "Live Poetry" costs 249 rubles. The whole month.

It seems that today children (and the project is designed for them) need to clearly and enthusiastically explain not only what the Protection of the Virgin is, but also who Bunin is. "Living Poetry" works primarily for this: to stretch, to return the general cultural space of Russia.

The main award "Book of the Year" was received by the monumental project of Yevgeny Yevtushenko and the Russkiy Mir publishing house: a 5-volume anthology of Russian poetry. Yevgeny Alexandrovich (a true expert on the subject!) had been working towards this work for many years: "The Stanzas of the Century" was its prototype.

... Among the novelties of the MIBF-2013, an anthology of the story "Russian Children" (St. Petersburg: Azbuka) is noticeable. 48 stories (from Lyudmila Petrushevskaya to Anna Starobinets and from Vasily Aksenov to Vadim Leventhal) create a broad (however, rather bleak) picture of modern childhood. In the same Azbuka, a novel by the Dutchman Hermann Koch "Dinner", a European bestseller of 2009, was published. (The Telegraph compares the author to Houellebecq ... but it seems to be more meaningful to reread Elementary Particles or Map and Territory instead of Koch.)

ZhZL published a biography of Mikhail Kuzmin, written by two of the best researchers on the subject, Nikolai Bogomolov and John Malmstad. The new volume of the Living History series - "The Daily Life of the Russian Intelligentsia from the era of the Great Reforms to the Silver Age" by Semyon Ekshtut sins with too detailed retelling of classical plays, but clearly and witty reveals tribal sins (the worst of them are "rejection of bourgeois values ​​and personal responsibility" ), which cost the Russian intelligentsia so dearly. And, of course, behind the historical sketch, the question arises: how do we live today with this heritage?

The two best, in my opinion, novelties of the fair are strikingly dissimilar and thus complement each other. This is a novel by Sergei Shargunov “1993. A family portrait against the backdrop of a burning house” (M.: AST, edited by Elena Shubina) and the book of “theatrical” prose by Eduard Kochergin “Notes of a Tablet Rat” (St. Petersburg: Vita Nova). Kochergin, the patriarch of Russian scenography, the main artist of the BDT since the time of G.A. Tovstonogov, has realized himself as a brilliant prose writer in the last 10 years (“Angel’s Doll”, “Baptized with Crosses”). His heroes are piece people: strange, beaten, tricky, labeled with fear and barracks. All are unique professionals.

Tovstonogov (the hero of the story "Copper Goga"), Evgeny Lebedev, Oleg Borisov, model-makers, chemists "from the underdogs", for whom the theater workshops became a refuge from Sofya Vlasyevna's diligent gaze. Brilliant illuminator and brilliant carpenter. A hereditary builder of guards uniforms, "the last trouser of the emperor", also hidden from time to time by the wings. Whatever the face, then Lefty. With each one, his craft, mourned in Kochergin's flourishing prose, leaves. But while they are alive, their business is their anchor, shield, point of self-reliance.

This is a small Russia. Piece Russia. In Shargunov's novel, she is completely different. Here - the river of times (muddy, black oil - not without reason that the hero serves in the "emergency truck") carries and throws people who look alike, like beds near Moscow. A unique master electronics engineer meekly leaves the FIAN laboratories in the winter of 1992 to plug rusty Moscow pipes. (The subcortex of the city, which is being torn through all the time, which is patched by hand, is an excellent backdrop for the plot.) 1992, 1993 - everything floats and collapses, wild floodlights and new opportunities boil ... But the village "43rd kilometer", where they live the emergency worker Victor, his wife, Lena, the dispatcher, and their 16-year-old daughter, seem to be frozen in a daze forever. Time is measured by planting potatoes, hilling, raspberries, mushroom rain, milking a goat, rainbow bubbles of the TV. And the thought vaguely tossing and turning in Victor's mind about the injustice and lies of all the new promises.

The scenes of Moscow in October 1993 are the best written, with a powerful effect of presence. Cossacks, Diggers, Anpilovites, Barkashovites, "Afghans", monarchists and Stalinists, half-forgotten leaders - all seem to be carried and twisted by an unstoppable stream. Nobody rests: nothing. Victor is drawn into the rebellion - just as sleepily, imperceptibly, unstoppably, as his 16-year-old daughter is drawn into an accidental, desperate love, and an accidental pregnancy, and the birth of a son.

And in the epilogue of the book, 20-year-old Peter, the grandson of Victor, is also drawn in by the Bolotnaya wave.

And the main dry residue of the novel: as long as lives and destinies are put on stream, as long as they dutifully drag in the muddy stream of times, nothing fundamentally will change in these destinies.

And any change of fate will collapse on the village of "43rd kilometer" as a natural disaster.

With Shargunov's undoubted sympathy for the hero, you close the novel "1993" with this very thought. And with a feeling: the book is weighty. For general understanding.