Without a tongue

Today, the jury of the Russian Booker Award will decide on the choice of a laureate. The premium season is coming to the finish line: according to the established order, the Booker declares its decision the penultimate, and then, already in the new calendar year, only the Nose award will have to be expressed. About “Buker” -2013 as one more lost opportunity to seriously talk about what is happening with Russian prose, ”Elena Rybakova.

There are five books of a short list (there are six of them in the short list (there are six of them in the short list, but Evgeny Vodolazkin and Lavr from the distance, of course, came off-he just became a laureate of the “Big Book”, and two prizes in the same composition in Russia, as you know, do not give it). It is important to emphasize that any book has this chance, even so - all five finalists have about approximately equal. Whom to congratulate tonight, so far it is completely unclear: Margarita Hemlin with the “interrogator” and Andrey of the hair with “returning to Panjrud”, and already marked by Buker, Denis Gutsko with the Roman “beta-maker”, and Andrey Ivanov with “Harbin Motyls”, and completely exotic Vladimir Shapko with a pro-Zaida can become a laureate. The poem “At the foot of the immense world” (the genre subtitle “Poem” did not prevent the jury from including the text of the Ural author in the list of applicants for the prize for the best novel; however, this seems to be the most insignificant question that the “Russian Boker” should be asked). Unlike the “Big Book”, where the choice of the number one laureate is always predictable (so far only 2012 and the friendly vote of academicians against the chief favorite of Tikhon Shevkunov for the very colorless novel Daniil Granin), give forecasts before the presentation of Boker - obviously hit the sky into the sky. It is always clear how one hundred people will vote (so much or about so much chooses a “big book”), you never know for sure how five members of the Buker jury will vote. The most indicative is that no one is interested in this for a long time.

It would seem, here it is, the intrigue: the outcome of the race is unclear, the chances of several applicants are approximately equal, the audience greedily monitors the messages of the news agencies, the bookmakers accept bets. It was not at all-the result of today's voting is only interesting to the short-listers themselves with their support groups, but more to anyone. At the third ten of its existence, the first book Prize of Free Russia was so routine that its results ceased to excite even the literary community. You might think, we are talking about political elections, about which everyone is clear and uninteresting to everyone long before the announcement of the result, and this, of course, is a completely serious diagnosis of free Russia as such.

It is possible that the “booker” was the first to be exhausted simply because he started before. This does not change the essence of the matter - the Great Russian Literary Prizes are common (we bring out the prize of Andrei Bely for brackets here). The first and main is the total crisis of the Institute of Expertise. I would like to take experts, the main regulators of the premium field, in each conversation about bonuses. The matter is not only in the persecution of corporate interests (although what, except for the corporate interests of the editor of the female prose series in the publishing house "Astrel" and part -time expert of the "Big Book" Elena Kholmogorova, you can explain the hit of the Aunt Moti Kucheskaya not only in a short but also on a long list?). God would with them, with corporate interests. Another thing is worse: experts of our literary awards do not consider it necessary to report on the merits of their examination. Of the scenarios of the premium ceremonies, the part where the principles are spoken out, the concepts are made up, and the positions are specified. We no longer talk about the essence of the matter - just like in public politics, because already everything understands everything . The main verbal genre in premium was the health of the buffet - first the next laureate, then Russian literature as a whole. To be responsible for your voice, if you are an expert, is not before the literature in general, but only to colleagues - but who, in fact, is it necessary? Well, and after three years, remember which - by name - the jury led to the victory of the "Flower Cross" by Kolyadina? The misfortune to have such a memory at a time when everyone understands everything and no one says anything. In the sense, except toasts.

By what right is the collection of random people, nothing but his own unomexed taste, not guided, takes away random books and on what basis should this seriously occupy someone?

The Russian Booker here is just more clearly more clearly demonstrated by the disease that struck our main awards. In the jury of the “Boker”, according to tradition, people are recruited, who, in principle, have nothing to talk about and nothing to negotiate - they represent so different parts of the ideological and aesthetic landscape. What, in fact, can be argued by Evgeny Margulis from the old “Time Machine” and Elena Pogorelae from the current “issues of literature”? What productive mismatch in the nuances can arise in the conversation of the literary critic Sergei Belyakov and the philosopher Vladimir Kantor? What will this unbelievable choir bring the jury and last year's laureate Andrei Dmitriev? Why did all these people decide that the novel, the most inertial genre to date, can certainly pronounce some important meanings for us here and now and should be awarded for it? By what right is the collection of random people, nothing but his own unomexed taste, not guided, takes away random books and on what basis should this seriously occupy someone? Finally, what does 1.5 million rubles have to do with it, which will go by accidentally happy laureate tonight?

If it makes sense to make some forecast before the awarding of the Boker, I would not ask these questions now, but would only talk about Andrei Ivanov’s Harbin Moths. This is really the most powerful novel of the current Short List, he clearly earned a separate conversation without any connection with those who will judge him and (if accidents are converged) award. Tallinn resident Andrei Ivanov writes about the Russian emigration of the first wave, and does this in such a way that today's Russians outside Russia, reading his book, one cannot help but remember. But the most curious is that about the 1920s and about our contemporaries, he speaks the language of the same 1920s-in Vaginsky intonation of the phrase and withstanding the distance between the characters, in Ostapbender, in Bulgakovsky playing with operetical motifs. Andrei Ivanov turned out to be a novel about the search for a language - that it is impossible to talk about today's language, because this language is not. By and large, Yevgeny Vodolazkin’s “Lavr” was also written about the same - to talk about the modern hero, you need to climb into the language wilds of the 16th century, and there is nothing more to construct from this hero. Two very noticeable novels of the year agreed at this point, and just here it would be worth starting the conversation seriously - at least at the Buker ceremony. If someone was ready to speak there.