Translated material
Everything is intertwined
Lipskerov's new novel: a soap opera with a Gogolian plot and a biblical ending
Dmitry Lipskerov. About him and butterflies. M.: AST, Edited by Elena Shubina, 2016.Dmitry Lipskerov published his first novel in three years, and for Lipskerov this is a long time. Since the late nineties, the writer sometimes managed to publish two books a year, and in moments of downtime, publishers collected his texts into three-volume sets, five-volume sets and even one eight-volume set. “An intriguing, extravagant plot” from an author “with an unbridled imagination and an impeccable sense of style” - this is how the book is recommended by the “Editors of Elena Shubina”, which generally rarely publishes anything extravagant, but makes an exception for Lipskerov. On the cover there are two chicken eggs clenched in a fist, and the marking “18+”. Lipskerov constantly plays games with the fleshy bottom on covers and in texts, although every year it shocks the public less and less.
This time he uses Gogol’s way out: one fine morning, the main character, the famous architect, millionaire, handsome Arseny Iratov, disappears “the main organ of the male body”, and in its place, literally like between the eyes of the collegiate assessor Kovalev, is a completely smooth place. The lost part of Iratov is discovered not in the pie, but on the village stove, and also begins to lead an independent life. Following the almost classic plot, a narrator appears in the novel: a certain omniscient being who has the ability to sometimes fall asleep for several months, quickly recover from injuries of any severity, and tell his stories so courteously and for a long time that some listeners do not live to see the ending. The creature has obviously been following Iratov for a long time, because he tells us in detail his entire life, paying special attention to women and children directly or indirectly related to Iratov through family relations.
On the cover there are two chicken eggs clenched in a fist, and the marking “18+”
Like most of Lipskerov’s books, “About Him and About Butterflies” is overpopulated with characters with their difficult or anecdotal destinies and non-obvious participation in the plot. Unable to remember everyone, the reader follows with his eyes hooligans and skaters, athletes and Komsomol members, aging actresses and young prostitutes, KGB men and KGB women, currency traders and village women, psychologists and andrologists, oligophrenics and geniuses, colonels, alcoholics, beauties, two Joseph Brodskys at once and even angels.
“Little Iratov was named Joseph in honor of the poet Brodsky, who was expelled from the USSR for parasitism. The name was invented by the nanny Evdokia, who did not know any other Russian names. Very young, about sixteen, she came to the capital from Yakutia and was half Buryat. She herself was not recognized by her own father, the second secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU, since Evdokia was adopted on the side, she was hastily conceived in a yaranga. A young woman, already wooed to the chief reindeer herder, was taken by force at a party activist's departure, the communist tore her furs and enjoyed the national flavor to the fullest. And so Evdokia was born, with slanted eyes, white skin and a fine body. She grew up among deer, and studied from the only book in the yaranga. And that was the manuscript that, according to legend, her own father forgot during the rape. It turns out that the secretary read samizdat in his spare time and was in high spirits. This “tall one” is what Dashka became, as her mother called her.”
In the future, all these destinies will merge at one logical point, from which a new history of mankind will begin, a new round of general life-affirming confusion, and yes - this is basically what Lipskerov has been telling us about for years. As the rapper Oksimiron said more briefly and clearly , * Miron Fedorov is recognized as a foreign agent in Russia : “Everything is intertwined, a sea of threads, but / pull the thread and a ball will follow.” The idea is as fresh as the world, and there is a feeling that the writer is not very diligently hiding behind it a serious intention to write another biblical testament, in which everyone endlessly conceives and gives birth to someone until genetic connections give the necessary saving result. This development of the plot, which started out at least funny, makes us perceive the novel as a painfully long and stilted toast, which the toaster tries to draw out with an abundance of barbs and greasy remarks.
As rapper Oksimiron said more briefly and clearly: “Everything is intertwined, a sea of threads, but / pull the thread and a ball will follow it.”
The combination of obviousness and significance is generally one of the properties of Lipskerov’s prose, thanks to which the writer receives the most unexpected labels. In the late nineties, some called him the new Pelevin (although the “old” Pelevin did not yet need to be replaced), others called him the Russian Marquez (the classic was summed up by the term “magical realism”, which stuck to his Russian “successor”). At the same time, Lipskerov is still, if not a popular fiction writer, then, as they say, an author who has his own audience. Ten years ago, writer Olga Slavnikova even called one of his books a “folk novel for users,” although at that time this was a rather arrogant definition, and today it has become extremely vague.
Lipskerov seems to keep his loyal audience by admitting that he always writes the same book—another similarity between his work and the television series. And overall he does it quite well: well, he’s not an impeccable stylist, of course, but we’ve seen much worse. The problem is that, unlike 1996, when Lipskerov’s debut novel “Forty Years of Changzhoue” was immediately included in the Russian Booker shortlist, in 2016 the value of his book, alas, tends to zero, giving the reader nothing except for the unexpected meaning of the word “butterfly.”