When the Russian bestseller comes

Mikhail Epstein about geniuses and taste

Alexander Genis: The news that this year the world will do without the Nobel Prize in Literature was especially acute in the Russian literary environment, where laureates are monitored with special excitement. Say, on the FB Moscow philologist Oleg Lexmanov announced a playful competition for the domestic nomination. There were many different names among the candidates, including Vladimir Sorokin, whom we recently discussed in ACh.

In this regard, I want to recall - in the framework of our heading “On the topic of the day” - a curious conversation that we had with the professor of the University of Emory and the old friend of our transfer to Mikhail Epstein about when an international bestseller comes from Russia and what it can be.

Michael, first of all, I think we must determine what the world bestseller means?

Mikhail Epstein

Mikhail Epstein: Bestseller literally means "that which is well for sale." But I put another meaning into this expression. This is a universal word, discourse or a language that is made instantly understandable to people in different parts of the world and becomes their general language, that is, in such a language in which they begin to understand each other. How did this happen when the "old man and the sea", or "over the abyss in rye," of Salinger, or "Rosa Name" Umberto Eco, or "Harry Potter".

Alexander Genis: Makanin told me that he somehow ended up in the summer in Denmark on the beach and saw how the whole beach reads one book-"The name of the rose." But, probably, from the last such world bestsellers was the "Da Vinci code".

Mikhail Epstein: There was still such a bestseller "A Seagull named Jonathan Livingston." Books of different levels, different categories, but what unites them is the instant recognition of their language. They either create this mood, or reflect the mood that has developed in society. And it is sad that for many decades we have not been observing a single universal word coming from Russia. I would say that the latter came and left with Solzhenitsyn.

Alexander Genis: When we are talking about bestsellers, we bring literary quality as brackets. "Code of Da Vinci", "The name of the rose", "The old man and the sea"-it is difficult to find something in common in the literary virtues of these books, right?

Mikhail Epstein: Of course, the tastes of mankind also have the ability to degrade, let's say. But it is significant that Russia of the second half of the 19th century really created world bestsellers-“fathers and children”, “crime and punishment”, “Karamazov brothers”, Tolstoy’s novels. And at the beginning of the 20th century-Chekhov, Gorky young.

Alexander Genis: Gorky was very popular in America. When he came here before the revolution, he was met by crowds of workers in New York.

Mikhail Epstein: And how they translated, say, Leonid Andreev in Brazil and in Argentina. And then it ended. Well, maybe some political shock news of the 1920s like Cement or Babel's stories.

Alexander Genis: Ilf and Petrov in America were known.

Mikhail Epstein: But these are already some local world masterpieces, so half-world, quarter-worldly. And the question arises: why did the Russian Literary Niva mean? We can admire something, rejoice at something, but the world remains uncontrollable and indifferent to our local joys. The Poles create some world bestsellers. Let's say Vishnevsky’s book “Loneliness on the Web”.

It seems to me that all world bestsellers have a feature that is hardly given to Russian literature. Namely, design, compactness.

Alexander Genis: The name of the rose is hardly called a compact novel, but I understand that you want to say: despite the fact that this is a thick book, it is like a well -laid suitcase - everything is packed.

Mikhail Epstein: Yes. And everything is very elastic. This is an amazing property of all world bestsellers. We take Hemingway or "A Seagull named Jonathan Livingston." This is a composition that is self -destroyed and is a miracle of compactness.

Alexander Genis: An interesting consideration about compactness. It never occurred to me. But, in essence, all successful Russian books in the West, except for “War and Peace”, maybe, despite the language insanely complex for a foreigner, have this compactness of the narrative that bribes the reader. He can plunge into the book and find the beginning and end.

Mikhail Epstein: Of course, and note, the structure is often laid on the same day.

Alexander Genis: The unity of the place and time.

Mikhail Epstein: Yes. This is at Venochka Erofeev in "Moscow - Cockerels", this is in Solzhenitsyn in "One Day of Ivan Denisovich."

Alexander Genis: This is also at Sorokin in the "Day of the Oprichnik"

Mikhail Epstein: That is, a very successful form has been chosen, which allows you to go in parts of the day and end the night in the same place where the day begins. That is, there is a certain prosperity in this, an archetype, dictated by the cyclical nature of nature itself.

Nevertheless, I think that there is in modern Russian reality, as in modern Russian literature, that which refuses to perceive the world's mind. This is a mixture of Byzantium and sloppiness, meanness and corruption. You see, authoritarianism and crime. So we see this in the "Day of the Oprichnik". It seems to me that this is the mixture that we find with Saltykov-Shchedrin. It grows very deeply into our soil, but the most difficult thing is in the world.

Alexander Genis: Therefore, Gogol did not become the same world writer as Dickens, for example, although he is the same type of grotesque talent.

Mikhail Epstein: In Russian books - in those that receive bonuses that are read, which are discussed - lacks, oddly enough, universality. There is no compactly built book about love, for example. As a book by Vishnevsky "Loneliness on the Web." Sorokin, because it seems to me, will still not become the author of the international bestseller, in any case, as a conceptualist, which he is undoubtedly in the "day of the oprichnik", because conceptualism is still a kind of frost of emotions, this is a distance that is difficult to reach the world audience. It is already very endured by Soviet experience, Soviet Sotsart, parody of distances in relation to the official language. These lenses are one lens, through another lens, multiple refractiveness, such things do not have, as it seems to me, a chance to become a worldwide, immediately perceived word.

Alexander Genis: You know, of course, it sounds believable, but I will give the opposite example. Polevin's books. When they appeared in English, the first translations of Pelevin made a rather strong impression on American youth. I saw young guys who read Pelevin, not even knowing that he was Russian. They were interested, it was fantasy. Pelevin for them was a man who lives on the Internet, like they live, and this was the first time that the Russian writer entered American literature not through Slavic circles, but simply as an ordinary writer. The reader was quite clear what was happening in such a strange book as Chapaev and Emptiness, which is all built on Soviet realities. It was very well sold both in France and in Japan. I once asked Pelevin: is he not afraid to call the book "Chapaev and Emptiness" when no one knows who Chapaev is. He says: "Everyone will think that I came up with him." That is, in itself, the question with a shortage of realities does not seem fatal to me.

Mikhail Epstein: I completely agree with you. It's not about the abundance of local color. I mean conceptualism - what we most like at Sorokin. But the world actually affects the world and, in general, becoming passionate things that depict a certain human nature, which wants, seeks, yearning-such primary emotions. About this - "Hundred Years of Loneliness", "Old Man and the Sea", "Above the abyss in rye." Therefore, it seems to me that not an excess of local, but an excess of the conceptual conceptual could prevent Sorokin from becoming such an instant classic.

Alexander Genis: Michael, and who can write such a world bestseller in Russia and is it possible at all?

Mikhail Epstein: I don't know. It would seem that there are a lot of candidates: Pelevin, and Sorokin, and Vladimir Sharov, it seems to me, could have claimed, maybe Dmitry Bykov could, Ulitskaya ...

But this is a miracle, and a miracle is unpredictable. Maybe a certain Smirnov or Sidorov will arise in a year or two. I don’t know who it will be, but I know exactly what properties this bestseller will possess. It will be more short than a long book, it will most likely be the same, for example, “one day of Ivan Denisovich” or as “Moscow - Petushki” - the detailed and measured, steps by composite ones going into a certain situation of human being, clear to everyone, recognizable to everyone. By the way, the book "Black Po -White" Ruben Galegu largely had these properties. The book did not become a world bestseller, but found a review. And it seems to me that for Russian literature facing the decisive question, whether we can create a certain universal word, that is, a book that becomes instantly classic, when typographic sheets have not yet dried up, and it is already read, re -read, and so on.

Alexander Genis: As it was with Gogol's “savage”.

Mikhail Epstein: It seems to me that this is a test for the amorphousness of Russian artistic genius. We have such an idea of geniuses: here I am a genius, I will create, and there they will understand me, read and delve me. No one will be, you must do everything for yourself.

Alexander Genis: Robert Frost said very well on this subject: any literary work should act like an ice floe on the stove - it itself is moving, because it melts and acquires a movement from this. This is how a literary work should move. There should be nothing superfluous, no comments, everything should be inside the opus.

Mikhail Epstein: That's right. I would also say that where the Russian writer puts an ellipsis, they think that the ellipsis is five points, ten points, a million points, that is, guess, delve into, penetrate. A multi -flower is three points. I want to say that even the darkness, plan, its impenetrability and goddessness also have some formal signs of brevity, distinctness, and no one will do what we owe to ourselves for. And the artist is an amazing combination of two completely opposite properties: genius and taste. That's when this miracle will happen, when the genius is completely reunited with taste, then another miracle will take place - the birth of the Russian world bestseller.