Mouse hunting

About how and for what they remove from the sale of the next book by Freedom letters - this time “Mouse”

The novel “Mouse” by Ivan Filippov*, published by Freedom Letters , demanded to remove from the sale-not anyone, but personally General Prosecutor Igor Krasnov (as publisher Georgy Urushadze himself claims). And this fact is the next innovation in Russian book censorship: so far, district prosecutors were interested in books - as in the case, for example, with the “little life” of Yanagihara and other AST publishing houses synchronously removed from the shelves at the request of the Presnensky inter -district prosecutor's office) or with the “harmful advice” of Oster (the prosecutor's office of Karatuzsky district of Krasnoyarsk edges). But so that the general prosecutor does not like the book personally - this happens for the first time. According to the official wording, which the editors of the Babook site immediately made an annotation to the novel sold, the “mouse” did not arrange the Prosecutor General in what contains:

“False messages about acts of terrorism or other inaccurate socially significant information that pose a threat of harm to life and (or) the health of citizens, property, a threat of massive violation of public order and (or) public safety or a threat of interference with the functioning or termination of the functioning of life support objects, transport or social infrastructure, credit organizations, energy facilities, industry or industrial or industrial connections ".

According to the current, apparently tradition, Roskomnadzor demanded to remove the book not only from the Freedom Letters website, but also from the Babook site recently blocked by it, as well as from the Echo Book online store. According to a similar tradition, both Freedom Letters and Babook refused to remove the book.

The fact that the accusation of “false messages” and “inaccurate information” is attributed to a fantastic novel, over the past two days they have already chuckled.

However, the Z-channels, who fought against the “mouse” no less actively than the struggle against Sorokin's “Heritage”, accused the novel and not of this: “Tsargrad” wrote that the book preaches “The coup, anarchy, death and blood”; The “paragraph” was indignant at the fact that the “Russophobic mouse crawled to the marketplaces” and from there preaches “foreign” hatred, and the “slander” channel accused the book of slander. In a word, the soil for the ban on the novel was a long time as fertilized - and despite this (or thanks to this), while it was possible, the “mouse” scattered from virtual Russian counter at a speed of 300 copies per hour. And the happy owners of these specimens who read the “mouse” completely, and not in a brief content, as the prosecutor’s office loves to do this, could easily make sure that there are, of course, no calls to violate public peace in the book.

Essentially, the “mouse” is a literary arrangement of the Last of US video games with the transfer of the plot to Russian realities. The romance is clearly owed to the game to many - first of all, the main plot line: a certain virus spreads at a monstrous speed, and everyone who is infected begins to show uncontrolled aggression and turn into zombies that quickly do not leave a trace of their own once great culture. Apparently, the book owes the same game the same game with symptoms of infection: since the virus affects some parts of the brain, the infected ceases to see and moves through echolocation; At the same time, he feels constant hunger, so he rushes at the relatives.

And finally, it is very similar to the game and the main plot of the novel: throughout the story, all the heroes (and the arrested elderly scientist with his escort, and two little brothers, and the main character-the girl in a suit of a huge pink mouse, who worked in peacetime), go somewhere in pairs-though, unlike the gaming heroes, not in search of medicines, but in search of vestments.

In 2023, when Filippov’s novel was released, all this topic Last of US was very relevant - and because the film version of the game came out in the same year, and because the echo of conspiracy theories that we did not fully realize the side effects of Covid was still: since the global conflicts in which we now live, some fans, followed the pandemia. Last of USs are still sure that Covid, like the virus in the plot of the game, causes uncontrolled aggression.

Unlike the creators of the game, Ivan Filippov knows what kind of virus it is, and tells about this to readers: this is a disease artificially synthesized in secret scientific laboratories, where a vaccine against death has been developed for decades by order of the government. According to the plot, this means of eternal life-more precisely, the eternal maintenance of the brain in a more or less living state-in the end developed, but the problem: in addition to the fact that a person, under the influence of the medicine, really remains if not alive, then existing, also manifests itself-the above aggression. But Russian employees, noticing this, as usual, decide that “it will go away” - and then a fire occurs in the laboratory, the mouse infected with immortality occurs in the turmoil, and that you guess further.

It is easy to understand that Roman Filippov does not create any threats to the public order. However, it is not difficult to guess what exactly the readers of him-or his annotation-Z-activists and general prosecutor could be offended.

The author, taking advantage of the main bonus of the writer's profession, is cut in this novel with everyone whom he cannot stand: bitten - with all the consequences that arise in the literal and figurative sense - he has Solovyov, Simonyan, and Putin, and many more.

However, the infection was before that, because the virus that destroys Moscow in the novel is the desire to live forever (more precisely, forever existing) at the expense of others. In this sense, there are many similarities with the Bulgakov “master and Margarita” in the “mice”. This is not about artistic value, of course, - Filippov’s novel from the first sentences declares himself full -fledged fiction, fantastic in her usual understanding - and clearly does not claim to be more. The similarity with the "master ..." here is in three things.

• Firstly, in the approach to the comprehension of what is happening: the disaster that happened to the country is highlighted with the help of an openly unrealistic plot: Bulgakov has the appearance of an auditor-dog, and Filippov has a zombie apocalypse. Frankly Hag, emphasized the gaming conflict of zombies against people, makes the real conflict more convex and terrible: those who are “infected” with propaganda and truly promote blood, death and violence against those who want peace. What is called a semantic shift-a shift in meaning, the combination of real and unreal, plastic and living-creates an effect that is commonly called “detachment”: a blurry look begins to look at the situation in a new way.

* The second similarity of the “master ...” with the “mouse” is, of course, a way to deal with those who ruined the author of life. I don’t know how consciously Filippov repeated behind Bulgakov, but he dealt with the Russian propagandists clearly with the same pleasure with which Bulgakov smashed the apartment of Latunsky. The only difference between the classic writer and the author-“Ino-agent” here is that Filippov does not consider it necessary to hide prototypes. But who knows, maybe if Bulgakov wrote a novel in exile, he would also not have been tormented with the transformation of Lithuanian critic into a critic of Latunsky and so on.

• The third similarity of the novels is that both of them show how organic violence is organic to them for the Russian reality. Descriptions suddenly and nowhere ending in the “Master ...” were not perceived and are not perceived as descriptions of the devilry: everyone knew and knows how often this happened in reality and in what hell these people fell. Filippov, describing the zombies, who only dream of breaking someone and running away to any noise, also does not say anything fantastic: in order to look at these zombies live, it is enough to look through the comments of bots in all kinds of prohibited and disabilities.

And all this, of course, does not promote any violence and does not call anyone - Filippov’s novel is not about how beautiful death and murder are, but about how disgusting they are, not only from a human, but also from an aesthetic point of view.

Not even the descriptions richest in syllable are enough to understand: there is nothing attractive in illness called “I want to live forever at the expense of others”. The fact that the author of the novel really wants what promotes and what he is achieving is described at the very end of the book (attention, spoilers, which will not work out without which it will not work): the book ends with the fact that the governments of the whole world are united to help Russia cope with the virus, Navalny comes out of prison, and Evgeny Roizman* becomes president, and the world in the world comes.

Such a mass-cult, Happy ending-I couldn’t even afford Last of USS-says the author quite directly: the only thing the book wants is the performance of the pink, like the costume of the main character, the dream that the country finally recovered. And the fact that the romance was bought up with the cosmic speed mentioned above, confirms how much Russian readers want to recover strongly - and finally break out of the state of the experimental laboratory mouse, on which experiments on instilling love for death have been set for decades.

* The Ministry of Justice recognized the “in -agents”.

18+. This material (information) was produced, distributed and (or) sent by foreign agent Filippov Ivan Borisovich or concerns the activities of the foreign agent Filippov Ivan Borisovich

QUOTE
Vladimir Rudolfovich Solovyov was waiting for the apocalypse that fell on Moscow in the Grand Cafe Dr. Zhivago. So it happened by accident - indecently expensive British lawyer, with whom Solovyov was supposed to meet, lived in National, and it was more convenient for him to make an appointment closer. Solovyov himself was arrogant to the “Grandkafa”. It was “rustic” for him, but he did not want to argue with a lawyer who promised to help him to get a British residence permit for fabulous money, and there, you look, and citizenship ... It’s not that he was going to live in England directly, but some inexpective anxiety demanded that he try to prepare another spare airfield. Just in case. When the first infected ones ran from the Okhotny Ryad metro station, most visitors and cafe staff ran out into the street-someone out of curiosity, someone, for some reason, thinking that it would be easier to escape in the open space. Vladimir Rudolfovich did not run. In principle, he was proud of his ability not to run along with the crowd, but to run somewhere ahead and lead it along. Of course, according to a pre -approved and paid path.

In horror, Solovyov looked at what was happening outside the window. How infected people swept everything in their way, how to tear to pieces of passers -by. He became scared, and he hid under the table. For the first two days he climbed from under the table rarely, glancing briefly at the window and drag a piece of food that was not eaten by the visiting visitor. Then he became a little dared and began to inspect the cafe: he studied the kitchen, ate, got drunk coffee and even washed. Life seemed to get better. Sitting at the table, because of which there was a view of the Manezhnaya Square and even a piece of the State Duma, Solovyov thought: maybe you can agree with the infected people? In the end, if he retains life and some modest prosperity, then why not? Over the years of his career, he was a fiery defender of civil society and democratic institutions and a radical conservative that rejects the very idea of ​​rights and freedoms. He defended the rights of gays and lesbians on the air and was one of the most fiery homophobes who called for expelled from society differing from the majority. He was the main defender of the world, a humanist who speaks of human life as absolute value, and the apostle of the nuclear war of destruction. If the truth can be agreed with the infected people ... After a day of observation, he came to an unambiguous conclusion that it would not be possible to agree. So you have to run. But how? In gloomy thoughts, the cavalier of the Order of Alexander Nevsky and the multiple laureate of the TEFI Award Vladimir Rudolfovich Solovyov gloomily looked out the window at the manifold. He did not want to go there categorically.