Translated material
“Drink with me, you lousy bitch!”
What the authors of Gorky read in 2024: part three
Russian erotic tales, seven books by a former Mormon, a scandal at the dragon faculty and the head of a dancer from the next issue in a box: the third part of the reading impressions of the authors of Gorky, accumulated over the past 2024.All of us, since February 24, 2022, have found ourselves in the face of advancing barbarism, violence and lies. In this situation, it is extremely important to preserve at least the remnants of culture and support the values of humanism - including for the sake of the future of Russia. Therefore, the editors of Gorky will continue to talk about books, reminding our readers that there is still a place for thought and fiction in the world.
On January 4, on the Yekaterinburg-Krasnoturinsk train, I set myself the task of reading fifty books in English in 2024. Over the past few years, I have read criminally little, especially in foreign languages: I could not pull myself together and finish reading even the thinnest book.
On the same train, I voraciously read Harry Matthews’s ironic auto-fiction “My Life in the CIA” - a funniest, erudite book. I promised myself that I would read a couple more books by Matthews, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. At the end of the eight-hour drive, I took up Brian Evenson’s “The Veil Parted” - Evenson’s liminal horror generally became the main leitmotif of the year for me: in twelve months I managed to read as many as seven books by the former Mormon.
After a productive trip on the train, I couldn’t pick up a book for two weeks. I was about to refuse the challenge, but suddenly I took up Bret Easton Ellis’s monstrous novel “Fragments” - this huge book reminded me why I love Dennis Cooper so much and why I don’t like his imitators so much.
It’s not surprising that after Ellis’s lengthy book, I decided to start reading/re-reading Cooper - I leafed through Closer , Frisk , Try and Guide (the writer’s best novel), and then started on another criminally underrated author in Russia, Nathaniel West. I read “Visions of Balso Snell”, “A Friend of Lonelyhearts” and stopped - wonderful, absurdly funny novels, but in the process of reading I was distracted, although I enjoyed it.
In general, for the first six months I read at random, without any plan or logic. Here are the books that touched me:
Philip Larkin - "Jill"
Jesse L. Anderson - "Western Contingent"
Ishmael Reed - "Civilian Rowers"
Cesar Aira - "Ghosts"
James Purdy - "Shallow Grave"
John Fahey - "What Bluegrass Got Me to"
At the beginning of summer, I decided to delve deeper into modern weird fiction - I read “Negative Space” by B. R. Yeager, “The Nether” and “A River Through the Trees” by David Peake, and “The Fisherman” by John Langan. I moved from science fiction to postmodernism: I finally studied Steve Erickson - Zeroville and Tours of the Black Clock convinced me that the writer was praised for good reason. Very punchy and well written novels.
August turned out to be dry - I didn’t read anything, but I wrote a lot myself. As always, detectives helped me get back on track. Absolutely at random, I started reading a series of thrillers by Joe R. Lansdale about the adventures of bosom buddies Hap and Leonard. Even if the plots themselves do not sparkle with originality, Lansdale has a perfect ear for tasty dialogue: almost every phrase of Hap or Leonard wants to be printed out and hung on the wall, and then invited to visit friends - let them laugh.
By the beginning of winter, I had read fifty books. Here are the books I liked the most:
Mathias Henard - "Annual Feast of the Funeral Brotherhood"
William T. Wohlmann - "Facing Everything"
Harald Wothmann - Awake
Robert Coover - "Noir", "Open House"
At the end of the year, I drove myself into an intractable bondage - for the first time in many years I began to read several books at the same time: Herscht 07769 by Laszlo Krasznahorkai (a novel written in one sentence), "Empire of Silence" by Christopher Ruocchio (a classic sci-fi adventure - you also need a break from nerdiness) and “Film Stories” by Alexander Kluge (a collection of micro-stories by the brilliant director).
So far I’ve only read Krasznahorkai, but I don’t really want to go into the new year with debts - I’ll have to meet the eve with a book in each hand. And I'm not complaining.
The year began with Nabokov. I wanted to reread Lolita. I don’t know why. But it didn't work out. Due to lack of time, I usually listen to books. “Lolita” was not available in audio format, so I took on “King, Queen, Jack.” I wanted more. I listened to “Camera Obscura” and “The Luzhin Defense”. So here it is. Nabokov is a true method actor from literature. He either goes blind or suffers from hallucinations - and everything is convincing. Terribly convincing. Scary in the literal sense.
Then I started listening to “Invitation to an Execution.” I couldn’t finish - I felt bad. So what do you think? A week later I went for a walk with Kafka’s “The Trial” in my headphones. I’ve read it before, but (forgive me if you think audiobooks aren’t “real” reading), in my opinion, this is a case where an audiobook is better. You're dreaming in reality. And the dream is so disgusting - cloudy, black, sticky. After such dreams, you usually wake up tired, with a sore head and vague anxiety. I listened to the end.
The second half of the year is diary and epistolary prose. The memoirs of Anna Feodorovna Kamenskaya, which need to be read while sitting in a rocking chair under a dim fringed floor lamp. Letters of the artist Zinaida Serebryakova and the memories of her contemporaries - the book is sad and quite weighty, just to knock on the head those who declare that “an artist must be hungry.” Confused, torn diary entries of Mikhail Kuzmin from 1917–1921 (many thanks to Alexandra Pakhomova!).
And the year ended with a completely stupid and at the same time surprisingly poetic book “Russian Erotic Tales” by Igor Gergenroeder. I read it on the road out of boredom. There was no boredom. According to the author, these “tales” are real oral works, collected somewhere in the Urals in the 1970s. But the manner is the same everywhere. However, it doesn't matter. What a language! It's like taking Remizov's curly style, diluting it with Karavaichuk's musical exercises and generously seasoning it with the aesthetics of a well-known adult film about the erotic adventures of a kolobok. Do you know what “kutak-zadvigun”, “knuckle-hoof” and “balabonchiki” are? I know. But I won't tell you.
It so happened that this year I have not read a single book to the end, and have not yet read a single book, as they say, “for the soul.” I remember how, as a child, I picked up a coin from the asphalt and my grandmother immediately knocked it out of my fingers, because the coin was, according to her, enchanted by the gypsies and would suck out my soul if I appropriated it. Now I’m curious how my life would have turned out if I had picked up a coin, and I started 2024 with the books of Pyotr Anatolyevich Kutsenkov - “Dogons, 21st century: Travel notes of a comic relative” and “Children of the rain: nogom, tellem and Dogons”, written in co-authored with Daria Vanyukova. The French ethnographer Marcel Griol, who visited the African Dogon tribe in the first half of the 20th century, informed the scientific community that the people, who do not have a written language, are aware of the existence of three satellites of the planet Sirius, which even in an ordinary telescope (an instrument with which they were not yet familiar to the Dogon) is difficult to see, and simply looking at the night sky is impossible. This and other cosmogonic myths of the Dogon were probably a hoax of the French ethnographer, and Pyotr Anatolyevich visited Mali precisely in order to study the Dogon culture and find out how this people actually lives.
Healthy and simply pleasant walks with the dog also turned out to be educational - during them I listened to about ten audiobooks in the genre of love fantasy, among which were definitely: “A Second Chance for a Hit” by Sanna Sue, “A Scandal at the Dragon Faculty” by Talyana (not a typo) Orlova, “Institute of Future Magisses” by Anna Platunova and “Don’t Divorce with Dragons” by Yulia Khanevskaya. I can’t say that these books played any even the slightest important role in my life or that any of them stuck in my mind, but it led me to the idea that if the Universe is infinite and everything happened, is happening and will happen in it. possible variants of events, then we can assume that there is a time when the events described, for example, in the book “Popadanka Me and My Dragon Family” occur, and a real nightmare, in comparison with which the nightmares of our world seem like a mere trifle, is to be abandoned at that time from its present one.
In fact, there were a lot of books this year and something could be said about each, but I will add only one, which, by the way, I came across quite recently - this is a novel by the “seasoned Master of Ceremonies and organizer of enchanting parties” M.C. EC with a name from the 2000s: Vintage , published by Amphora in 2005. In the novel, the main character, a famous rock musician, for some unnecessary reason comes from glamorous (again noughties) Moscow to Perm and simply lives his life, but in a different, unglamorous reality. Perm attracted my attention, because I lived in this city for most of my life, and I immediately wanted to feel the illusiveness of recognizing Perm in the 2000s, which I did with pleasure. In addition, the MC’s essay begins mysteriously and promisingly - “That summer, the birds went wild and boldly shit on the city from a bird’s eye view...”
Probably my most remarkable reading experience of 2024 was my acquaintance with Alexander Tarasov’s novel “The Orthodox.” I learned about it last year, when I was leafing through the Soviet magazine “Soviet Land” (1929–1933) in the Russian National Library, where the novel was published in parts. It seemed that this was such an early Soviet Dovlatov - in particular, the following passage caught my attention and amused me:
“Nyura recited Yesenin.
On Moscow's crooked streets
To die, to know, God promised me...
(I recite decently and seem to be very handsome at the time).
He made a somewhat rude move. In general, sometimes I tend to be rude. I tested how it would affect her.
Rash, harmonica! Boredom! Boredom!
Sits, silent.
Drink with me, you lousy bitch!
Drink with me!
She shuddered, but it seemed like nothing. She just clenched her mouth tighter.
Drink, bitch, drink.
She blushed a little, but didn't stop. I haven’t recited Yesenin so well for a long time.”
I decided that I had to find the novel and read it. To my surprise, it was not even in Tarasov’s bibliography in the Wikipedia article about him , not to mention the online version of the text. Fortunately, the same NLR found a single book edition from 1931.
When compared with the magazine version, there are differences - for example, the quoted passage has lost its swear word. Well, what can you do? I ordered it, came and read the book in one sitting. Oh, and it was nice: February, it was cold outside, and I was in a cozy reading room with an excellent book. And let the whole world wait.
What is "Orthodox" about? We can probably say that this is something like “The Diary of Kostya Ryabtsev” and other school prose of those years, but with its own characteristics. They contain a tremendous amount of lively written language: everyone constantly and without a twinge of conscience reads letters, poems, and diaries of each other. For example, the piece about Yesenin is from the notes of the local poet Kolka Steblev.
Just in case, I took a photo of the book - not very high quality, but you can make it out. If anyone suddenly needs it, click here .
And here’s another thing: in 1931, “Orthodox” was published with the subtitle “book one.” Is there a second one? It turns out there is. Although it is unclear whether it is in its entirety and in readable condition, the information from the website of the archives of the Vologda region is rather reassuring. Probably worth doing. Perhaps I could use the help of some caring bookworm from those parts.
As for other reading for 2024, these were, as a rule, random books that for some reason came across along the path of life. Here are the ones that I could highlight: “Interstellar Sin” by Philip José Farmer, “Diary 2002–2006” by Alexander Markin, “On the Edge of Life” by Chon Myungwan, “Locust” by Sergei Budantsev, “Who Walks So Quietly in the Grass” by Sergei Wolf, the “horror” trilogy about Silver Ponds by Anton Ivanov and Anna Ustinova, “The City of Familiar Strangers” by Choi Inho, “The Fraudster on the Field of Miracles” by Valery Sotnikov, “Summer with Strangers” by Tahiti Yamada, “25 Years in Captivity of the Cheerful and Resourceful” by Valery Hotnog, “A Gift from Outer Space” by William Kotzwinkle, “Beetles "Nick Arnold, "Akulina in business, or Three Lives..." Evgenia Kuznetsova, “Beautiful Second Year Student” by Valery Alekseev, “Potatoes in Still Life” by Felix Vetrov, “Psycho Machine” by Viktor Goncharov.
And in a special way I was fascinated by a book about octopuses - “Primates of the Sea” by Igor Akimushkin. There are eight-legged romantics and eight-legged dancers here. Beautiful and touching retroscience pop.
I have already talked about some of the books I read during the year on Gorky. All of them are worthy of your attention in their own way, but I would especially like to mention Carlo Levi’s novel “Christ Stopped at Eboli.” I hope to talk about some more in detail in January-February, some I don’t want to talk about, and some I can’t talk about in a nutshell. For example, I re-read Plato’s Republic, so what can I say... He was right in everything, of course. So I’ll share some slightly less trivial considerations.
Georges Bernanos. Humiliated children. Diary 1939–1940. Quite a difficult read from many points of view. Thematically, these entries are adjacent to the late interwar journalistic work published in Russian in the 1988 collection “Preserve Dignity.” However, in the diary Bernanos appears almost more violently and paradoxically than in other works. First of all, he counts on sympathy, only which can be followed by an attempt at real understanding. Therefore, he seeks to disturb the reader from a calm intellectual balance and hits directly at the painful points of prejudice and dogmatism. His reasoning cannot be simply accepted or refuted, and its intonation creates an almost unbearable tension. At the same time, the text is arranged rather whimsically and gives the impression of a monument of modernist literature rather than a desperate cry of a restless soul. Bernanos's worldview is difficult to classify into any category, including the banal "optimism" and "pessimism." Like any mature person, he is complex. Because he is human, he does not lose spirit even in the most difficult circumstances. After all, there is nothing more worthy left.
Joseph Roth. Hotel Savoy . Another year has passed without the re-release of the masterpiece “The Legend of the Holy Drunkard”. And no one seems to be ashamed of it! Well, at least this wonderful novel about the fate of lost travelers from the old world to the new, with which the hotel replaces the forever lost home, has been republished. In the finale, of course, he goes to hell, but the main thing in life is not the finale, but the road to it. Roth spent a good part of his life wandering between such hotels, so he describes the everyday conflicts of the guests with skill. For cinephiles, the book may vaguely resemble the film “Barton Fink” - of course, adjusted for the difference in local color, time of action and the nature of the humor, Roth’s is much more cheerful than the Coens’. Like any sane person, he is interested in the legs of the dancer from the next room, and not in her head in the box. True, the scope of the tragedy here is wider, so fate is knocking not from the next room, but from somewhere completely outside, threatening to destroy the heroes along with the choir. Some 15 years later, Roth, already seriously ill and drinking heavily, would have a blow in another Parisian hotel due to the news of the suicide of his friend Ernst Toller. In another year, the Nazis will occupy the city, and so the splendor of old Europe will end ingloriously. Already in the twenties, immediately after the first act of this play, Roth understood where things were going, but all the sweeter and at the same time more unbearable was his critical nostalgia for difficult times, but still much more understandable and familiar.
Richard Edgar Pipes. Russia under the old regime. Both Toller and Roth left memories of their travels to the "young Soviet republic". It seems that until the collapse of the Union, Professor Pipes had not been anywhere east of the Vistula, but this did not prevent him from becoming one of the most influential Russian scholars and Sovietologists. His works also raise theoretical objections, but more often provoke ideological criticism, both from vulnerable “patriots” and representatives of “Westernism,” including foreign ones. Let's face it, the history of Russian statehood, no matter how you slice it, is very, very unsightly in any order. Like any of its researchers, Pipes is biased in his own way, but completely objective. As a Sovietologist, he writes more about the enemy, but with interest and sympathy for people, since he believes that the understanding of Russian history among his friends is not enough. Emphasizing the differences between local relations between state and society from those familiar to Europeans, he states and analyzes their specificity. His tone is critical, but generally quite calm. Ultimately, he is more interested in understanding than in passing judgment, and so he immerses himself in a variety of aspects of his subject - from geographical conditions to social structure and features of political thinking, including drawing on the work of Russian and Soviet historians. In short, Pipes is not as scary as he is made out to be. Readers who are courageous, inquisitive and free from prejudice, his books will undoubtedly be inspired to their own reflections and searches, regardless of their views. And for those who depend on views, reading them will be doubly useful.
Peter Brown. The World of Late Antiquity . According to the old bad tradition, the high achievements of Western scholarship often reach the Russian reader with a fair delay. Of course, this does not diminish the value of truly significant works. The 1971 work that has already become classic is dedicated to an era, which for hundreds of years and not at all existing in the eyes of descendants, so that in this case, delayed relatively small. It is a pleasure to read the book, especially the reader, tuned to any idealistic, because Brown depicts the motley culture of the Mediterranean of the II - VIII centuries. With much greater optimism and faith by virtue of the spirit, rather than consoled by the philosophy of the “last Roman” of Boieties. Contrary to the inexorable collapse of the matter of the old world, contrary to the seemingly triumph of barbarism over civilization, a person was able to maintain dignity and move forward, sometimes gradually and with great difficulty, but still bending the variable world for himself. True, then the doctrine of salvation replaced pagan science, which gave not only comfort, but hope and, therefore, support. The big question is whether the new paganism of our nameless era will at least get closer to the heights of the spirit of the ancients.
Osip Mandelstam. The fourth prose. The man spoke with poems not of poetic, but from practical considerations. Since time immemorial, they resort to rhyme for the sake of persuasiveness. Not just the legendary laws of Lycurgus and all sorts of scriptures were traditionally stated in verses. Poetry in this sense is deeply primitive art. Over time, a person spoke more and more sophisticated. Even the songs about love gradually lost their rhyme, and love, and the whole saint. Now poets are needed to write prose. Poetry is too prosaic. Mandelstam understood this a hundred years ago, for which he earned universal honor and respect. Once again, he showed that from domestic garbage, small intrigues and private insults, the great poet is able to melt the radiant diamond, even the cost of his life. Whether it will be robbed by rhythm or not, it does not matter at all. Real poetry, as the ancient Greeks bequeathed to us hopelessly, reveals itself in the creation of something hitherto not the former. Poetry is an act, convincing in itself, but only the strongest poet turns actions into poetry.
Roberto Bolano. Wild detectives . Contrary to coming from the reputation of a radical post- or metamodernist who wrote to high-button critics, Bolano was an author affordable and even fascinating. He needed to earn a living, so he wrote a lot, avoiding the danger of graphomania only by turning his life into a story, and the story into life. His best works are dedicated to about the same thing: wandering at the restless young poets in white light - from American dictatorships to Catalan beaches. In short, life in all its manifestations. It is difficult to spoil Bolano because his style is unpretentious. Most of all, he was interested in what was happening and, most importantly, does not happen to the heroes. Skillfully unfolding relatively simple plots, sometimes with the help of frankly delusional motivations by the standards of the real world, he manages to inhale the atmosphere of lack of anxiety, an invisibly impending, but deprived of intelligible outlines of the future. It is in this that Bolano is truly close to one of his idols-Hulio Cortasaru. Experiments themselves with the structure of the novel are not so interesting. The thing is to, with their help, to allow at least a moment to touch the intensity of life that the reader will never have. The soul is to go into adventures that we do not dare to. To come up with another world in the image and likeness of the real, too tangible and prosaic. In the end, what else to demand from fiction?
The work of the translator greatly deforms reading practices - each work has its own professional diseases. The time for “ordinary” reading often simply does not remain, and the books appearing at hand in the process of translation - primarily from links and footnotes in what you translate, are inevitably read fragmentarily and fragmentically. That is how a couple of years ago, the novel of the Chinese writer Van Anya “Song of Endless Longing” appeared on my horizon-I learned about it from one book that I translated, I immediately realized that this thing should be read someday, put it on the regiment and now Finally got.
The famous definition of Hegel says that the novel is the epic of private life, and Van Anya’s book, written relatively recently, a little less than three decades ago, recalls that the repeated funeral of the classical novel (with and without honors) was, to put it mildly, premature. This more than 500-page text is beautiful precisely by its predictability, the fact that everything is in its place: the plot, the system of characters with the notorious psychologism, techniques of working with time and space-in general, a completely old-school thing that does not suggest that it They will swallow in a couple of evenings and forget safely. When your personal reader time is reduced to a minimum, you need to read only what brings real pleasure from the text. And of course - from the brilliant translation of Maria Semenyuk: what was there in the original in Chinese, one can only guess, but in Russian Roman Van Anya immediately found himself for me in the niche where the classic translations of Golyshev, Lyubimova or Apta live.
Despite all my chamberity, I would even say, Prustovshchina, “Song of Infinite Longing” is a full -fledged historical novel, as, indeed, “Search for lost time”. The narrative of the life of the heroine of Van has been occupying for almost half a century - the application itself for historicity - and, although historical events from coming to power in China Communists to the era of “reforms and openness” most often act as a distant background of private life, history constantly bursts into the Shanghai Luntan quarters, no matter how they try to isolate themselves from the outside world. In a certain sense, this is a novel about internal emigration, which may turn out to be as dangerous as Vita Activa, since it leaves it with you - and in this inner world it may not be possible to find anything but endless longing. In general, a very suitable text to turn the last page a few days before the New Year and again try to leave this longing in the past.
This year I read a variety of books, but I selected three for you, one way or another associated with American culture, this is my long-standing hobby, which I write about in the Bentonia telegram channel .
Clayton Atrius. Two Arms and a Head: The Death of a Newly Paraplegic Philosopher (2008)
In 2006, a life -loving thirty -year -old American Claithon Schwartz sets off on a trip to the motorcycle from Seattle to Argentina. In the third week of the path near the Acapulco, a frightened donkey rushes under the wheels; When Claiton comes to his senses in the Mexican hospital, he finds out that his body is paralyzed below his chest.
Claithon, a graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy and a notorious maximalist, thought to make a chronicle of a three-month trip on a motorcycle, but as a result he wrote something like a detailed suicide note. He did not want to accept this new reality, in which he is only “two hands and head, carrying two -thirds of the corpse”.
The author believes that people in his position inevitably have to pervert their attitude to their own body, reflects on the place of the disabled person in society, ethics of suicide - and does not come to any comforting conclusions.
“A visual example: a paralytic that cannot move anything except the neck and breathes with the help of a fan, claims that people like him are“ an active group capable of a variety of activities is no worse than most people without restrictions. ” Yes, he is a fucking head. Head! What the hell is he “capable”?
Doesn't it scare you? The prospect of having four paralyzed limbs terrifies on its own, but imagine that at the same time you will still make such statements. ”
David Mamet. Three Uses of the Knife (1998)
The cognitive essay of the famous playwright and director David Glen Ross, House of Games, Wag The Dog) about the nature of the drama - or rather, about the human need for it, about our need to reduce the surrounding reality to a dramatic plot.
Mamet writes that in everyday life, Americans, as a rule, speak a five -stage iambic; that the theater performance, similar to magic and religious rite, is an act of faith and submission; That the structure of the dramatic narrative is not only not arbitrary, but in general unconscious - once and for all deeply embedded in us by nature. Most of the book is devoted to the issues of lies, rituals and conscience.
Mamet claims that in the center of any good drama lies the betrayal served in one or another. The title of the book, “three ways to use a knife,” refers to the words of Bluesmen Haddi Ledbetter: “You cut bread with a knife so that there are strength to work; You shave with a knife to look good for your beloved; And if you find her with another, then cut her false heart with a knife. ”
“Nature tells us to build hypotheses on the basis of our perception, and then reduce them to the knowledge on which we will rely in action. This is our special means of adaptation, our bird flight, our unique survival tool. And the drama, music, art is the triumph of this instrument, like a valdshn’s craving in a marriage fever, like a giant kita jump. This is how excess abilities / forces / skills / resistance / love are specifically expressed in our type. The goats are jumping, but people create. ”
Larry Brown. Big Bad Love (1990)
Larry Brown (1951–2004) is included in the top three of the most famous Rednek Proseikiks along with Garry Kryuz and Barry Hannah; The press even found the established expression “Harry, Barry and Larry” .
Big Bad Love is a collection of ten stories about the American wilderness, in which Brown’s heroes are spent, imperceptibly for themselves, having lost the land underfoot.
They go aimlessly back and forth on pickups; They pull the time and Kanya, afraid to go first to work, then home, to his wife; They drink beer endlessly, shoot at glass bottles and dream of once meeting a beautiful busty stranger at a music machine in a bar.
It sounds terrible, but for some reason it is pleasant to read Brown, although in reality all the stories gather in one endless internal monologue of some loser and are forgotten in a week. Users of the popular Goodreads service call this Loser Lit.