November 16 is the 115th anniversary of the birth of Nikolai Erdman, playwright, screenwriter and amazing master of letters, three of which we invite you to read. HA.

Well, what can I say?! She has a huge advantage: you bought the sofa together! Neither the thirst for spiritual intimacy, nor the romance of distance, nor the charm of virtual affection, nor... can resist the simple words “you bought a sofa together”... I now know what happiness is: buying a sofa together! Go to the store, having previously quarreled over everyday trifles, but united in front of a huge goal: to buy a sofa together.

Matei Vishnek (b. 1956) is a Romanian writer, whose novel “Mr. arrival in Paris. Alas, even in the “free world” it is impossible to free yourself from the need to eat, drink, dress and keep warm. Not only with the body, but also - the most difficult thing - with the soul. Loneliness and insignificance in the world are experienced so painfully because it opens our eyes to our insignificance in the universe.

Andrey Bely. Silhouette by A.Ya. Golovin On October 26, the jury of the Andrei Bely Prize announced this year’s shortlists. The poetry shortlist included the books “Losiny Island” by Vasily Borodin, “In the Hands of the Father” by Daniil Da, “Soviet Cantatas” by Sergei Zavyalov, “White Butterflies of the Night” by Ian Kaplinsky and “Decentralized Observation” by Andrei Cherkasov.

Finally they ordered to fasten their seat belts and raise the curtains, and the plane came in to land, and mountains appeared below in the sunset light - ridges and ridges casting gigantic shadows. It was getting dark quickly. I always wanted to travel. And here I have nothing to reproach myself with: while the borders were locked, I traveled a lot across ⅙ of the land, and when the remaining ⅚ became available, I didn’t miss my chance.

Russian New Year's comedy with Gosha Kutsenko... After these words, some viewers (snobs and intellectuals), snorting contemptuously, will turn away from the film, will not watch it, and thereby make a big mistake. Other viewers (inexperienced, as they say, simple), on the contrary, may even go to the film and... also make a big mistake. How did such a paradox become possible?

Looking out the windshield of the old Volga, I thought about everything at once. The mind tried to grasp as many phenomena, people, events, phrases as possible... He, like a diligent and attentive investigator, tried to remember every, even the most insignificant detail of the many sent to him through the channels of feelings.

The editors of the journal “Foreign Literature” together with the British Council in Russia held a competition for translating poems by contemporary English poet Sinead Morrissey. Sinead Morrissey's works were practically never published in Russian[1], but in Great Britain she is recognized as one of the brightest poets of her generation. Morrissey is the author of five poetry collections; at eighteen, she - the only one at such a young age - won the prestigious Patrick Kavanagh literary award.

Rostislav Amelin acted as a poet, immediately capable of settling into a large form. A not so common quality for a modern poet: usually the tasks of a poet are thought of as the tasks of a scientist who is writing a thesis not before completing several term papers. But here the scope of the songs turned out to be stronger than the enumeration of experiences among the experiences of building the future.

On Saturday I visited the Manege. The entire exposition of the exhibition “ Romantic Realism. Soviet painting 1925-1945 ” consisted of mythological memes pulled from different parts of Soviet culture. The mental center of the exhibition was the image of Stalin and Lenin. There were a lot of people, and people, jostling around the paintings, tried to get to the text.

I have one rule: avoid trending topics. Fortunately, the rule is quite flexible, and if it gets too bad, you can refuse it at any time. In this case, I will have to drop a few words about Charlie Hebdo. For the simple reason that I am no longer able to stand the stupidity and clumsiness of the presentation of information in our media. Let's read the editorial statement from "Charlie" as a starting point. One of the cartoonists produced, Joan Sfar.

This essay arose from diary entries I kept in Germany in November of this year. My route ran from East to West - from Leipzig to Bonn.

Between two points lying on the same plane It is possible to draw only one straight line. The piece of paper was thrown around the corner, bending around the hand, flies, wraps itself in a coffee grinder around the corner and ends up falling into the trash. Cleverly. People with defined muscles on the beach in California a girl jumps from a man's outstretched arm, like from a column. A somersault is performed. Lands on his hand.