The briefest brief on modern Russian literature

Самый короткий обзор современной русской литературы

То, что там ниже написано — все правда. Это рекомендации по чтению из современной русской литературы для американского читателя. Если к кому придут с таким же вопросом (есть ли у вас сейчас писатели, которых стоит читать), можете использовать этот текст с рабочими ссылками.

Explanation (of a kind)

A bi-lingual (English/Spanish) friend of mine just finished reading “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov, on advice from his other friend who is a professor in Slavic studies. It was a kind of undertaking, it took some time, and when reading he had often asked me for some explanations, which were gladly provided (you know, the Russians are easy with dispensing an advice). And then an embarrassing question was asked. Bulgakov had been able producing literature of high quality (it looks especially beautiful for a Spanish reader immersed into magical realism, etc.) under the Stalin dictatorship. He was not the only good writer in these truly bad times. Now Russia is under dictatorship again, but, as we see, people can somehow manage, sometimes. Why don’t we have now anyone brave and talented on the Bulgakov scale? Are there any contemporary writers of comparable quality in Russia? This question assumes that the answer is “no” (because there are no recognizable names), with explanations. Meanwhile, the answer is “yes”, and the following is a brief recommendation for an American reader who is not too much interested in Russia proper but just looking for some new, reasonably enjoyable reading.

Simple choice

Yes, some great Russian authors may have no publicity and thus stay completely under the radar. We will know about them when they are dead and we do not care. It has happened many times and it is completely beyond the point now because we are just looking for some examples of authors who are (a) really good, on pair with Bulgakov and (b) available in English translation. This would not apply to true underground or Russian poetry, the former requiring too many footnotes and the latter disappearing in thin air upon translation.

The best contemporary writer in Russian literature is Vladimir Sorokin. Among those who are well known and still alive, he is the best in style, plot, diversity and predictive power. He has always been a visionary, and people knew that reading his books provided you with the best idea of Russia of the relatively near future. A word of warning: he is intentionally shocking, and the stuff completely acceptable to the Russians may be questionable for Americans. Remember, it is foreign literature based on different life and addressed to people who actually live this different life. My favorite quote from an American scholar about Russian literature and life is “it looks like a slapstick humor where the clown actually dies.” Another word of warning: it is prose, but still may lose much in translation; for example, in one story, he introduces a mixture of Russian and Chinese, with hybrid words — I do not expect that the message survives translation in this case.

Bio:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Sorokin

Reviews:

thenation.com/article/vladimir-sorokins-absurdist-excess/


Day of the Oprichnik: A Novel


Ice Trilogy (New York Review Books Classics)


The Queue (New York Review Books Classics)


Illustration: a fragment of opera “Children of Rosenthal” in Bolshoy Theatre in Moscow based on the Sorokin’s libretto; the subject is cloning of famous composers:

youtube.com/watch?v=0Ehr_1JKe1Y

The most popular among educated Russians Russian writer is Victor Pelevin. He is always entertaining; formally, his genre is fantasy. He provides not less interesting reading than Sorokin in terms of plot, originality and predictive power; moreover, he apparently has some insight into the structure of the regime and personalities in power in Moscow, so in a way it is close to Bulgakov (who described real people of his time in spectacular detail). Reading Pelevin’s “fantasy” you, probably, get a better understanding of modern Russia than from the news and political analyses. He is a lesser writer than Sorokin in terms of purely style and literature novelty, but this difference is noticed more by professionals than general readership. I do not expect a foreign reader to get the same message from his books as local people. Think of this: for me, the first Pelevin’s book to read is “Chapaev and Void,” and this title is quite meaningful. It is published in English under the title “Buddha’s Little Finger” that means nothing for a Russian. I hope, at least the popular now Russian expression “inner mongolia” (not capitalized) will become properly understood from the translated version.

Bio:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Pelevin

Interview:

bombmagazine.org/article/2481/victor-pelevin

Review:


Books on Amazon:


Viktor Yerofeyev is an easy and pretty good quality reading; I would start with his smaller works and see how you like them. It is good prose; the only problem I see with him is that much of his writing is pointed and important critique of Russians addressed to Russians themselves. To what extent could it be interesting to an American? European experience is very positive: he could be the most popular Russian writer in Europe. Strangely enough, I did not find many available English translations; at least, not one of my favourite reading from this author.

Bio:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yerofeyev

Interviews in English:

youtube.com/watch?v=7MRDcOVA_Kc


Reviews:


Good Stalin

amazon.com/Good-Stalin-Victor-Erofeyev/dp/1782671110

Life with an Idiot


A figure-skating performance of tango from Alfred Schnitke’s opera based on this work of Erofeev (it requires a lot of explanations, but the “idiot” character is played in this opera by an actor that looks like Lenin).

youtube.com/watch?v=JZnVmnYpb3A

Complete opera:

youtube.com/watch?v=wMNadsBz-QI

Less important, but still interesting is Vladimir Voinovich who gives an excellent satire of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, with a very broad historical and geographic (up to America) span. It is enjoyable reading in Russian, very funny. He is right in all his assessments, he is very famous now for a strangely detailed prediction of the development of the country under Putin (when Putin as we know him was not even on the horizon, so it is very instructive: “Moscow 2042” is derived from his general knowledge of history, not personalities). He was an opponent of Solzhenitsyn that offended many, but in their debate Voinovich was exactly right. If you actually read his story of a Russian soldier from WWII, you will never forget the original recipe for moonshine; every Russian knows it. This book is also available in Spanish. It is hilarious, the best humor on the sorrow subject of WWII I have ever read. He is surprisingly even in quality of his books, most of which are available in English translations.

Bio:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Voinovich

The Man Who Predicted Putin


Books:

amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n

Boris Akunin writes easy and, most of the time, good quality prose, mostly history fantasies (not science fiction but mock history and suspense). It is entertaining in a good way and does not suffer from geographical or historical mistakes (he is a scholar in history and geography, specifically, of Japan) but he will unlikely be considered as a great writer of our time. Strangely enough, his most important and most interesting to me book, a non-fiction “Writer and Suicide” published under his real name (Grigory Chkhartishvili) is not translated.

Bio:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Akunin

Reviews:


theguardian.com/world/2007/sep/19/russia.books

Books:

amazon.com/Boris-Akunin/e/B001JOFLX2

Two great dead writers could be added because a death is coincidence; they belong to the same generation.

If the plain question is asked: who were the best quality writers in Russian language in the second half of 20th century, the plain answer is: Venedikt Erofeev and Friedrich Gorenstein. The problem with the former is that his works are either not translatable (“Moskva-Petushki” — “Moscow Stations”, it dies outside the Russian language as fish out of the water; what would be the English translation for a famous question “dayan eban?” that is a combination of last names of Israeli politicians but means something entirely different in Russian?) or unacceptable and impossible to understand (his famous, incredibly enjoyable but apparently not even translated play where everybody dies in the end but laughs until the last moment). The problem with the latter is that his big novels (Tolstoy-size) focus on one subject: God’s punishment of other nations, specifically Russians, for their mistreatment of Jews. The question “who cares” sounds very cynical but we are talking just about a choice of (very long) reading about distant lands. In Russia, his best quality prose in Russian language is considered by many as russophobic and therefore not enthusiastically accepted. Personally, I love his prose, and I am not Jewish.

Venedikt Erofeev

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venedikt_Yerofeyev

amazon.com/Venedikt-Erofeev/e/B001JONK3A

Friedrich Gorenstein

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Gorenstein

No English translations found.

P.S. In modern Russian culture, the text is often combined with music and visual images; performance, including theater performance, becomes a part of the message. Below are some multimedia examples that are representative of modern Russian culture giving an idea of an attitude typical of contemporary texts written in Russia. They tell, in a quick and direct way, the same stories that are chewed by Russian prose on many pages.

youtube.com/watch?v=Mb5TjO_MuU8

If you ask who Sasha (Alexandra) is, well, the whole story is made of a senseless phrase used by pediatricians to improve Russian pronunciation (yes, Russian is a difficult language for native speakers, too).

youtube.com/watch?v=1ugivNRYfjc

The most popular contemporary Russian song. The message: St.-Petersburg is the best place in the whole country to drink vodka, and not much else to do. Just in case: the colloquial name of the city sounds in Russian as a derivative from the word "to drink".

youtube.com/watch?v=586eyeY3To0

Forward, Russia! And yes, you got it right: it is a mockery.

youtube.com/watch?v=eIa7ZfJUeGU

This is a modern performance of a famous piece of Daniil Kharms (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniil_Kharms) filmed just outside the Akhmatova (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Akhmatova) museum in St.-Petersburg; a good example of continuity in Russian culture.

Copy with full references placed outside Russia: