Musician Karina Ghazaryan about favorite books
IN BACKGROUND "BOOK SHELF" we ask journalists, writers, scholars, curators, and other heroines about their literary preferences and publications, which occupy an important place in their bookcase. Today, musician Karina Ghazaryan shares her favorite book stories.
I think that my reading habit most likely originated from the boredom that prevailed in the city where I grew up. But curiosity also did its job: I knew that I was in every corner of our apartment, and every book in the parent library. Their library consisted mainly of analytical and political literature: for example, there were books on forensic examination and the twenty-first Congress of the CPSU Central Committee. I really enjoyed looking at the pictures of "Bhagavad-Gita" and "The Origin of Species", but the most precious thing I found there is the biography of Andrey Platonov.
In Omsk, when I was growing up, the book "It's Me, Eddie" by Eduard Limonov, published by a large local publisher, was very popular. Like many children, I was lured by the forbidden, and this was almost the first book I read with interest after The Headless Horseman and The Amphibian Man. I will not say that I was delighted, but the author mentioned Henry Miller in the preface and said that he flew in the same plane with Alain Rob-Grillet. I usually also learned about writers through books (for example, from Miller I learned about Knut Hamsun and Arthur Rambo). I especially did not have advisers: before the students, I almost did not communicate with anyone. At the institute, I and three of my friends did nothing but trample the Siberian land from idleness and talk. Very often, especially in winter, we spent time in a bookstore on Lenin Street. This was our second favorite leisure activity after a joint viewing of Jesus Lizard and Big Black live on YouTube.
At seventeen, the Internet appeared in my life, and the problem of the information deficit disappeared by itself. Quite by chance, I stumbled upon the group "Marginal Film and Literature" VKontakte, from where I learned about Jean-Genet and Georges Bath. My goal was to study everyone, and I had a precious notebook with names: I chose on an intuitive level. At twenty-one, I moved to Moscow and started looking for a job. At this time, there were amazing little coincidences between my real life and the content of the books that I read during that period. The brightest ones are the work by the ad advertiser and the reading of the Post Office by Bukowski or the time when I didn’t have any money, and I read Knut Hamsun’s The Hunger. I liked to test myself and present myself as a heroine of novels.
At that time I was reading books and I was not interested in reality. I was beyond the limits until the harsh life in Moscow sobered me. The most correct decision at that time was to get a job in a bookstore, the lion’s share of an insignificant salary in which I once again spent on books. At twenty-six, I read only one book a year, and it was Platonov's “Chevengur”. Constantly wrote quotes, for example: "A pedestrian walked towards them, from time to time. He would lie down and roll on a roll, and then walk again with his feet," "speak roundly", "your horse is a bourgeois", "blood in his head thinks," "some kind of raw god stinks," "the subject knows, and the predicate has forgotten." And yet one of my favorite books is the Old Testament. When I broke my leg, I had a strict regimen: read ten pages every day. I consider the Old Testament one of the most beautiful texts, the real treasure is the Song of Songs.
Then I traded fiction to study the theory of sound in order to understand the basics of sound engineering - the reason for this was the occupation of electronic music. It brought great pleasure and distracted from the fuss, but I acutely realized that my thoughts were becoming practical and mundane. I was embarrassed that I lost interest in fiction and it became uninteresting for me to read my favorite authors. Now I read three books in parallel, and it has become my habit to omit them. Previously, to finish books was the goal and the rule, but now I do not see the point. Reading for me is no longer filling gaps and no way to pump erudition. I like to find a random page in a random book and just read it while lying on the bed.
Andrey Platonov
"Ulya"
Platonov for me is one of the most mysterious authors. Thanks to the story "Ulya" I wrote my first story, which I also called "Ulya". But only I have a cat, and Platonov has a little girl hiding at the bottom of her big eyes the reflections of the people who look at her are the most important thing about them. She quickly blinked so that the gazer did not have time to see what was really there. The main character fascinates detachment, darkness and the lack of a conscious understanding of good and evil: her eyes reflect the whole truth for others, but not for herself.
Lotreamon
Maldor's Songs
Isidore Ducasse, a young enthusiast who was not recognized during his lifetime, wrote for his short twenty-four-year life only two works that became the bible of the surrealists. Dyukass himself died under very strange circumstances, he has no grave, but he knows the street in Paris, where he wrote "Songs of Maldodor". Andre Breton and Philip Supo published his works for the first time: a period of "discontent with culture" was picked up by this dark and impulsive uprising in man. Lotreamon illuminates the inconsistency with a special syllable: "The American owl, beautiful as the curve formula, which is described by a dog running after its owner." I was struck by the subversivity of the text and the author’s total emancipation - sometimes I even felt fear turning the pages.
Pierre Guyot
"Coma"
Guyot was obsessed with writing a book of his life, which he later called the "Book." Giant labor demanded a concentration of will and strength and drove the author into depression: Guyot was exhausted and literally fell into a coma. In the book "Coma", Guyot describes the time of his rehabilitation from the borderline state in which his "Book" was introduced. All this is about the phenomenon of self-blame, which is due to absolute loyalty to the cause. The author writes about the pursuit of torment and slavery. Body and spirit - that which interests him most of all, and in “Coma” we see how the second eats the first. It was enough for me to hear only a fragment of the "Book" from the mouth of Marusya Klimova, in order to make sure that the author’s actions and behavior were justified - he achieved the goal. I experienced an extraordinary pleasure from the text - this is a completely unnatural work for both the mind and the language. My head does not fit, how could it be translated into Russian.
Louis Ferdinand Celine
"Death on credit"
Selin is a gifted nihilist, totally disillusioned with man and humanity, who never ceased to feel the injustice of the world and people. One of his fans was Henry Miller, and from his books I learned about Selina. Miller was shocked to read his works, and literally admired Selin, which, however, was absolutely non-reciprocal. “Death on Credit” is an autobiographical novel of the writer, published in Russian only in the nineties. With cynical language and grotesque paintings, Celine describes her childhood and the darting soul.
Rolan Ax
"Princess Angina"
I learned about Rolan Topor through Alejandro Jodorowski - like many, I experienced a period when he was my favorite director. Together with him and Fernando Arrabal Rolan Ax was in the post-surrealist grouping "Panic". I met the name of the Ax very often: he was shot by Herzog, according to his novel "The Tenant" Polanski made the film of the same name, and his most famous achievement is the amazing cartoon "Wild Planet". Rolan Ax often confuses me. He flirts with reality: it is refracted, filled with absurdity, and there is a lot of black humor in it.
George minoya
"Devil"
Since my student days, I have been interested in the archetype of the devil and at some point I found a neutral analytical text that illuminates the story of the appearance of the devil in the epic and his position in mythology. I do not in any way incline myself to ideology, but just observe and explore. The book of Minua invariably inspires me and causes a pleasant dismay.
Peter Kropotkin
"Anarchy"
I was advised to read "Anarchy" by one director, who was shooting a mockuit about the eighties punks in Moscow, where I played a cameo role. He was filled with heroes and quickly came to the basic work of Kropotkin. The belief that anarchy is the ideal state of society grew in me with every line read. I have often observed how many people with the word "anarchy" change their facial expressions: people often think that this is an unconscious desire to destroy civilization. Kropotkin, on the other hand, places emphasis on the observance of ethical and moral norms in society, without which anarchy is impossible. He speaks of a just society as a unity of equals, but begins with the simplest: he sets as an example the evolution of the development of organisms in nature and explains the idea of mutual aid on it.
ALEXANDER Vvedensky
"Everything"
In an interview with Egor Letov, I learned that Vvedensky was his favorite poet. There are only two complete works: one of them is the rarest white two-volume book, released for the first time only thirty years ago, and the second is the collection “Everything”. I looked at him for a long time when I was working in a bookstore. The book was rarely bought, but for connoisseurs it was the most precious thing. "Around God is possible" - one of my favorite works of his.
Pursued by the authorities and in the last years of his life in exile, Vvedensky was tragically killed by an infection in a train full of detractors. He, like other Oberiuts, was accused of the fact that their poems are too "abstruse", as if they distract readers from the tasks of building socialism. In the unique world of Vvedensky, doom, revelation, thinking about life and death, the randomness of verbal symbols - all this is clothed with a riddle. His world is a world where the living and the dead are together.
“Everybody went crazy. The world went out. The world went out. The world was slaughtered. He’s the rooster Fomin, who was lying blue, began to pray with a two-eyed hand.”
FLOOR BOWLES
"Midnight Mass"
I was always fascinated by people who deliberately renounced household goods and turned to asceticism with an obedient soul. That was Paul Bowles, who lived most of his life in Morocco. The country and people made an indelible impression on the writer, but did not accept his art. He seemed to have dissolved into the Islamic culture: it is no coincidence that critics call him an invisible observer.
Midnight Mass is a collection of Bowles stories about life in Tangier. Despite quite realistic style, his stories are filled with magic, they reveal a secret connection between the natural world and human consciousness. Bowles tells about the life and moods of local residents, while revealing to us all himself. Many of the writer's stories are partial retellings of his conversations with lovers of cephalus (hashish).
And also, Bowles had a musical talent - now on the Net you can find beautiful collections of traditional Moroccan music recorded by him (Music of Morocco: Recorded By Paul Bowles).
LOUIS ARAGON
"Lono Irene"
This story, which I consider to be one of the most beautiful erotic texts, was included in the Four Steps in Delirium anthology - a very rare edition. This suffering lyric work, where the author reflects on an obsession with a woman, is a slightly distorted memoir about the author’s youth. There is an assumption that the text is dedicated to the mistress of the writer - the aristocratic Nancy Cunard, who was photographed with bracelets up to the elbows by Man Ray. The communist views and submissiveness of his wife Elsa Triolet almost completely obscured the surrealistic period of Aragon's creative work: at some point he was ashamed of this book and even allowed himself, on the verge of suicide, to destroy the novel Defense of Infinity, of which Lono Irene was a part.
KNUT GAMSUN
"Hunger"
Reading "Hunger" came at that time in my life when I first moved to Moscow. I, like the protagonist, wandered aimlessly through the streets unknown to me, in anticipation of getting into some unusual story, in parallel I was looking for work in order to at least somehow feed myself and pay for rented accommodation.
"Hunger" is called the first novel of modernism because of the technique of the "stream of consciousness". Almost the entire novel, we are watching the consciousness of the protagonist, which is changing under the influence of the dominant feeling - unbearable hunger. Hamsun compares physical hunger with spiritual hunger, which simultaneously torments the hero.