Editor of the book shelf Alice Taezhnaya about favorite books
IN BACKGROUND "BOOK SHELF" we ask a variety of heroines about their literary preferences and editions, which occupy an important place in their bookcase. Today, Alisa Taezhnaya, a journalist, film critic and author of the “Bookshelf” column, shares her stories about favorite books.
The parents have told me the first story related to reading so far: I learned to read syllables in almost three years and gave me books when I sat down in a pot. I sat on the books for an hour without noticing anything, and then ran around the room with a bare booty and a pot stuck to it. We had a very modest family with a proud library closet, and parents spared nothing on the books.
The main merit of adults was that they never spoke to me like a little one. The same thing happened with the books. They didn’t hide anything from me: they were simply divided into disposable and very good ones, to which they should return. That is why “Lolita”, Welsh, Palahniuk and Miller, when they first met, did not cause any burning inside.
My childhood passed between parents and neighbors in a communal apartment - Lyudmila Mikhailovna and Antonina Zinovievna. They were mom and daughter (both of them have been dead for a long time) and loved me with unconditional love, helping me compose poems, draw albums for parents and invent songs. Lyudmila Mikhailovna was a scientific editor and instilled in me a love of words. She had tears in her head when she spoke about Lermontov’s poems or explained “Anna on the neck” to me.
While Zola was looking at me from high shelves, I spent two years with a book on astrology. Sticking in books for months, poking around and not reading it was typical of me since childhood.
I am the rare child who fell in love with the Russian classics after school lessons, although, as I understand now, we were taught it instructively and clumsily. I am opposed to protecting children from supposedly adult and harmful books: the ability to read the non-obvious is instilled with constructive criticism and does not depend on experience.
Everything good that I learned about books came later, at the university, in the company of the best teachers of our time. Konstantin Polivanov, Elena Penskaya, Maya Kucherskaya, Andrei Nemzer, Vladimir Kantor, Alexander Dobrokhotov - people to whom I am eternally grateful for the lectures and because of whom I began to suffer that I did not receive a deep humanitarian education, for example, philological or philosophical.
I really miss the gentle evenings with a book when there is no need to hurry anywhere: there is no longer an understanding of time and myself, as in ten or twelve years, and no longer. At fourteen I was stolen from music and movies, and now I come to the books in waves, reading a little bit, but in such a way that it will penetrate.
Being engaged in the “Bookshelf” rubric for two and a half years, I realized that the points of coincidence are all about the same. "One hundred years of loneliness" to understand that life is more than any book, and at the same time a hundred lives will quietly fit into it. Nabokov to fall in love with words. Dovlatov, to understand that contemporaries are classics. "Anna Karenina" to always return home. Silver Age, to be afraid of their own lack of talent. Counterculture to preempt the forbidden. American novel to discover America.
All this was with me. I now adore my shitty memory - which makes it difficult to remember the names of the characters, the plot details, and the more so the jokes. I can read the same good ten books a year and constantly forget what is going on in them, but remember the foolish little thing - for example, as Pepperstein’s hero, after his death, he chose to become Russian slush, because it is everywhere and always.
Poetry lives separately in my life. First of all, in difficult life situations, the poem “The Piglet on the Porch” by Sergei Kozlov saves me. I think that these are the main Zen poems about how to enter into resonance with the universe - the real Terrence Malic for the little ones. Secondly, when I was twelve years old, I memorized Blok’s poem "When you stand in my way ..." - and I think it suits just about all confused people. Thirdly, once I fell in love with the poem “The Forest” by the modern poet Pavel Lukyanov; at eighteen, pulled him out to a meeting. I had nothing to say to him about the poems, and I have no idea why it was necessary, except to hand a bunch of wooden tulips to an outsider who famously explained everything I felt then. Fourthly, depending on my mood, I explain the world with lines from the early Grebenshchikov or jokes from Friends and I am terribly happy when outsiders learn quotes. Some things lead me to stupor, for example, Gumilev's African poems or the early texts of the Agatha Christie group. Where there is immediacy, awkwardness and vulnerability, there is always me. It doesn't matter if it is verse or prose.
I equally love those bookstores that look like supermarkets, and those that are secret shops, I come there with the hope of surprise, with a manic tremor, ashamed that I did not read a lot of things and would not read them anymore. Since there are a lot of books and time is short, I’m used to quickly closing a volume if I don’t like the language, if I see a fake dialogue - this happens in nine out of ten cases. There is an important internal rule: never read something just because everyone does it - so modern Big American Novels passed by me. I never wade through the text if it costs me mental strength: Joyce, Pynchon and the other guys were left unfinished.
I spend a lot of time with texts and have long divided them for myself into encyclopedia texts and stimulator texts. The first ones - from explaining non-fiction to short reviews - I need only for information. The better the text encyclopedia, the more directions left after it. A good non-fiction, after which you want to bury yourself in the history of the issue - one in a million. I almost do not remember the facts and can’t flaunt the information I got at the party, and small currents of knowledgeable people are given to me with great difficulty. Therefore, texts and encyclopedias are needed as a mansion with a thousand rooms in order to always be able to climb into it.
Text-stimulants - a completely different sense. A small dose — sentences, paragraphs, stanzas, sometimes even words (God, how can I live without Sologub’s “lack of money”?) Is enough for a portal to open. Text-stimulants can be dry and emotional, comfortable and uncomfortable, good and poorly written, but they wake up the imagination, give hope. Each such text is a chance for a more fascinating self, laughter with tears and an inner click, for which all books and films are needed.
Natalia Manaseina
"Zerbst Princess"
As I understand it now, this is the first pro-feminist book of my life. I read it at seven and fell in love with Catherine II, memorizing her name - Sophia Augusta Frederick Anhalt-Zerbst. In fact, this is such a "Marie Antoinette" with a good ending: Sophia overcame herself, learned to survive and showed everyone. This book is about how to find your voice in a world that belongs to men, how to overcome submission. The book intelligently ends with the wedding day, after which, as we know, there was the murder of a husband and unlimited power. The real "Thelma and Louise" in the world of books, which ends before the flight in the car over the precipice.
Alain de Botton
"How Proust Can Change Your Life"
Rescue book, which can be safely called fiction, so be it. I have an amazing relationship with Proust: I love to read it, but every time I get lost in the first volume - I just forget what is happening there, close it, and walk around the circle for years. De Botton does not chew, but shows how Proust can be a salvation from neuroses and that he understood about the transience of life. His mom, constantly interested in letters about the state of his chair. Friends whom he was mortally afraid of offending, but still wrote about them. Habit to wrap up on a warm day. Perfect inability to live with amazing supernormal abilities. Love to wallow in the crib. As if the book about Proust is a text about the meaning of life in the small, the readiness to forgive yourself and others. And how to read to learn an appreciative, kind look at life.
Robert Bresson
"Notes on Cinema"
One of the best books about the cinema of the greatest French director who records everything he sees around him: how to make films, choose actors, find the truth and overcome the exhaustion and artificiality of cinema. Here there are short and capacious expressions for all times: "Reserve of uncertainty", "Turn off the water in the pond to get to the fish", "Links, in anticipation of which is all living and nonliving to come to life." Fifty years later, the most valuable thing that happens in the movie can still be found in his theory.
Astrid Lindgren
"Baby and Carlson, who lives on the roof"
The most beloved, funny, important book of my childhood. I was growing up as an only child and dreamed of a puppy like a Kid, although in reality I was about a friend with whom there would be so many adventures. There was an interesting window on the roof of the neighboring house, and I thought that Carlson lived there. Over time, it turned out that there was no better way to become his friend than to just become Carlson. It is clear that he is a sadist, a troll, a manipulator and an unbearable man, but I always dreamed of his energy, his passion for taming reality and self-confidence. The part about Uncle Julius still brings me to tears - I do not understand how you can write a text, over which you weep equally at six and thirty years.
Truman Capote
Stories and Essays
"Cold-blooded murder", "Breakfast at Tiffany", "Summer Cruise", "Other Voices, Other Rooms" - that goes without saying. But most of all, Capote always surprised me with stories and notes about the world around him, his talent and unwillingness to “conveniently” wrap up melodrama, lack of moralizing and a tender look at everything marginal. Capote is a man with a terrific biography and a painful history of extinction, which is recorded from beginning to end. The story around "Cold-blooded murder", reflected in both Capote biopic, perfectly explains it. The story "Guest at the festival" and an essay about Marilyn Monroe - the best of prose that I read when I was already an adult. And in adulthood it is more difficult to wonder.
John Lennon
"I am writing how to spell"
When I was six years old, I became a Beatloman. It's funny to write about it, but since then I think that there is nothing better than The Beatles and its members separately. What struck me at seven, perhaps years, was the translation of John Lennon in the style of Lewis Carroll at the end of the book of The Beatles. I found the book already an adult, its magic - in a perfect translation, because Lennon, like Monty Python, is all in the play on words. “Smoke and gurgling with might and main, they nastropilis at the moment and began to dance the dance of the wild belly, throwing out unpainted capers.” Or the story "Once there was a pig and a network of ulcers." In the preface it is written: "This correction of short snakes is the most amazing thing I have ever sneezed. May God anoint and feed us all." I do not know, I am very funny.
Jenny linford
"Dog names"
Calling it a book will not turn the language, but it has changed my life. When I was twenty-two or twenty-three years old, my husband and I lived in Barcelona, and he gave it to me for my birthday - we dreamed that we would have a house and a dog. After eight years, we have a house and two dogs, and we are still together. Names, however, did not have to choose - we left the dogs those who had already given them in the shelter: Ron and Mary.
"Land of the Seas. Anthology of New Zealand's Poetry"
In the Metropolitan Museum, I was stuck in the department of Oceania, stuck on thirty items of coconut. This year I almost flew to Papua - New Guinea, it was three hours from this unforgettable part of the world. They taught me to love Oceania, the BBC series, and also this book. When I see a phrase like “Oh, light, blooming like a tree” or “The Milky Way bar”, the flowers inside me bloom. The more verses there are about the bare horse that enters the room, the better it will be for us all - I am sure of it.
Tove Jansson
"Moomin trolls. Complete comic book collection in five volumes"
I have only three volumes, but at the next Non-Fiction show I will buy all the others. I love Tove Jansson's prose very much, but for some reason I couldn’t get enough of Moomin trolls until I bought comic books - this is the ideal format for funny dialogues and sitcom's plot system. Retelling jokes is the most ungrateful thing in the world. Take my word for it: you did not read anything more soul-saving. And yes, Tuva does not write about children at all - one series about elections is worth something: I think there will be nothing more relevant for our 2018.
Thomas Elzesser, Malta Hagener
"Theory of cinema. Eye, emotion, body"
One of the most comprehensive and important books on how to watch a movie and analyze it is, importantly, perfectly translated. It connects different views on cinema, stages of film critics and a fantastic bibliography. The book is very necessary in Russian - a thorough, relevant, useful. In general, the desk - I try to freshen it up in my head when I am preparing lectures or picking films, I am not able to catch something.
Kenneth enger
"Hollywood Babylon"
Let's agree that without Kenneth Enger there is no life. Watching it on film in a movie theater is one of the most powerful pleasures of my life. To commemorate this, I bought the payback of his legendary Hollywood Babylon, which, like Andy Warhol's America, is for me one of the important books for understanding American culture of the twentieth century. Published as a tabloid, she talks about the scandals, intrigues and investigations of Hollywood from the beginning to the middle of the twentieth century: half of the stories are ready-made scenarios for a cool noir. Starlets, harassment, prisons, drugs, frauds and crippled lives - in another head the book would have decomposed into a collection of great jokes that could be told in smart companies, but not in me. I just love this palp as much as I don’t like the period films that Anger talks about.
Sidney Lumet
"Making Movies"
A short book of one of the best directors on how to make a movie. Everything is simple and in chapters: "Director", "Actors", "Style", "Camera". Lessons from past films. Tips that never expire. Aphorisms about the installation and production artists: both those and others can not do anything with the helplessness of the director. Directing is an exhausting job, and Lumet explains how not to fake, not to be disappointed and not to do nonsense in which you do not believe. Spielberg and Ebert call this book priceless. I’ll say the most important modern analogue - the dilogy "My First Movie", where important people from Mike Lee to Sam Mendez tell us what kind of film debut they were given: a book to fall in love with the director or forever remain just a spectator.
Mark Axelrod
"Constructing Dialogue: Screenwriting from Citizen Kane to Midnight in Paris"
Another great book is on screenwriting. Parses the main dialogues in the history of cinema - "Jules and Jim", "Midnight Cowboy", "Thelma and Louise", "Annie Hall" - line by line and affordable, highlighting the key. From it it is clear where the magic of the film comes from for all times and why the script is not a text, but a lively speech that is so hard to imitate. A gift from a husband who loves movies like me and more.
Chris Dumas
"Un-American Psycho: Brian de Palma and the Political Invisible"
At twenty-six, I reviewed all of New Hollywood and chose a pet. No wonder - they became Brian De Palma, Roxy Music in the world of cinema, one of the most talented, intelligent and amazing people in the world. I shook hands with him (I will always be glad), I have a T-shirt with his name, but long before that I brought a book from Vienna about how De Palma works with the thriller genre, giving him a political shell. This is the abyss of cool stories about Nixon and De Niro, about the comedic talent of De Palma and the influence of European cinema. In general, about everything, than he is really great.
Arkady Averchenko, Nadezhda Teffi, Osip Dymov, Iosif Orsher
"World History Processed by" Satyricon ""
I love to laugh. If I laugh at a book to tears, then I will never forget. So it was with the "Reserve" Dovlatov, "Golden Calf", the memories of Danelia, Zoshchenko's stories about Lenin. "World History" - my first funny book, in six years I found and read. Before school lessons, I knew the whole story of "Satyricon" - it is funny and fair there. "According to the surviving images, modern scholars see that the Assyrians were very high in hairdressing, since all the kings of the beard were curled with even, neat curls. If we take this issue even more seriously, then we can be even more surprised because it is clear that in Assyrian times, not only people, but also lions did not neglect hairdressing tongs. For the Assyrians always depict animals with the same manes and tails curled into curls as their beards of kings. In general, there are better things than "Game of Thrones" and the TV series "Rome".
Pavel Pepperstein
"Spring"
When I was eighteen, I read "The Mythan Love of the Castes," and life has not been the same since. I can hardly remember what was happening there - I like life with a magical impression of a book about which I don’t know what it really was. I love Pivovarov’s books very much. And the books of his son, too, even stupid. When I lived in Holland, I came home for the New Year and bought the just-published, hastily printed Spring in the Phalanster. А там рассказы про чемодан творога и пенсионера с инопланетянином - в общем, я, наверное, уже тогда поняла, что скоро вернусь домой.
"Жил один средних лет. К нему приходят, рассаживаются, он их угощает чаем - всё как положено. Наконец один из гостей говорит:
- Отчего бы и вам не навестить нас?
А тот в ответ:
- Я в гости не хожу.
- Why? - все заинтересовались.
А тот вдруг:
- Потому что я в этом мире не гость, а хозяин.
И сам же - хохотать. Стыдно, конечно, что проговорился, а всё же потеха".
По-моему, это великолепно.