Critic Polina Ryzhova about favorite books
IN BACKGROUND "BOOK SHELF" we ask heroines about their literary preferences and editions, which occupy an important place in the bookcase. Today a critic, journalist and editor of the Shelf project, Polina Ryzhova, talks about favorite books.
Literature today, in a sense, is a typical "girl in need." And I am equally annoyed by those who are trying to get rid of her, and those who are frantically saving her. Because by themselves all these cholendges like “read one hundred thousand books this year!”, State campaigns designed to make reading fashionable, school grumbling that without great Russian literature we will all become animals, marginalize the practice of reading no less than moaning that the novel died, the author died, the paper died, the literature died, the book market died, and in general everything died except for YouTube bloggers, telegram channels and cryptocurrencies.
Yes, the status of the book, to put it mildly, has changed. The world no longer revolves around it, simply because a bunch of other objects have appeared. And this normal, in general, people who read the competition, as a rule, feel like the last day of Pompeii - although the literature entertainment function simply disappears: it is no longer a way to kill time or air the head. It is not clear why plod over a clumsy detective in a creepy cover, if you can include a luxurious series with your favorite actors, and even cook dinner in the process.
At the same time, all that which people usually like to breathe is left in literature remains. And this, in my opinion, will not become obsolete and will not die, even if people learn to download the library of the US Congress to their heads with a single click. I have a foolish analogy with travel. Take the distance N, which can be overcome in three ways: by plane, by car and on foot. On the plane, of course, the quickest and most convenient, but also the minimum impressions. By car longer, but you will find out the terrain, and the adventures are guaranteed - the car will break down, take your companions. And if you go on foot, then this, of course, will be history - no, even history with a capital letter. You can die in the process, but this experience is likely to radically change your life, each passed bush will leave a mark on the soul.
In my opinion, not only the fact of contact with creativity is important, but also the quality of interaction: walking the path is how to read a cool book, traveling by car — how to watch a good movie, a plane ticket — I don’t know how to gif with kittens. Reading is always hard for me, and it’s hard to agree: the lazy and tortured part of me constantly wants to look at the gifs, not read. And this seems to be normal: all things in life are given to a person through the resistance of his own inertia. Not overcome - not received.
I have always perceived the text, and especially the text as artistic, as a magical space - it is able to “think out” itself in a striking way. You usually approach the letter without having anything; except in a small way, a bit of memory, an anemic thought. And only in the process (if you are lucky, of course) a rhythm, a melody arise, a new, strong thought is born, which, by the way, has little in common with the original one. A good text is independent, it does not allow ideology and ready-made concepts. A talented author will begin to write about good or bad Putin, and he will write, without noticing, about the era, love, loneliness and death.
Those who fail to bury all the literature, try to bury at least modern. Indeed, can any obscure author compete with a collection of the best world prose? For each writer from this list stretches a long tail of recommendations - a guarantee that you will not waste time in vain. Dostoevsky and Nabokov, of course, can be endlessly interpreted and applied where it hurts, but they no longer write about us today, do not think about us through the text, do not express our pain and anger. Yes, today there are many other ways to broadcast the spirit of the times in the works. Literature is no longer the main route, but it seems to me that it is still one of the most scenic.
There are two options for successful reading: the unconscious, when I fall into the story, like in a trap pit, and conscious, when I glide along the lines, periodically, in violent enthusiasm, I slam the book, saying: "What a talented scoundrel!" I don’t really like the first one - when I get out of the pit, I understand that they have equipped a cunning trap for me, tickled my nerves, twisted empathy to the maximum, but, by and large, I was still deceived. But the second state I love reverently: I get some kind of physiological pleasure from the process.
And yet, as it turned out, transcendental reading happens - the rarest subspecies. When you suddenly discover texts that you don’t like or dislike, they are so much yours that you feel in them like in a deprivation chamber or amniotic fluid. That is, in fact, you do not feel anything - just parting with your own borders.
Maria Stepanova
"One, not one, not me"
A collection of literary essays on the best, in my opinion, modern Russian publicist. In the texts of Stepanova, every word is poured over, if not every letter. I like to twist each sentence for a long time, marveling at how it is done: qualitatively, with taste, but every time with some hypnotizing “irregularity”, due to which the meanings do not fall into the prepared “holes”, but alarmingly roll over, forcing me to think.
This is exactly what the ideal literary criticism looks to me - not the fussy scoring of a work or drawing it into some actual agenda, but co-creation, a superstructure above the text of additional floors. Grigory Dashevsky also wrote about literature to whom Stepanova’s book is actually dedicated.
Sergey Solovyov
"Indian Defense"
Another collection of essays. The texts of Solovyov are so oversaturated with images, so poetic that it does not work for a long time - it is sickening, as if from frequent breathing. Solovyov can push off from anything - the figures of Vvedensky, philosophical reasoning, the sunbeam on the desk, the outlines of the female breast - and get along the ropes of associations to where none of us have ever been. In the world of his prose, three very different sources and sources close to me are completely naturally combined: Russian literature, the nature of the Crimea, and a reverent attitude towards India — which I especially appreciate.
Arundati Roy
"God of trifles"
Roy told her story in such a way that some part of me remained to live in Kerala Ayemenem - the stuffy world of kindred bonds, sentimental and scary memories, a space of pure children's pain, which can never be relieved. And it is this pain that shakes up the whole text: “God of trifles” is not a boring Booker postcolonial novel, but a book about the inner world of a person, family, country, planet, turned inside out. At the same time, there is not a single pretentious note, the whole text rests on details, trifles, knickknacks, rubbish - a sort of "girlish" solipsism.
"Bhagavad-gita as it is"
The most entertaining history. Arjuna, the leader of the clan of the Pandavas, is preparing for a battle with the treacherous Kauravas. But suddenly he begins to doubt: I am now killing all my relatives, I will set up a bloodbath - and for what? For some kingdom? Rave. But Krishna, who settled his charioteer, tells Arjuna that he must kill everyone, and explains point by point why.
In my opinion, this is a delightfully paradoxical plot for any religion, especially for Hinduism, which is associated with non-violence, detachment, care for karma and other wonderful things. Krishna explains to Arjuna that the most important thing is not to sit all your life in the lotus position, but to fulfill your duty. I like to think about it. It is a pity that, unlike Arjuna, we do not have the opportunity to chat with Krishna - to make sure that we understand exactly what this very duty is.
Vasily Rozanov
"Fallen leaves"
Rozanov's prose is very understandable and too vague, through ironic and at the same time frighteningly sincere. Everything he has revolves around himself - and at the same time no complacency. What I especially like is that in his world there is no straightforwardness, unambiguity, everything that, if desired, can be criticized or disproved. Rozanov himself refutes everything and agrees with everything himself, he is here, and there, and everywhere, and nowhere - and this makes his texts invulnerable. Galkovsky in The Endless Dead End compared them to a black hole: “We want to understand Rozanov, but we find ourselves in the closed, curved space of his irony and slip out of it to another level of our own consciousness.”
Yegor Radov
"Mandustra", "Serpent"
Radov, like all postmodernists of the nineties, loves readers to click on the nose: to have more sex, violence and blasphemy, and fervent nonsense - tea, not in Soviet literature. But unlike others, the game of deconstruction is not an end in itself, but a tool of the philosophical system; Radov equalizes high and low, good and bad, ridiculous and not so much, because everything in the world has a mandustra - a common aesthetic essence, a great truth. The ability to see the mandustriality of things means the ability to live in art, the ability to live in a high, because "art is a high."
Olga Komarova
"Georgia"
The universe of female frenzy: inflamed consciousness or, on the contrary, blissful stupidity. For me, this is the most exciting topic in art. Komarova's heroine is one miserable, losing her mind, but they do not cause pity, but horror — like when you look into the abyss, which will surely bite off your head. Komarova herself knew about the abyss firsthand: she had nervous breakdowns, and in the early nineties she hit on Orthodoxy and burned everything that had been written.
Andrey Platonov
"Juvenile Sea"
To be honest, I didn’t suspect at all that you could write like that. Not words, but boulders. Not heroes, but titans. Under the pressure of this incredible power, you yourself turn into a young Soviet country, into a remelted pig-iron ingot, into the very meat-producing farm that Nadezhda Bestaloyeva and Nikolay Vermo rebuild. And at the same time all the time you feel the happiness and longing that spills over the juvenile sea.
Julian barns
"Nothing to fear"
Great essay on death. Somewhere ironic, somewhere sentimental, somewhere conceptual, and somewhere frivolous. But the concentration on this topic per se, the constant return to this final (initial, in fact) point causes protest, alarm, even panic. Barnes, as he might, is trying to reassure the reader — not to comfort, but to be near, to share the experience of his own mortality.
Stephen Pinker
"A clean sheet. Human nature. Who and why refuses to recognize it today"
A rare example of efficient non-fiction. Pinker does not retell ideas - he takes you on an intellectual journey (or captive?), Which you then want to continue on your own. We are all accustomed to living within the conceptual contradiction: on the one hand, science confidently states that the whole person with his complex internal world order can be explained by biology, on the other, we still want to believe in our own infinity, opacity and unknowability, and this biological determinism how even abusive. Pinker manages to remove this painful contradiction, and without it, believe me, it is easier to breathe.