Intriguing and inspiringly articulated. Would be interested to read the next post!
“The fact that today technology moves much faster than novelists can write about it is one key reason the novel has lost its effectiveness: It has become insufficiently shamanistic.” - this point is a good angle on that. “Effectiveness” of a novel aside (for example, I reckon Russian cultural space is still quite literary centric, and novels are effective, being discussed, banned etc.- as the tradition goes haha), portrayal of contemporary technology in art, not exclusively novels, to meet often feels like satire. Have you ever felt the same? As if the fact of putting the tech there assumes there’s gonna be a commentary, you know? Maybe it’s just me 🫠
What would be an example of individualistic and non-individualistic novel?
Very interesting comment. What books are being banned in Russia today? And what books are being discussed? Last I was there (Piter in 2010), Pelevin was all the rage. Curious to know what's happening today.
Every year new Pelevin book is published and being discussed, tho less and less, but that’s on him. Writers in general are celebrities and "thought leaders" who people listen to and expect “explanations”. That is especially relevant for the anti-war movement, people want to know, as usual, “who’s to blame? what has to be done?” and look for some hope. Writers (for example Sorokin, Glukhovsky, Ulitskaya, to name a few) are constantly invited to interviews or hold lectures and such, but, given their position, that often happens outside of Russia. But such is the way of Russian literature, as Michail Shishkin said, “Russian literature is not a form of language existence, but a way of existence of non-totalitarian consciousness in Russia. It squeezed itself into the crack between a shout and a moan. Its language is a defense, an islet of words where human dignity must be preserved. This is my struggle, my war.” Shishkin, and the mentioned plus others, also write anti-war columns for Western magazines. It all happens in Russian cultural space, but geographically it’s elsewhere in Europe. Putin and the government still somehow think writers are dangerous and either restricts distribution by covering many names and titles with black paper in bookshops and libraries, or just bans some of them, like Sorokin’s recent “Legacy” (2023), especially writers/books that take anti-government and anti-war stance. Myself I have been to a few literary events with the authors themselves in London. After the war started, there are many of them here and across Europe, because you can’t do them in Russia without going to prison. And those events are always full of people. Other than that, opposition politicians / thought leaders / influencers always allude or even talk about novels, old and new, some novels are considered prophetic (like “Day of the Oprichnik” or “Post”), etc. There’s I think increased interest to certain literature of the past too, in particular anti-war, anti-totalitarian (shameless plug: I wrote such a book myself). For example, I see a lot of fresh discussion around Platonov (and btw there’s new English translation of “Chevengur”) as his work getting even more traction. Other figures from the past, like Solzhenitsyn plus a bunch of other “gulag” writers, are being discussed wildly in new context with new relevance. So, somehow, in Russian cultural space, literature is still clearly an important element and hasn’t lost its effectiveness.
Also, I want to quote Brodsky’s Nobel lecture, 1987, I think he makes an interesting, tho debatable, point: “However, before I move on to poetry, I would like to add that it would make sense to regard the Russian experience as a warning, if for no other reason than that the social structure of the West up to now is, on the whole, analogous to what existed in Russia prior to 1917. (This, by the way, is what explains the popularity in the West of the Nineteenth-Century Russian psychological novel, and the relative lack of success of contemporary Russian prose. The social relations that emerged in Russia in the Twentieth Century presumably seem no less exotic to the reader than do the names of the characters, which prevent him from identifying with them.) For example, the number of political parties, on the eve of the October coup in 1917, was no fewer than what we find today in the United States or Britain. In other words, a dispassionate observer might remark that in a certain sense the Nineteenth Century is still going on in the West, while in Russia it came to an end; and if I say it ended in tragedy, this is, in the first place, because of the size of the human toll taken in course of that social – or chronological – change. For in a real tragedy, it is not the hero who perishes; it is the chorus.”
Would be happy to chat more about the topic if you’re interested.
P.S. There are some non-political novels like "The Petrovs In and Around the Flu" that have also been widely popular (that one was made into a film as well), "Laurus", "The Gray House" (a cult one), and many works by the authors I mentioned in the comment (Ulitskaya, Sorokin, Shishkin, etc.) are always "in the air", you can see/hear non-literary people mentioning them in conversations and such.
“This is why the calls of ‘dissident right’ for art to be beautiful again—to depict beautiful healthy bodies and rural landscapes—are not only gauche but impossible.”
So true. There’s an old alchemical adage, ‘in sterquiliniis invenitur’, which roughly translates to ‘in filth you shall find it’. You gotta get down there…
Your comment about the novelist's solemn purpose is phrased in a way I’ve never seen anyone else say it, and it is oddly consistent with my own aspirations. Eager to hear more about your various project as they ripen.
I agree about both sides of "political thought" being misguided--you can't return to the art of the Renaissance in art, but certain principles that the world was built on should be rescued from the neoliberal gutter. Even simply the notion that values are objective (among which I include Beauty, the very soul of humanity)--because the current dogma is subjective to the point of ridicule and it has led to the worship of certain intellectually bankrupt "Emperor's New Clothes" in the arts, and the lowest of the vapid content in literature. And other denaturation of truth ("trans women are women"; "body positivity"; etc). The Western world is polluted with this illness to the point of suffocation, and to reverse this paradigm before it squashes us all, we need to explicitly create a movement that says: "beauty is objective; objective truth exists". And other phrases that should act as pepper spray to the galaxy of mindless narcissistic egos that today all think their individual mediocrity is the be-all.
Intriguing and inspiringly articulated. Would be interested to read the next post!
“The fact that today technology moves much faster than novelists can write about it is one key reason the novel has lost its effectiveness: It has become insufficiently shamanistic.” - this point is a good angle on that. “Effectiveness” of a novel aside (for example, I reckon Russian cultural space is still quite literary centric, and novels are effective, being discussed, banned etc.- as the tradition goes haha), portrayal of contemporary technology in art, not exclusively novels, to meet often feels like satire. Have you ever felt the same? As if the fact of putting the tech there assumes there’s gonna be a commentary, you know? Maybe it’s just me 🫠
What would be an example of individualistic and non-individualistic novel?
Very interesting comment. What books are being banned in Russia today? And what books are being discussed? Last I was there (Piter in 2010), Pelevin was all the rage. Curious to know what's happening today.
Every year new Pelevin book is published and being discussed, tho less and less, but that’s on him. Writers in general are celebrities and "thought leaders" who people listen to and expect “explanations”. That is especially relevant for the anti-war movement, people want to know, as usual, “who’s to blame? what has to be done?” and look for some hope. Writers (for example Sorokin, Glukhovsky, Ulitskaya, to name a few) are constantly invited to interviews or hold lectures and such, but, given their position, that often happens outside of Russia. But such is the way of Russian literature, as Michail Shishkin said, “Russian literature is not a form of language existence, but a way of existence of non-totalitarian consciousness in Russia. It squeezed itself into the crack between a shout and a moan. Its language is a defense, an islet of words where human dignity must be preserved. This is my struggle, my war.” Shishkin, and the mentioned plus others, also write anti-war columns for Western magazines. It all happens in Russian cultural space, but geographically it’s elsewhere in Europe. Putin and the government still somehow think writers are dangerous and either restricts distribution by covering many names and titles with black paper in bookshops and libraries, or just bans some of them, like Sorokin’s recent “Legacy” (2023), especially writers/books that take anti-government and anti-war stance. Myself I have been to a few literary events with the authors themselves in London. After the war started, there are many of them here and across Europe, because you can’t do them in Russia without going to prison. And those events are always full of people. Other than that, opposition politicians / thought leaders / influencers always allude or even talk about novels, old and new, some novels are considered prophetic (like “Day of the Oprichnik” or “Post”), etc. There’s I think increased interest to certain literature of the past too, in particular anti-war, anti-totalitarian (shameless plug: I wrote such a book myself). For example, I see a lot of fresh discussion around Platonov (and btw there’s new English translation of “Chevengur”) as his work getting even more traction. Other figures from the past, like Solzhenitsyn plus a bunch of other “gulag” writers, are being discussed wildly in new context with new relevance. So, somehow, in Russian cultural space, literature is still clearly an important element and hasn’t lost its effectiveness.
Also, I want to quote Brodsky’s Nobel lecture, 1987, I think he makes an interesting, tho debatable, point: “However, before I move on to poetry, I would like to add that it would make sense to regard the Russian experience as a warning, if for no other reason than that the social structure of the West up to now is, on the whole, analogous to what existed in Russia prior to 1917. (This, by the way, is what explains the popularity in the West of the Nineteenth-Century Russian psychological novel, and the relative lack of success of contemporary Russian prose. The social relations that emerged in Russia in the Twentieth Century presumably seem no less exotic to the reader than do the names of the characters, which prevent him from identifying with them.) For example, the number of political parties, on the eve of the October coup in 1917, was no fewer than what we find today in the United States or Britain. In other words, a dispassionate observer might remark that in a certain sense the Nineteenth Century is still going on in the West, while in Russia it came to an end; and if I say it ended in tragedy, this is, in the first place, because of the size of the human toll taken in course of that social – or chronological – change. For in a real tragedy, it is not the hero who perishes; it is the chorus.”
Would be happy to chat more about the topic if you’re interested.
P.S. There are some non-political novels like "The Petrovs In and Around the Flu" that have also been widely popular (that one was made into a film as well), "Laurus", "The Gray House" (a cult one), and many works by the authors I mentioned in the comment (Ulitskaya, Sorokin, Shishkin, etc.) are always "in the air", you can see/hear non-literary people mentioning them in conversations and such.
“This is why the calls of ‘dissident right’ for art to be beautiful again—to depict beautiful healthy bodies and rural landscapes—are not only gauche but impossible.”
So true. There’s an old alchemical adage, ‘in sterquiliniis invenitur’, which roughly translates to ‘in filth you shall find it’. You gotta get down there…
Love that
We Have Always Lived in the Maze.
Your comment about the novelist's solemn purpose is phrased in a way I’ve never seen anyone else say it, and it is oddly consistent with my own aspirations. Eager to hear more about your various project as they ripen.
That's very cool to here. I just subscribed to learn more about what you're working on
Generally haven’t written about my ongoing project on Substack very much. When I have a
completed draft, I will plan some kind of launch. Hopefully next year.
Super interesting take
Thank you
I agree about both sides of "political thought" being misguided--you can't return to the art of the Renaissance in art, but certain principles that the world was built on should be rescued from the neoliberal gutter. Even simply the notion that values are objective (among which I include Beauty, the very soul of humanity)--because the current dogma is subjective to the point of ridicule and it has led to the worship of certain intellectually bankrupt "Emperor's New Clothes" in the arts, and the lowest of the vapid content in literature. And other denaturation of truth ("trans women are women"; "body positivity"; etc). The Western world is polluted with this illness to the point of suffocation, and to reverse this paradigm before it squashes us all, we need to explicitly create a movement that says: "beauty is objective; objective truth exists". And other phrases that should act as pepper spray to the galaxy of mindless narcissistic egos that today all think their individual mediocrity is the be-all.