HOW I BREWED "GOAT IN MILK"

When my book "The Kid in Milk" was published, I received many letters, in which there were many different questions... But, in fact, all readers were interested in about the same thing. Namely:

How did I decide to write a "literary novel"?

What did I mean when I gave the novel such a strange title - "Kid in Milk"?

What real writers did I “hide” under the names of the characters in the novel?

And is it true that I was beaten in the House of Writers by a group of angry characters from the novel?

Since, unfortunately, I am not able to answer the letters of all readers, I came up with the idea to write this preface to the next reprint of the novel, which, to my considerable surprise, became a bestseller, although no one is killed in it, and erotic scenes at least and there are, but only in the amount necessary to reveal the inner world of the heroes. By the way, this time I restored some erotic scenes removed from previous editions ...

First of all, I will answer the last question. No, I have not been subjected to any violence from prototypes either within the walls of the writers' club or anywhere else. Otherwise, dear readers, you would not have this preface in front of you right now. And this is not explained at all by the softening of literary mores (they are cruel as never before), but by the fact that in my work I confess the principle of "invented truth." All my heroes could well exist, they sometimes even resemble the existing figures of Russian literature, moreover, the story that happened to them could well have happened, but in fact there have never been such people and such events have never taken place in the history of Russian literature.

With all my might, I tried to keep future readers of the novel from false identifications. For example, the sixties minstrel Perelygin, performing his poems with a cello, in original version bore the surname "Dust helmets", but since the thoughtful reader immediately associated this with the famous lines of B. Okudzhava about "commissars in dusty helmets", I avoided misunderstanding by giving this surname to an episodic character. And the problem of mistaken recognition was settled, because everyone knows that Okudzhava himself performed his poems with a guitar, and not with a cello, which, although it became a powerful instrument of democracy, is in the hands of a completely different master of culture.

The following question comes across in letters: do the poets-contextualists found on the pages of the novel have any relation to real poets-conceptualists? But after all, it is enough to compare the examples of contextual poetry I have given in the text with the samples of conceptual poetry that is widely published today, in order to easily answer this question ourselves. But since we are talking about poetry, I can tell you that initially all the events of the novel were supposed to take place in a purely poetic environment, and it should have been called like this: "Master of the lyrical ending." However, when ten years ago this story came to my mind, it pulled at most a big story, the work on which I put off and postponed everything.

To be honest, every writer is somewhat like a cucumber vine covered with many flowers, most of which will never be fertilized by the bee's diligence of a writer and will never grow to the size of a full-fledged artistic green plant. Perhaps this was the fate that awaited the plot about the master of the lyrical ending, if not for one circumstance. Many years ago, during evening walks along the famous Orekhovo-Borisovsky ravine, I told this story to my friend Gennady Ignatov. And every time after that, when I began to languish in reasoning about what to write, he pointed to me with pneumatic persistence at this half-forgotten plot. "What ?!" - I once thought, and after a year and a half the plot for a big story turned into a novel, which is also quite large in our lazy times. So, taking this opportunity, I want to thank my old friend for his fruitful perseverance!

But, by and large, the writer is just a pencil with which the era deduces the words it needs. You can feel like a fucking demiurge, lock yourself into a castle made of ivory and even a mammoth bone, but it is the era that "sharpens" you, relatively speaking, from the red or blue end and, after talking, sticks it into a blank sheet of paper. Your task is not to break under her pressure.

Allow me, you may ask, why is the unreal situation described in the novel here, when a person who has not composed a single line, a person whose entire literary baggage is in a folder with blank sheets of paper, with the help of frankly roguish tricks becomes a world famous writer? And you take a look around, I will answer. Are there few writers in the Soviet and post-Soviet literature, whose names are known to everyone, but whose books, or, as it is now customary to say, the texts we have never read, and if we tried, we very quickly ran into a dilemma: or is this nonsense, or you and I don't know a damn thing about literature.

There are two fundamental principles of the relationship between (using the avian language of modern literary criticism) the sender of the communicate and the recipient, that is, simply put, between the author and the reader. First principle: "The reader is always right." Carried to an extreme, he turns into a so-called pulp fiction: "With a soft groan, she weakened in his strong tanned hands and in a moment she felt something big and solid inside her ..." The second principle: "A writer is always right." Pushed to the extreme, it turns into this very folder of blank paper. For a writer who cannot be read is in essence not much different from a writer who cannot be read due to the "unwritten" text. We live in an era of literary reputations brazenly trying to replace literature itself.

However, this postmodern reality easily spreads to other areas of our life. We listen to singers who are devoid of voice and even hearing. Our life is determined by politicians who have not made a single correct decision in all their activities. And they are consulted by scientists who have not been noticed in any any serious research. You and I are suffering from the reforms, not even understanding what they are, and we do not understand this mainly due to detailed television political commentaries. Modern television, as it is rightly said, is an invention that allows those people who would not even be allowed on the threshold of our house to enter our bedroom. And how do you like the "rulers of thoughts", a refined creative intelligentsia, diligently performing the functions of a goat-provocateur, leading a submissive herd to the slaughter?

When my book "A Kid in Milk" was published, I received many letters, in which there were many different questions. But, in fact, all readers were interested in about the same thing. Namely:

How did I decide to write a "literary novel"?

What did I mean when I gave the novel such a strange title - "Kid in Milk"?

What real writers did I “hide” under the names of the characters in the novel?

And is it true that I was beaten in the House of Writers by a group of angry characters from the novel?

Since, unfortunately, I am not able to answer the letters of all readers, I came up with the idea to write this preface to the next reprint of the novel, which, to my considerable surprise, became a bestseller, although no one is killed in it, and erotic scenes at least and there are, but only in the amount necessary to reveal the inner world of the heroes. By the way, this time I restored some erotic scenes removed from previous editions ...

First of all, I will answer the last question. No, I have not been subjected to any violence from prototypes either within the walls of the writers' club or anywhere else. Otherwise, dear readers, you would not have this preface in front of you right now. And this is not explained at all by the softening of literary mores (they are cruel as never before), but by the fact that in my work I confess the principle of "invented truth." All my heroes could well exist, they sometimes even resemble the existing figures of Russian literature, moreover, the story that happened to them could well have happened, but in fact there have never been such people and such events have never taken place in the history of Russian literature.

With all my might, I tried to keep future readers of the novel from false identifications. For example, the sixties minstrel Perelygin, performing his poems with a cello, in the original version bore the surname "Dust helmets", but since the thoughtful reader immediately associated this with the famous lines of B. Okudzhava about "commissars in dusty helmets" the name of the episodic character. And the problem of mistaken recognition was settled, because everyone knows that Okudzhava himself performed his poems with a guitar, and not with a cello, which, although it became a powerful instrument of democracy, is in the hands of a completely different master of culture.

The following question comes across in letters: do the poets-contextualists found on the pages of the novel have any relation to real poets-conceptualists? But after all, it is enough to compare the examples of contextual poetry I have given in the text with the samples of conceptual poetry that is widely published today, in order to easily answer this question ourselves. But since we are talking about poetry, I can tell you that initially all the events of the novel were supposed to take place in a purely poetic environment, and it should have been called like this: "Master of the lyrical ending." However, when ten years ago this story came to my mind, it pulled at most a big story, the work on which I put off and postponed everything.

To be honest, every writer is somewhat like a cucumber vine covered with many flowers, most of which will never be fertilized by the bee's diligence of a writer and will never grow to the size of a full-fledged artistic green plant. Perhaps this was the fate that awaited the plot about the master of the lyrical ending, if not for one circumstance. Many years ago, during evening walks along the famous Orekhovo-Borisovsky ravine, I told this story to my friend Gennady Ignatov. And every time after that, when I began to languish in reasoning about what to write, he pointed to me with pneumatic persistence at this half-forgotten plot. "What ?!" - I once thought, and after a year and a half the plot for a big story turned into a novel, which is also quite large in our lazy times. So, taking this opportunity, I want to thank my old friend for his fruitful perseverance!

But, by and large, the writer is just a pencil with which the era deduces the words it needs. You can feel like a fucking demiurge, lock yourself into a castle made of ivory and even a mammoth bone, but it is the era that "sharpens" you, relatively speaking, from the red or blue end and, after talking, sticks it into a blank sheet of paper. Your task is not to break under her pressure.

Allow me, you may ask, why is the unreal situation described in the novel here, when a person who has not composed a single line, a person whose entire literary baggage is in a folder with blank sheets of paper, with the help of frankly roguish tricks becomes a world famous writer? And you take a look around, I will answer. Are there few writers in the Soviet and post-Soviet literature, whose names are known to everyone, but whose books, or, as it is now customary to say, the texts we have never read, and if we tried, we very quickly ran into a dilemma: or is this nonsense, or you and I don't know a damn thing about literature.

There are two fundamental principles of the relationship between (using the avian language of modern literary criticism) the sender of the communicate and the recipient, that is, simply put, between the author and the reader. First principle: "The reader is always right." Carried to an extreme, he turns into a so-called pulp fiction: "With a soft groan, she weakened in his strong tanned hands and in a moment she felt something big and solid inside her ..." The second principle: "A writer is always right." Pushed to the extreme, it turns into this very folder of blank paper. For a writer who cannot be read is in essence not much different from a writer who cannot be read due to the "unwritten" text. We live in an era of literary reputations brazenly trying to replace literature itself.

However, this postmodern reality easily spreads to other areas of our life. We listen to singers who are devoid of voice and even hearing. Our life is determined by politicians who have not made a single correct decision in all their activities. And they are consulted by scientists who have not been noticed in any any serious research. You and I are suffering from the reforms, not even understanding what they are, and we do not understand this mainly due to detailed television political commentaries. Modern television, as it is rightly said, is an invention that allows those people who would not even be allowed on the threshold of our house to enter our bedroom. And how do you like the "rulers of thoughts", a refined creative intelligentsia, diligently performing the functions of a goat-provocateur, leading a submissive herd to the slaughter?

And is it really so fantastic in this situation the story of Vitka Akashin, kicked out of the construction site, whom two friends, in fulfillment of a bet made while intoxicated, "repaired" a world famous writer? By the way, in some letters I was reproached for the unoriginality of this plot, referring, in particular, to the well-known story of A. Averchenko. But, of course, it is most correct to refer to the notorious intertextuality, which the Russian people discovered long before the poststructuralists, saying the saying: "Bad song, unlike any other song!" Indeed, original plots, as you know, can be counted on one hand, and the conflict I have chosen has been wandering around world literature for a long time. Actually, even the "Inspector General" is about the same: "There is another" Yuri Miloslavsky ". So that one is mine ... ”But since Gogol's times, the situation has changed significantly both in life and in literature. What I mean? Here's what. Imagine that the same Ivan Aleksandrovich Khlestakov turns out to be a real inspector who "arrived at the behest of an official from St. Petersburg"! Have you presented? Isn't it very modern?

We have crossed some extremely dangerous border in our life. Actually, hence the name of the novel. The prohibition to boil a kid in his mother's milk is a taboo from the ancient Mosaic Code. There are many historical and ethnographic explanations for this commandment, but any old wisdom has a peculiarity of being interpreted broadly. And what if, having entered into a struggle with nature, we do not boil a kid in his mother's milk? And what if throwing the Russian people first into stick socialism, and then, when he softened and adapted this way of life for himself, to drive it with the same stick into wild capitalism, does not mean boiling a kid in his mother's milk? And the cultural figure who, instead of “calling for mercy to the fallen,” calls for “crushing the reptile”, meaning the part of the population deprived by the “reforms” - doesn't he boil a kid in his mother's milk?

HOW I BREWED "GOAT IN MILK"

When my book "A Kid in Milk" was published, I received many letters, in which there were many different questions. But, in fact, all readers were interested in about the same thing. Namely:

How did I decide to write a "literary novel"?

What did I mean when I gave the novel such a strange title - "Kid in Milk"?

What real writers did I “hide” under the names of the characters in the novel?

And is it true that I was beaten in the House of Writers by a group of angry characters from the novel?

Since, unfortunately, I am not able to answer the letters of all readers, I came up with the idea to write this preface to the next reprint of the novel, which, to my considerable surprise, became a bestseller, although no one is killed in it, and erotic scenes at least and there are, but only in the amount necessary to reveal the inner world of the heroes. By the way, this time I restored some erotic scenes removed from previous editions ...

First of all, I will answer the last question. No, I have not been subjected to any violence from prototypes either within the walls of the writers' club or anywhere else. Otherwise, dear readers, you would not have this preface in front of you right now. And this is not explained at all by the softening of literary mores (they are cruel as never before), but by the fact that in my work I confess the principle of "invented truth." All my heroes could well exist, they sometimes even resemble the existing figures of Russian literature, moreover, the story that happened to them could well have happened, but in fact there have never been such people and such events have never taken place in the history of Russian literature.

With all my might, I tried to keep future readers of the novel from false identifications. For example, the sixties minstrel Perelygin, performing his poems with a cello, in the original version bore the surname "Dust helmets", but since the thoughtful reader immediately associated this with the famous lines of B. Okudzhava about "commissars in dusty helmets" the name of the episodic character. And the problem of mistaken recognition was settled, because everyone knows that Okudzhava himself performed his poems with a guitar, and not with a cello, which, although it became a powerful instrument of democracy, is in the hands of a completely different master of culture.

The following question comes across in letters: do the poets-contextualists found on the pages of the novel have any relation to real poets-conceptualists? But after all, it is enough to compare the examples of contextual poetry I have given in the text with the samples of conceptual poetry that is widely published today, in order to easily answer this question ourselves. But since we are talking about poetry, I can tell you that initially all the events of the novel were supposed to take place in a purely poetic environment, and it should have been called like this: "Master of the lyrical ending." However, when ten years ago this story came to my mind, it pulled at most a big story, the work on which I put off and postponed everything.

To be honest, every writer is somewhat like a cucumber vine covered with many flowers, most of which will never be fertilized by the bee's diligence of a writer and will never grow to the size of a full-fledged artistic green plant. Perhaps this was the fate that awaited the plot about the master of the lyrical ending, if not for one circumstance. Many years ago, during evening walks along the famous Orekhovo-Borisovsky ravine, I told this story to my friend Gennady Ignatov. And every time after that, when I began to languish in reasoning about what to write, he pointed to me with pneumatic persistence at this half-forgotten plot. "What ?!" - I once thought, and after a year and a half the plot for a big story turned into a novel, which is also quite large in our lazy times. So, taking this opportunity, I want to thank my old friend for his fruitful perseverance!

But, by and large, the writer is just a pencil with which the era deduces the words it needs. You can feel like a fucking demiurge, lock yourself into a castle made of ivory and even a mammoth bone, but it is the era that "sharpens" you, relatively speaking, from the red or blue end and, after talking, sticks it into a blank sheet of paper. Your task is not to break under her pressure.

Allow me, you may ask, why is the unreal situation described in the novel here, when a person who has not composed a single line, a person whose entire literary baggage is in a folder with blank sheets of paper, with the help of frankly roguish tricks becomes a world famous writer? And you take a look around, I will answer. Are there few writers in the Soviet and post-Soviet literature, whose names are known to everyone, but whose books, or, as it is now customary to say, the texts we have never read, and if we tried, we very quickly ran into a dilemma: or is this nonsense, or you and I don't know a damn thing about literature.

There are two fundamental principles of the relationship between (using the avian language of modern literary criticism) the sender of the communicate and the recipient, that is, simply put, between the author and the reader. First principle: "The reader is always right." Carried to an extreme, he turns into a so-called pulp fiction: "With a soft groan, she weakened in his strong tanned hands and in a moment she felt something big and solid inside her ..." The second principle: "A writer is always right." Pushed to the extreme, it turns into this very folder of blank paper. For a writer who cannot be read is in essence not much different from a writer who cannot be read due to the "unwritten" text. We live in an era of literary reputations brazenly trying to replace literature itself.

However, this postmodern reality easily spreads to other areas of our life. We listen to singers who are devoid of voice and even hearing. Our life is determined by politicians who have not made a single correct decision in all their activities. And they are consulted by scientists who have not been noticed in any any serious research. You and I are suffering from the reforms, not even understanding what they are, and we do not understand this mainly due to detailed television political commentaries. Modern television, as it is rightly said, is an invention that allows those people who would not even be allowed on the threshold of our house to enter our bedroom. And how do you like the "rulers of thoughts", a refined creative intelligentsia, diligently performing the functions of a goat-provocateur, leading a submissive herd to the slaughter?

And is it really so fantastic in this situation the story of Vitka Akashin, kicked out of the construction site, whom two friends, in fulfillment of a bet made while intoxicated, "repaired" a world famous writer? By the way, in some letters I was reproached for the unoriginality of this plot, referring, in particular, to the well-known story of A. Averchenko. But, of course, it is most correct to refer to the notorious intertextuality, which the Russian people discovered long before the poststructuralists, saying the saying: "Bad song, unlike any other song!" Indeed, original plots, as you know, can be counted on one hand, and the conflict I have chosen has been wandering around world literature for a long time. Actually, even the "Inspector General" is about the same: "There is another" Yuri Miloslavsky ". So that one is mine ... ”But since Gogol's times, the situation has changed significantly both in life and in literature. What I mean? Here's what. Imagine that the same Ivan Aleksandrovich Khlestakov turns out to be a real inspector who "arrived at the behest of an official from St. Petersburg"! Have you presented? Isn't it very modern?

We have crossed some extremely dangerous border in our life. Actually, hence the name of the novel. The prohibition to boil a kid in his mother's milk is a taboo from the ancient Mosaic Code. There are many historical and ethnographic explanations for this commandment, but any old wisdom has a peculiarity of being interpreted broadly. And what if, having entered into a struggle with nature, we do not boil a kid in his mother's milk? And what if throwing the Russian people first into stick socialism, and then, when he softened and adapted this way of life for himself, to drive it with the same stick into wild capitalism, does not mean boiling a kid in his mother's milk? And the cultural figure who, instead of “calling for mercy to the fallen,” calls for “crushing the reptile”, meaning the part of the population deprived by the “reforms” - doesn't he boil a kid in his mother's milk?

Many letter writers find that reading a novel is a lot of fun, but when you finish reading it becomes very sad. Alas, this is a persistent tradition of Russian satire, rather than going back to the "parody mode of narration", but to the gloomy domestic reality, for which we are all to blame in our own way. That is why I did not completely hide behind the "author's mask" so fashionable now, but brought myself out on the pages of the novel as an episodic person and without much, as you will notice, indulgence. As for the main organizer of this entire literary scam, on whose behalf the narration is being conducted, the more or less attentive reader will see that nowhere in the entire space of the novel he has never been named either by name or by surname, and descriptions of his appearance are completely absent. ... I think the meaning of this uncomplicated author's trick is clear. We live in an era when anyone can become an antihero.

HOW I BREWED "GOAT IN MILK"

When my book "A Kid in Milk" was published, I received many letters, in which there were many different questions. But, in fact, all readers were interested in about the same thing. Namely:

How did I decide to write a "literary novel"?

What did I mean when I gave the novel such a strange title - "Kid in Milk"?

What real writers did I “hide” under the names of the characters in the novel?

And is it true that I was beaten in the House of Writers by a group of angry characters from the novel?

Since, unfortunately, I am not able to answer the letters of all readers, I came up with the idea to write this preface to the next reprint of the novel, which, to my considerable surprise, became a bestseller, although no one is killed in it, and erotic scenes at least and there are, but only in the amount necessary to reveal the inner world of the heroes. By the way, this time I restored some erotic scenes removed from previous editions ...

First of all, I will answer the last question. No, I have not been subjected to any violence from prototypes either within the walls of the writers' club or anywhere else. Otherwise, dear readers, you would not have this preface in front of you right now. And this is not explained at all by the softening of literary mores (they are cruel as never before), but by the fact that in my work I confess the principle of "invented truth." All my heroes could well exist, they sometimes even resemble the existing figures of Russian literature, moreover, the story that happened to them could well have happened, but in fact there have never been such people and such events have never taken place in the history of Russian literature.

With all my might, I tried to keep future readers of the novel from false identifications. For example, the sixties minstrel Perelygin, performing his poems with a cello, in the original version bore the surname "Dust helmets", but since the thoughtful reader immediately associated this with the famous lines of B. Okudzhava about "commissars in dusty helmets" the name of the episodic character. And the problem of mistaken recognition was settled, because everyone knows that Okudzhava himself performed his poems with a guitar, and not with a cello, which, although it became a powerful instrument of democracy, is in the hands of a completely different master of culture.

The following question comes across in letters: do the poets-contextualists found on the pages of the novel have any relation to real poets-conceptualists? But after all, it is enough to compare the examples of contextual poetry I have given in the text with the samples of conceptual poetry that is widely published today, in order to easily answer this question ourselves. But since we are talking about poetry, I can tell you that initially all the events of the novel were supposed to take place in a purely poetic environment, and it should have been called like this: "Master of the lyrical ending." However, when ten years ago this story came to my mind, it pulled at most a big story, the work on which I put off and postponed everything.

To be honest, every writer is somewhat like a cucumber vine covered with many flowers, most of which will never be fertilized by the bee's diligence of a writer and will never grow to the size of a full-fledged artistic green plant. Perhaps this was the fate that awaited the plot about the master of the lyrical ending, if not for one circumstance. Many years ago, during evening walks along the famous Orekhovo-Borisovsky ravine, I told this story to my friend Gennady Ignatov. And every time after that, when I began to languish in reasoning about what to write, he pointed to me with pneumatic persistence at this half-forgotten plot. "What ?!" - I once thought, and after a year and a half the plot for a big story turned into a novel, which is also quite large in our lazy times. So, taking this opportunity, I want to thank my old friend for his fruitful perseverance!

But, by and large, the writer is just a pencil with which the era deduces the words it needs. You can feel like a fucking demiurge, lock yourself into a castle made of ivory and even a mammoth bone, but it is the era that "sharpens" you, relatively speaking, from the red or blue end and, after talking, sticks it into a blank sheet of paper. Your task is not to break under her pressure.

Allow me, you may ask, why is the unreal situation described in the novel here, when a person who has not composed a single line, a person whose entire literary baggage is in a folder with blank sheets of paper, with the help of frankly roguish tricks becomes a world famous writer? And you take a look around, I will answer. Are there few writers in the Soviet and post-Soviet literature, whose names are known to everyone, but whose books, or, as it is now customary to say, the texts we have never read, and if we tried, we very quickly ran into a dilemma: or is this nonsense, or you and I don't know a damn thing about literature.

There are two fundamental principles of the relationship between (using the avian language of modern literary criticism) the sender of the communicate and the recipient, that is, simply put, between the author and the reader. First principle: "The reader is always right." Carried to an extreme, he turns into a so-called pulp fiction: "With a soft groan, she weakened in his strong tanned hands and in a moment she felt something big and solid inside her ..." The second principle: "A writer is always right." Pushed to the extreme, it turns into this very folder of blank paper. For a writer who cannot be read is in essence not much different from a writer who cannot be read due to the "unwritten" text. We live in an era of literary reputations brazenly trying to replace literature itself.

Yuri Polyakov is not just a famous writer, but an author who is interesting to reread. His works, when published, immediately became bestsellers. They have withstood a record number of reprints, translated into foreign languages, filmed.

The Kid in Milk is a witty satirical novel about how a semi-literate Mytishchi man can be easily turned into a genius bohemian avant-garde writer.

The reader, as always, will meet in Y. Polyakov's prose fascinating plots, social acuteness, psychological reliability, light humor and sophisticated eroticism.

(excerpt from the description in the Ozone online store of the book by Y. Polyakov "A kid in milk" ("Rosmen", 2004))

HOW I BREWED "GOAT IN MILK"

When my book "A Kid in Milk" was published, I received many letters, in which there were many different questions. But, in fact, all readers were interested in about the same thing. Namely:

How did I decide to write a "literary novel"?

What did I mean when I gave the novel such a strange title - "Kid in Milk"?

What real writers did I “hide” under the names of the characters in the novel?

And is it true that I was beaten in the House of Writers by a group of angry characters from the novel?

Since, unfortunately, I am not able to answer the letters of all readers, I came up with the idea to write this preface to the next reprint of the novel, which, to my considerable surprise, became a bestseller, although no one is killed in it, and erotic scenes at least and there are, but only in the amount necessary to reveal the inner world of the heroes. By the way, this time I restored some erotic scenes removed from previous editions ...

First of all, I will answer the last question. No, I have not been subjected to any violence from prototypes either within the walls of the writers' club or anywhere else. Otherwise, dear readers, you would not have this preface in front of you right now. And this is not explained at all by the softening of literary mores (they are cruel as never before), but by the fact that in my work I confess the principle of "invented truth." All my heroes could well exist, they sometimes even resemble the existing figures of Russian literature, moreover, the story that happened to them could well have happened, but in fact there have never been such people and such events have never taken place in the history of Russian literature.

With all my might, I tried to keep future readers of the novel from false identifications. For example, the sixties minstrel Perelygin, performing his poems with a cello, in the original version bore the surname "Dust helmets", but since the thoughtful reader immediately associated this with the famous lines of B. Okudzhava about "commissars in dusty helmets" the name of the episodic character. And the problem of mistaken recognition was settled, because everyone knows that Okudzhava himself performed his poems with a guitar, and not with a cello, which, although it became a powerful instrument of democracy, is in the hands of a completely different master of culture.

The following question comes across in letters: do the poets-contextualists found on the pages of the novel have any relation to real poets-conceptualists? But after all, it is enough to compare the examples of contextual poetry I have given in the text with the samples of conceptual poetry that is widely published today, in order to easily answer this question ourselves. But since we are talking about poetry, I can tell you that initially all the events of the novel were supposed to take place in a purely poetic environment, and it should have been called like this: "Master of the lyrical ending." However, when ten years ago this story came to my mind, it pulled at most a big story, the work on which I put off and postponed everything.

To be honest, every writer is somewhat like a cucumber vine covered with many flowers, most of which will never be fertilized by the bee's diligence of a writer and will never grow to the size of a full-fledged artistic green plant. Perhaps this was the fate that awaited the plot about the master of the lyrical ending, if not for one circumstance. Many years ago, during evening walks along the famous Orekhovo-Borisovsky ravine, I told this story to my friend Gennady Ignatov. And every time after that, when I began to languish in reasoning about what to write, he pointed to me with pneumatic persistence at this half-forgotten plot. "What ?!" - I once thought, and after a year and a half the plot for a big story turned into a novel, which is also quite large in our lazy times. So, taking this opportunity, I want to thank my old friend for his fruitful perseverance!

But, by and large, the writer is just a pencil with which the era deduces the words it needs. You can feel like a fucking demiurge, lock yourself into a castle made of ivory and even a mammoth bone, but it is the era that "sharpens" you, relatively speaking, from the red or blue end and, after talking, sticks it into a blank sheet of paper. Your task is not to break under her pressure.

Allow me, you may ask, why is the unreal situation described in the novel here, when a person who has not composed a single line, a person whose entire literary baggage is in a folder with blank sheets of paper, with the help of frankly roguish tricks becomes a world famous writer? And you take a look around, I will answer. Are there few writers in the Soviet and post-Soviet literature, whose names are known to everyone, but whose books, or, as it is now customary to say, the texts we have never read, and if we tried, we very quickly ran into a dilemma: or is this nonsense, or you and I don't know a damn thing about literature.

There are two fundamental principles of the relationship between (using the avian language of modern literary criticism) the sender of the communicate and the recipient, that is, simply put, between the author and the reader. First principle: "The reader is always right." Carried to an extreme, he turns into a so-called pulp fiction: "With a soft groan, she weakened in his strong tanned hands and in a moment she felt something big and solid inside her ..." The second principle: "A writer is always right." Pushed to the extreme, it turns into this very folder of blank paper. For a writer who cannot be read is in essence not much different from a writer who cannot be read due to the "unwritten" text. We live in an era of literary reputations brazenly trying to replace literature itself.

However, this postmodern reality easily spreads to other areas of our life. We listen to singers who are devoid of voice and even hearing. Our life is determined by politicians who have not made a single correct decision in all their activities. And they are consulted by scientists who have not been noticed in any any serious research. You and I are suffering from the reforms, not even understanding what they are, and we do not understand this mainly due to detailed television political commentaries. Modern television, as it is rightly said, is an invention that allows those people who would not even be allowed on the threshold of our house to enter our bedroom. And how do you like the "rulers of thoughts", a refined creative intelligentsia, diligently performing the functions of a goat-provocateur, leading a submissive herd to the slaughter?

And is it really so fantastic in this situation the story of Vitka Akashin, kicked out of the construction site, whom two friends, in fulfillment of a bet made while intoxicated, "repaired" a world famous writer? By the way, in some letters I was reproached for the unoriginality of this plot, referring, in particular, to the well-known story of A. Averchenko. But, of course, it is most correct to refer to the notorious intertextuality, which the Russian people discovered long before the poststructuralists, saying the saying: "Bad song, unlike any other song!" Indeed, original plots, as you know, can be counted on one hand, and the conflict I have chosen has been wandering around world literature for a long time. Actually, even the "Inspector General" is about the same: "There is another" Yuri Miloslavsky ". So that one is mine ... ”But since Gogol's times, the situation has changed significantly both in life and in literature. What I mean? Here's what. Imagine that the same Ivan Aleksandrovich Khlestakov turns out to be a real inspector who "arrived at the behest of an official from St. Petersburg"! Have you presented? Isn't it very modern?

We have crossed some extremely dangerous border in our life. Actually, hence the name of the novel. The prohibition to boil a kid in his mother's milk is a taboo from the ancient Mosaic Code. There are many historical and ethnographic explanations for this commandment, but any old wisdom has a peculiarity of being interpreted broadly. And what if, having entered into a struggle with nature, we do not boil a kid in his mother's milk? And what if throwing the Russian people first into stick socialism, and then, when he softened and adapted this way of life for himself, to drive it with the same stick into wild capitalism, does not mean boiling a kid in his mother's milk? And the cultural figure who, instead of “calling for mercy to the fallen,” calls for “crushing the reptile”, meaning the part of the population deprived by the “reforms” - doesn't he boil a kid in his mother's milk?

Many letter writers find that reading a novel is a lot of fun, but when you finish reading it becomes very sad. Alas, this is a persistent tradition of Russian satire, rather than going back to the "parody mode of narration", but to the gloomy domestic reality, for which we are all to blame in our own way. That is why I did not completely hide behind the "author's mask" so fashionable now, but brought myself out on the pages of the novel as an episodic person and without much, as you will notice, indulgence. As for the main organizer of this entire literary scam, on whose behalf the narration is being conducted, the more or less attentive reader will see that nowhere in the entire space of the novel he has never been named either by name or by surname, and descriptions of his appearance are completely absent. ... I think the meaning of this uncomplicated author's trick is clear. We live in an era when anyone can become an antihero.

That's all I wanted to warn readers about. The rest, I hope, will be clear from the book. After all, as one of my heroes, the tabulist critic Lyubin-Lyubchenko, remarked: "What is the text - this is the context!"

Yuri POLYAKOV, Peredelkino-Perepiskino, March 1997