Despite its title, this book doesn't speak about entomology. Not in its common terms, at least.
Six years have passed since I've read "The life of inseDespite its title, this book doesn't speak about entomology. Not in its common terms, at least.
Six years have passed since I've read "The life of insects". In the meanwhile Viktor Pelevin, who was considered one of the best contemporary novelists of the so called "new Russian generation" has been forgotten by many reviewers. Unfortunately for him there has been a new wave of angry, young and often attractive teenagelike Russian novelists to talk about. Pelevin who's in his fourties looks like a dinosaur.
On the Italian edition of this book there is an absurd line who calls Pelevin "a cybernetic Nabokov for our times". That's pure nonsense.
The Life of Insects is definitely an astonishing work of genius. Pelevin's insects have human beings, they behave like people, they spend their holidays in Yalta in a postmodern version of the fin-de-siecle and bourgeois scenario chosen by Checkov for his famous "Lady with the little dog" tale.
There is plenty of social satire against the Russian habits, decadence, corruption and neverending bureaucracy in this book and it's expressed with a very good writing technique. If you want to have an interesting portrait of a changing Russia caught in the late 90s, you have to read other works of this novelist, like "Babylon", but this one is the best book Pelevin has ever written.
This book is the key to understand Pelevin. We're talking about a talented author who fills his novels with a thousand elements coming from Russian popThis book is the key to understand Pelevin. We're talking about a talented author who fills his novels with a thousand elements coming from Russian popular culture, literature, poetry, politics, history and much more. His pen often dances on the narrow line between geniality and presumption.
At a first glance Omon Ra could seem a tale about the Russian space programme. Then it becomes clear that Pelevin has no intention to show historical accuracy. His aim is above all to satirize with an astonishing black humour several aspects of Russian decadence.
The narrator and main character of the book, Omon Krivomazov, has a dream: he wants to land on the Moon. From his childhood, he has always built spaceships in the air, thinking to interstellar journeys and science fiction. He will find his way to the space, for the reason why his country needs men like him: numbers rather than astronauts.
Pelevin creates a stunning allegory of Russian space travels age, emphatizing on tragicomical aspects such as the importance of a dumb propaganda, the dramatic lack of technology and financial resources and the annihilation of individual thoughts through the concept of heroism....more
For a short while I tried to find and define my own literary style. Wow, how ambitious it sounds!
And yet at the moment I give up with that idea. ThereFor a short while I tried to find and define my own literary style. Wow, how ambitious it sounds!
And yet at the moment I give up with that idea. Therefore my short stories are still derivative and boyish. If I will ever write something good in my fourties or fifties there's a little chance those early stories receive posthumous honours and bad reviews. Be prepared guys.
Anyway, a couple of years ago I was fascinated by the concept of "skaz", a kind of writing developed by two Russian novelists: Mikhail Lermontov and Nikolaj Leskov.
I have to confess that part of my interest for this literary style was related to its weird name which resembles the slang word "scazzo" in Italian. This word has no positive meaning and it's quite difficult to translate properly. Let's say that "scazzo" happens when you are sick and tired of doing something and you pay no attention to it, behaving in a passive way. It's the typical sensation someone felt during teenage years.
Well, Nikolaj Leskov's interpretation of skaz has convinced me just for a few pages. Then boredom has won. I won't explain why this novel has disappointed me. It would take too long. I just say that as for Lermontov, Doblin and Landolfi (who wrote the Italian translation of this book) Leskov is not my cup of tea. Sip it and tell me if it could be yours. ...more
We were told how planet Earth turns on its axis day by day, drawing an elliptical orbit around the Sun once a year. Well, this is something.
Yet, bothWe were told how planet Earth turns on its axis day by day, drawing an elliptical orbit around the Sun once a year. Well, this is something.
Yet, both time and space may stand on a line, potentially leaning toward the infinite, but actually aiming to a specific moment in which everything will end. Somehow.
"The Yellow Arrow" is a neverending train tracing out that horizontal timeline, having a past, a present and even a future in its wagons. It runs to its fate. May it be a broken bridge, may it be oblivion. "The Yellow Arrow" is a community of people not caring that much of the lands they are crossing, unaware of their movement, unhopeful of their destination. Their greatest aspiration is trying to have a wider view on their enclosed universe, fantasizing about its head and tail. They believe in myth.
Who drives "The Yellow Arrow"? Apparently no one. And yet the train goes. Who lives in "The Yellow Arrow"? Disillusioned human beings with Russian names, patronymics, habits. Who cares about "The Yellow Arrow"? Not the people living along its route, outdoors, in another world.
This is a sublime and profound satire about contemporary Russia. ...more