vladimir sorokin

The time has come for me to write a literary essay and answer a question asked by my rarified

russian readership ( all 2 of them ) what are all these grotesque russian things i put in my blog ,

what sort of delirium they represent and where they come from! The truth is that

I never think that anybody actually reads any of it and so i never even bother saying anything

about them., specifying the author...etc.
Most of those essays have the distinctive characteristic of the absolute immunability of its ideas and its idioms, descriptions of incapability of dealing with contemporary life or of making visible and palpable the simplest aspects of creatures and things, they are basically absurd..and yet quite brilliant in their own way!
No, they are not written by Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky or Checkov .., Turgenev, Gogol or Solshenitsyn, not even by Bulgakov or Nekrasov...And here is a well kept russian secret: most Russians have never read War and Piece and use that brick to kill flies and other parasites and I suspect that in rural areas they may use this masterpiece instead of toilet paper due to lack of alternative sources.

The great heroines of russian literature, all these Natashas, Sonyas, Annas and Katushas

put the russian reader to sleep due to complete absense of sex and glamour in their lifes,

and I shall not even bother with all the "kitchen moralism" and religious dogmas that dominate every single book written in the old country by those immortal masters!

So , in my opinion, the only prosaist worthy of attention is...Vladimir Sorokin!

I know some of you will understand..and that is he, who is the author of some passages in my blo

my shrooms and peach pie I made today out of the juiciest colorado palisade peaches

Sophie in Paris

Всё, чего касался ты, казалось

Не таким, как было до тех пор,

То, что разрушал ты, — разрушалось,

В каждом слове бился приговор.

Одинок и часто недоволен,

С нетерпеньем торопил судьбу,

Знал, что скоро выйдешь весел, волен

На свою великую борьбу.

Miranderize the dude

From the Guardian: "No one is crying over the rights of the young man who is accused of killing innocent people, helping his brother set off bombs that were loaded to maim, and terrorizing Boston Thursday night and Friday. But the next time you read about an abusive interrogation, or a wrongful conviction that resulted from a false confession, think about why we have Miranda in the first place. It's to stop law enforcement authorities from committing abuses. Because when they can make their own rules, sometime, somewhere, they inevitably will."
As a practical matter, it would be hard to believe that a smart 19 year old who grew up in the US has never seen a cop show or has never heard of Miranda rights. If that's the case, then the good teachers at Cambridge Rindge & Latin who so admired his intelligence and athletic skill really let him down. In principle, of course, the authorities should read him his Miranda rights. I'm touched --touched!--by the Guardian's concern for US legal procedure. Perhaps that high tone allows them to forget that a member of their own Parlement was starved to death in captivity, or that Tony Blair, along with Bush, remains a war criminal. I guess they've also forgotten how their beloved London bobbies police iced an innocent guy on the bus after that horrible attack in 2006. So much for King's rights. Even though it's kind of mainstream media and all, I'm as interested in the terrorism that turns runners' legs into hamburger meat and that kills an year old child and a grad student who was Chinese, and therefore presumably not tainted with the primal sin of being American. The death of innocents bugs me, whether they are Chechen or Americans. But, speaking personally, I'd be glad if Tamerlan is sucking pus off Satan's left buttock right now, because if there were any justice in this sorry universe that's exactly where he'd be with his brother soon behind him. But hell yeah, read him his rights

America my beautiful - great view from around my house in Boulder Colorado after the snowstorm yesterday

Barn Rules

If you unlock it, lock it back
If you open it, close it
If you borrow it, return it.If you don't know, ask.
If you drive it, check the oil.
If you lose it, replace it.
If it doesn't concern you, don't mess with it.
If you turn it on, turn it off.
If you break it, fix it.If you move it, put it back.
If you throw it down, pick it up.
If you ride it, feed it.
If it drinks water, give it some.
If you fall off, get back on.

...Back at the hotel, he strips and I gobble two of my fortuitous codeine tablets. I know what my duty is. Whithin an hour, I'm in that sparkling night gallery made of little explosions of codeine. It blots out most sociological details surrounding our situation, leaves only his hard , shadowy body inexcplicably laid out for me, dappled by the streetlight piercing the gaps in the heavy curtains. This is a funereal, or should I say vampiric, scene. I fall to my knees in the darkness because I know that to worship his abjection is to drink at the fount of cultural doom and play at entangling my fate with his. He's a door out of of the repetitive banalities of North American capitalism.His penis plunges into my throat like an eel into inky water. ...

From "The Romanian" by Bruce Benedrson.

My Furry Sophie!!!

Я не владел тобой и вряд ли овладею...
Случайный бар, знакомство и вино.
И это все. Я, право, сожалею,
Что видеться нам больше не дано.
Но как чудесно, что воображенье,
Живя в душе избранников искусств,
Порой такое дарит наслажденье,
Такую остроту и свежесть чувств,
Что я вчера в распивочной дешевой,
Где хмель, густея, закипал в крови,
Тянул и мямлил, но, на все готовый.
Сходил с ума и бредил от любви.
Ты понял все... - не в этом дело!
Ведь полчаса, украдкой, словно тать,
Я видел губы, видел твое тело.
Дарованную
встречей благодать.

Caractéristiques du 43 rue Saint-Denis

Уж климакс близится а Германа всё нет.....( зто был последний репортаж перед отъездом обратно в америку с улицы сан дени)

middle age passions

Did you ever witness the gradual and horrifying developments of the middle age passions?
Those mature love-affairs where one partner goes onblowing hot
When the other has already started blowing cold,
Where age forces the amorous pair to indulge in Grandmotherly caresses and
in Grandfatherly embraces whose tenderness is not only restful but also gives rise, so to speak,
to interesting feelings of remorse about a vague sort of incest...

The 8 of March

The 8 of March

Tomorrow is The 8 of March - The Soviet Woman's Day!


I will never forget how Thierry Marignac, the self-appointed "expert" on everything Russian, particularly russian women, was explaining to Tim what kind of a holiday this is! Its when all Russian mooshiks that beat and treat their wives like shit all year long, remember all of a sudden that they are men and exactly on That Day, they take a shower, put on clean socks, run out to buy flowers and behave themselves.
I almost fell off my chair hearing this, since I know for a fact that our Russian boys are way more galant and a 100 times more fun that the frogs will ever be! Happy 8 of march!