Long list of “Big Book” announced

At the announcement, fifty names explained how great literature works

On April 26, a press conference was held in Moscow, at which the long premium list of the Big Book was announced. Listing fifty-one names of contenders for prizes in a short note is inappropriate. What is worth quoting, however, are the speeches of experts who, in general, outlined the main lines along which great Russian literature will move—and is already moving.

BK can be congratulated on a good start in 2023. Even now, looking at this list of eminent and conditionally “beginning” writers, one could predict who will reach the final. Vasily Avchenko, Olga Anikina, duet Pavel Basinsky – Ekaterina Barbanyaga (Basinsky – last year’s winner), Yuri Buida, Evgeny Vodolazkin, Oksana Vasyakina, Mikhail Kvadratov, another duet – Evgeny Popov and Mikhail Gundarin, Roman Rubanov – the stars in this constellation are very close to each other, and in astronomy such proximity makes it difficult to determine the brightness.

But much more interesting than the calculation of favorites and their names, I found the statements of the experts of the award. For example, the chairman of the expert council, prose writer, poet and playwright Dmitry Danilov, said that there has been a “tendency towards the past”, when “biographies of famous people, historical novels and memoirs” are nominated for the award.

— Modern literature actively and thoughtfully works with the past. I would not like to give an unambiguous assessment of this – this is neither good nor bad. But, probably, there is a request for this, and the literature reflects this request. Literature is a reflection of what the thinking part of society thinks about.

The critic Valeria Pustovaya Danilova expanded her thought by saying that, when it comes to historical issues, our prose shifts attention to the present, and this present “defines itself, collecting from what it knows about the past. It turns out a paradox: the past is what undoubtedly was. But, recognizing the past, we always recognize it in part. And since everyone chooses something of his own in the past that he wants to make part of the future, “the truth about history is inaccessible to either the hero, or the city, or the people.”

Actually, this was the explanation why significant works of leading authors should not be expected to be “actual” and continue the conversation about what is being discussed on talk shows or in the news.

It seems that Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy created the main novel of Russian literature from 1863 to 1873, based on the events of the Patriotic War of 1812 (!) On the last pages, he barely got to 1820. And it never occurred to anyone to advise the classics to turn to the present (although, in fairness, Tolstoy wrote Sevastopol Tales about the contemporary Crimean War).

So the writer and philosopher Yevgeny Abdullaev, who spoke at the ceremony of reading the Long via video link from Tashkent, urged not to look for “reflections of the news feed” in the books from the list. Remembering that in 2022, claims were made to the award: “Where are the current events? Where is ours today?”, Abdullayev uttered a phrase that can be printed on the openings of school literature textbooks: “Serious literature does not work according to the principle “in the morning in the newspaper, in the evening in the verse”.

In addition to all this, Yevgeny Viktorovich emphasized that voluminous books have been written for more than one year and are not published immediately, so the book year 2023 is an echo of 2019 and earlier years.

Does a writer have the right, because he is a witness to something epochal, to compose an epic in hot pursuit, say, about the events in the Donbass? Of course, it can, since literature is not the observance of rules and not their fundamental violation, but the establishment of new ones. However, even Zakhar Prilepin was nominated (or was nominated as a nominee, I don’t know the details) for BK with documentary prose about Mikhail Sholokhov. And Russian literature will move along this path for the next few years, if not decades.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29020 dated April 27, 2023

Newspaper headline:
Soon only books will be born?