Pelevin and Emptiness – Moskovskaya Pravda

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the main hoaxer of Russian literature, Viktor Pelevin, a new, author’s documentary film by Rodion Chepel about him was released. Maria Chamberlain looked one of the first, and made sure that we do not read Pelevin, but he reads us. And that’s why.

All of Pelevin’s novels appeared at a turning point, with a change in one state, time, event and the arrival of another. He only looked into the future and described what awaits us. His first stories arose during that gap between two historical epochs, whence all the chthon gushed out, and he grasped its essence. My favorite quote by Pelevin is about TV, how to watch it correctly – first with the sound turned off, and then with the image turned off. Didn’t that happen? Does anyone else watch TV? None of my friends have been like this for a long time.

What is good about a documentary or “an epoch filmed by the date” by Viktor Olegovich P? It would be too easy to make a simple film about such an extremely difficult person, and the author of the film got out and shot it in a style that is called slipstream in literature (the novel Ice by Anna Kavan is written in this style). It consists of a mosaic of eyewitness impressions, expert analytics, graphics, animation and game episodes with elements of absurdity. And surprisingly, none of the components of this mosaic is annoying. This is very important, because individually I don’t listen, for example, to literary critic Galina Yuzefovich, or I don’t know who Rodion Chepel is, who made the film and plays the GP, I’m not interested in the scientific and esoteric intelligentsia of the 80s and what does she think about Castaneda, and Pelevin is not my favorite writer. But all together, in such a kaleidoscope and in the turn of time that has already passed since then, it tells me something new about myself and my perception of the world then and now. And although after Snaf, where he described all the immorality of television news and foresaw a war with Ukraine, I stopped reading him. Everything that he wrote before, and especially the stories, is still prophetically interesting, intelligent and accurate.

Of course, like everyone else, I read Pelevin at that time, of course I listened to Grebenshchikov, never understanding, by the way, the cult of Tsoi, for me it was too simple and straightforward, but “he who is wounded by a bright arrow is not cured” those who have not read Omon Ra in the noisy and crowded metro will not understand its universal hopelessness, those who have not lived in the electric darkness of Moscow street lamps reflected in dirty snowdrifts will not feel the metallic taste of despair in Pelevin’s prose.

I/We are Generation P and this is as inevitable as the fact that Russia is our Fatherland, wherever we are now. The fashion for the 90s of the new generation, reflecting on what they did not know, an attempt to comprehend where the reason that everything went wrong, the film, the exhibition and the keen interest in Balabanov is an example of this. And now Pelevin.

A documentary about him, but really about everyone who sees him. Everyone will have their own assemblage point of the information received.

Documentary film “Pelevin” on the KION platform from November 22.

Maria Chamberlain,