Review of Victor Pelevin's novel "Cool"

Victor Pelevin continues last year's "Journey to Eleusis", which, in turn, continued the two previous novels. In the new book, the heroes face new difficulties; they have to understand the consequences of Jesus Christ's descent into hell, visit the wind colony named after Kai and Gerda, and dive into the details of the sexual life of the most prominent Russian writer of the near future. Followed them relentlessly Mikhail Prorokov.

In the new novel by Victor Pelevin, three levels can be distinguished - virtual, ground and underwater.

At the virtual level there are those already familiar to us from the previous book - "Journey to Eleusis" - Head of Internal Investigations at Transhumanism Inc. Admiral-Bishop Lomas and his colleague Markus Sorgenfrei. For his services to the corporation, after his physical death, Marcus was awarded placement in a jar (a cerebrocontainer in which the brain continues to live), but this service must be paid, so the late Marcus has to work in the sweat of a non-existent person. Having worked in “Journey to Eleusis” first as a companion and confidant of the Roman emperor, and then as himself, and thereby preventing a universal catastrophe, in the new novel he is forced to save the world again.

He has to save the world from an evil spirit who intends to destroy the people of the Earth through an asteroid that turns up and a “rooster” named Cooker, into whom the evil spirit takes possession.

Cooker does not know how to control asteroids, but he is able, taking advantage of his privileged position, to force other prisoners to generate wind energy. And it, in turn, will create, if not a reason for the destructive behavior of an asteroid that had no previous intention of colliding with the Earth, then at least the formal prerequisites for this: such is the magic of evil spirits, just give it a reason.

In general, Pelevin does not pay too much attention to explaining the physical nature of the threat looming over the world; he is also not very interested in the mystical side: the evil spirit and the evil spirit want to use the “wedge by wedge” method to return the mesozoic, destroyed by Christ during the descent into hell (“the descent of Christ to hell and the fall of a Mesozoic asteroid are one and the same event,” well, of course, as we didn’t guess before), for the sake of decency, he needs to inhabit someone, so... The author of “Cool” is much more interested in changes, occurred in the thieves' hierarchy: almost universal microchipping and correction of “toxic masculinity” led to the fact that the law of “inverse elevation” worked in the criminal environment: yesterday’s authorities found themselves at the bottom, and pariahs took their place. But this does not mean that the new criminal elite can sleep peacefully: in addition to other authorities, the “roosters” have to fear the “hens” - the authorities of the women’s colonies.

The entire “chicken” elite burns with hatred for their male colleagues and is ready at the first opportunity to kill them for nothing, following the example of the mysterious Varvara Zugunder, an ancient blogger who became famous for her diaries, which described in detail the murders of 96 men. When the spirit possesses Cooker, he invites him to name the only person who will be able to defeat him. Kuker with a chuckle calls Varvara Tsugunder, who seems to have died long ago, but higher powers accept his answer. This means that the serial husband killer may still be alive.

This applies to the ground level. But let us remind you that there is also an underwater one. In search of clues to the riddle of Varvara Zugunder, Lomas and Markus contact her pen pal - a specialist in Russian literature, who has long found peace in a jar, but continues to meet with readers and advise those interested in the guise of either a deep-sea fish or a jellyfish. Her name is Fish (a partial coincidence with the telegram nickname of a famous contemporary critic is, no doubt, accidental) - in the last book, in a simulation of an underwater grotto, she already enlightened Marcus about the specifics of Russian literature. In “Kruti,” it turns out that she not only corresponded with the legendary killer, but also had a tender relationship with Sharaban-Mukhlyuev himself, Pelevin’s patriotic alter ego. Moreover, the classic dedicated to her both an essay included in the collected works and a chapter of the novel, prohibited by Serdobol censorship.

When reading these fragments that occupy a considerable part of “Kruti,” you get the feeling that Pelevin is finally becoming interested in writing again.

The thieves' thesaurus has been put to work by him more than once, the delights of the Mesozoic look somehow a little forced, the expulsion of the spirit appears in "Kruti" as a dangerous, but rather routine matter. But the opportunity to again say hello to the new generation and lovely ladies - yes, this still touches the writer’s heart, which has become hardened over the years. “The mother of all appropriations is when the old pawnbroker dresses up as freedom on the barricades and posts pictures of herself as a climate-conscious little girl... You think you’re progress, but you’re just a lost Halloween.”

The matter is not limited to verbal abuse - in the connection between Ryba and Sharaban-Mukhlyuev, harsh BDSM practices are present with might and main. Actually, the end to their relationship (fatal for the psyche of Pisces, but, as it later turns out, saving for the planet) is put by an episode when the classic, carried away, forgets the safe word agreed upon between the two: he is going to stop when his philologist friend says “Bakhtin,” and does not remember that in fact their password is “Yanagihara” (later on Varvara Tsugunder’s blog, this surname, well-known to lovers of American literature, will be encrypted with the message “I’m looking for someone to kill”).

This whole chain of random roll calls and fatal coincidences leads to the fact that the “chicken” defeats the “rooster”, and the world is once again saved. Was it worth it? Well-known, not new - in this “Cool” is inferior to the first “can” book, “Transhumanism Inc.”, which does not excite even the way the hero of “KGBT+” was excited by his “cut-ins”, does not captivate the author himself, as the ancient Roman realities captivated him in "Journey to Eleusis."

You could even say that “Cool” was written simply because something had to be written. But is this incentive really that much worse than any other?

In the end, Sharaban-Mukhlyuev’s grumbling is quite cute, and the love story of the writer and his Pisces is not particularly touching, but in the love - excuse me - lack of fish that came in Pelevin’s books after “SNUFF”, it is still refreshing. Well, then, what does Sharaban-Mukhlyuev himself say in his essay, telling how he somehow found an abyss of meaning in a song into which its author did not put any meaning at all? “In Russian this is called fish. A text that has no meaning and temporarily takes the place of another text. The present, which will be created later... The trick of our world is that there are no real words here. Or, what is the same thing, any fish becomes the final text for a while.”

“Cool” feels very inconclusive. Both in relation to Pelevin’s texts in general, and in relation to the world of Transhumanism Inc. But for a while—approximately a year—it becomes so: the last, as they say now, and in the correct language, the last. And because of this, something changes in her. Or let’s put it simply: great writers are worth reading not only when they write good books.