The boy went to rest – Newspaper Kommersant No. 181 (7382) of 09/30/2022

The new novel by Viktor Pelevin is destined for increased attention of readers and critics, and not only for the witty title “KGBT +”: this fall, it seems to many that literature can tell them something, even, perhaps, teach them. What the illustrious guru teaches in his new book, realized Mikhail Prokov.

The novel by Viktor Pelevin was published just when many are already waiting not so much for Pelevin’s book as for the end of this world. But those who were still waiting for Pelevin, it seems, were ready to leave the tiredly condescending tone that has become familiar in recent years and listen to the author of “iPhuck” and “Empire V” no longer as a slightly reported stand-up comedian, but almost as an oracle who finally tell what will come of it all.

It’s funny that “KGBT +” turned out to be a novel about a stand-up artist. KGBT+ is his creative pseudonym, for those close to him he is Kay, at birth he was named Salavat (the author makes the required number of jokes about the dialectical unity and struggle between fat and cotton wool). He is not quite, of course, a stand-up artist – rather a coach or even a preacher of the American rollicking type, but at the time in which he lives, his occupation is perceived as an art, and a variety one at that. Time is the same hypothetical future as in Transhumanism Inc.: everyone has implants in their brains, many have nothing but the brain – life in the physical body has come to an end, but big money and (or) merit in front of the world elite helped them put their brain in a jar with a special liquid and live in a virtual body. So the beaters – that’s what the hero and his colleagues are called – do not just make faces on the stage, but, connecting to the brains of the audience, broadcast the texts there directly along with the thoughts they contain. The goal is reached if the listener has experienced something like insight, the stronger the better.

The path of young Salavat to the big stage was tortuous and difficult, he had to serve in the special forces and use prohibited methods for illegal enrichment in a casino located in the basements of the former Moscow City (about why in the future he will be called Sito, reader deigns to find out for himself on the pages of the book), and, finally, to receive the attention of a powerful producer, married man Lucefedor. At first, it seems that we have another upbringing novel in front of us – such as Empire V, Batman Apollo or The Caretaker: the young hero will be taught the mind by people who are somehow involved in secrets. But this is only the first part of KGBT +, where completely different characters act. Salavat-Key, on the other hand, masters the art of punching surprisingly quickly – already his second composition (the third, if we consider the first improvisation at the audition with Lucefedor) elevates him to the top of the charts, and then the reader does not unfold before the reader the story of growing up, but the story stated in a seemingly parodic annotation success: the KGBT+ beater, “known throughout the planet as a titan of performance and spirit”, “gives a lot of memo-advice to a young performer aiming for victory” and “tells in detail the story of the creation of his masterpieces”.

In fact, the masterpieces – four punches – if they do not constitute the main ideological content of the book, then they serve as the main cherries on this, as usual with Pelevin, a complex pie. The third and fourth compositions are considered the main masterpieces: “Catastrophe” – about the death of God, reflected in Andersen’s (it’s not for nothing that Kay, he’s Kai, but his assistant, of course, is called Gerda) troll mirror, and “Letitbism” – on Pelevin’s favorite the theme of “let everything be and let you not be in the observed”. The second was devoted to vaccination, the topic of the first, at the audition, Lucefedor determined virginity. “Virginity … is effectiveness! – Salavat, who made his debut in front of the audience, got out of the situation (Lucefedor virtually multiplied to imitate a concert hall). “When you do something for the first time, only then do you do it for real.”

The narrator does not recall more about this bright idea (unlike the Catastrophe and Letitbism that formed the basis). But it is no secret that many critics (the author of “KGBT+” also, of course, fired back at them, but somehow on duty) have long been interested in the question: does Pelevin himself remember this? What is experienced by a person who transmits two messages to the reader from book to book: 1) the mind is incapable of knowing the truth (if only because of the non-existence of both truth and the mind); 2) is there truth, has the author comprehended it and will reveal it to you exactly in this book? This is not about the fact that these messages contradict each other a little – this is not a problem at all, rather, even dignity; we are talking about the fact that the author may well begin – we quote the same punch – “to repeat the familiar route, trying to advance in the same tracks.” And this would not be a problem – but you get tired of it faster. Simply put: isn’t Pelevin already tired?

Improvising an ode to virginity, the hero, as you might guess, finds an answer that fits into the context of the author’s ideas: “… In fact, we always do everything for the first time, because the world changes with us.” The world is really changing – in the year that has passed since the appearance of Transhumanism Inc., it was quite difficult not to notice this. Did the author of the second book about the end of the third millennium manage to react to this with virgin efficiency?

The first half of the book tends to answer this question in the negative. The text of the same insert about vaccination seems to be a greeting from the distant past. Then, finally, the impatience of readers, waiting for edifications and interpretations, begins to be slowly satisfied: “… You can’t go to goodness and light over human corpses – neither by the vigorous pace of reforms, nor by tanks. You can only go over the bones to the bucket.” Then a virtual Good Russian appears, made by American prison authorities to reason with Russian prisoners: “His name was AIPAC SHAKUR. He was half Negro, half Jew.” Well, at the very end, Pelevin, with unexpected persistence, sends an Easter egg to another famous writer, a supporter of a special military operation (in the KGBT + world, the euphemism “V-word” is accepted).

But Easter eggs are Easter eggs, and the changing world deserves, of course, a more careful attitude. Or at least just someone else. With this in “KGBT +” everything is in order. If in the book before last by Pelevin, the heroine, after hesitating, still allowed the world to live, and in the last one, the heroes were too busy with themselves to pass judgment on him, then in KGBT +, the author, having chosen another author as the hero, peers into the world with the exacting gaze of the artist – and does not find kind words for him: “Everything that is happening now has already happened many times … And there is no less cunning meanness in the world. On the contrary, it mutates, marks itself with signs of indisputable goodness and becomes invulnerable.” Does this concern a talented master of embossing? No, the master of embossing has been in the bank for a long time, but “everything is clear with the jar. He is where his thoughts are, and not where his brain is … Is it possible to have an emigration more internal (and final) than leaving the material world to your gray matter?

And at the very end – almost personal self-certification, atypical for Pelevin: “For peace to come, he needs a bouncer who knows how to work with visitors. So I am such a gatekeeper – and at the same time such peace.

In general, starting as a naive kid going to success, the hero of Pelevin’s new novel ends up as a hermit, wise with experience and wisdom of Zen generations.

Not the worst, frankly, the result for the artist of the pop word. But for some reason, I recall the previous, eleven years ago, Pelevin hero-writer, Colonel Savely Skotenkov from Al-Efesbi Anti-Aircraft Complexes, who made cars suffer and thereby awakened their souls, who ended up in the same American prison, but ended up not in exchange for Khodorkovsky (Kay escaped that way), but with an electronic lobotomy. In the story about a Russian officer who wrote funny texts and fought in the Afghan desert with NATO drones, there is a phrase that any era has its own future, which, of course, never comes, but says a lot about the era. Skotenkov, who was born somewhere near the beginning of perestroika, was captivated by the future that the people of the 1960s imagined – “the most touching of all national self-deceptions.”

Is it possible to imagine a young man of the future who will be captivated by the future that is presented to us today? And did the author of Transhumanism, Inc. and KGBT+, by drawing this future, to help prevent it, or at least reduce the chances that it will be just that… transhuman?

Most likely, yes. But more than once I have heard about inquisitive minds who investigated something that seemed terrible to them at first and gradually fell in love with the objects of their research. This can apply to communism (the case of Alexander Zinoviev), and cannibals, and viruses.

And to the canned future.

Viktor Pelevin. KGBT+.— M.: Eksmo, 2022.