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368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
‘Tonight I’m going to snort something. And read Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Envy me, rips laowai. Not yours, Boris’
‘Ni hao, my dry moth. To put it generally—everything is getting started, rips ni ma de. Your warm little Boris has gotten himself set up pretty well in his concrete zhichang—I’ve met everyone. The geneticists: Bochvar is a ruddy, prolix Russki with about a dozen marmalon plates around his lips, Witte is a gray German, Marta Karpenkoff is a corpulent woman with a history of TEO-Amazonianism who loves: clone-horses, old-hero-techno, aeroslalom, and conversations about M-balance. Fan Fei is a cheerful man from Shanghai of about your age. He speaks impeccably in both Old and New Russian. It’s obvious that this great zhuan men jia is getting along nicely in gen-eng (the L-harmony of his gait is more than 60 units on the Schneider scale). I discussed the dominance of Chinese blockbusters with him. He couldn’t care less about tuding, of course—But you really are a huaidan, ni ma de.’
“There it is. On the bookshelf. Between Babel and Borges. I already let you lick it, you bastard. Did you forget? No, you pig. One doesn’t forget such things—”
“Then let’s begin, rips ni ma-de-fuck-er! You’ll be the first to shake—”
“Shit, connard de merde . . .�� with a sigh, he fell back onto the pillow smeared with his lipstick and mascara. “If there’s shit in the morning, then there’ll also be shit in the afternoon. Total shit.”
“Makeup,” Stalin ordered in English. A very plump woman in the uniform of an MGB major carrying a small case appeared in the room, sat down next to Stalin, and began to put his face back in order.
‘Hello, mon petit—my tender bastard, my divine and vile top-direct. Remembering you—such infernal business, rips laowai—is heavy—This is my curdy, ephemeral brain-yueshi, plus your festering minus-posit. It’s old blood that’s splashing around inside me. My turbid Heilong Jiang on the oozing banks of which you piss and shit—your FRIEND is having a hard time without you. Without your elbows, your gaovan, your rings. Without your final yelp—squeak: wo ai ni! Rips! I wanna drain you off. Sometime soon? OK.’
‘An M-balance of 28. Unsettled behaviour, automatism, PSY-GRO, yang-dianfeng. Frequently emits guttural noises, sniffs at her right shoulder and other objects. In the cell: a bench of vulcanised rubber (South Africa, 1900) and a glowing orb that floats freely around the room. Her erregen-object is bones from a male Neanderthal coated in liquid glass. Is this description too dry, my golden-eared hangkong mujian? Keep reading. After all, you’re a HERO-KÜNSTLER, rips choude xiaozhu. Nabokov-7.’
‘Remember: “An excess of sweetness generates mucus, obesity, dampens heat, the body fattens, the appearance of diabetes, goiter, and rmen-bu.” Don’t give in to soft sugar, I’m seriously warning you. I’m sending you the text produced by Akhmatova-2. During the script process, the object didn’t become at all deformed. Just heavy bleeding: vaginal and nasal. The object eventually proceeded into a state of accumulative anabiosis. If this creature survives for four months and accumulates two kilograms of blue lard, it will be our top-direct and the triumph of GENRUSSMOB.’
‘When I get back (forgive the hushuo badao), I’ll ask you more tenderly: “What is it that’s so M-unpleasant in Chekhov-3’s text, my little xiaotou?” And you, rips shagua, will answer my question with a question, as usual: “What is it that’s so L-pleasant in it?” And I, Boris, shall not give you an answer.’
‘In its place is a new vocabulary, a free-floating grammar of debasement and ecstasy. But one need not stumble into the trap of nihilism. Even Sorokin’s most debauched episodes can be understood as camouflaged bids for transcendence. Each is a challenge, an incitement to change. He reminds us of our scandalous freedom.’ — Dustin Illingworth (New York Times)
“Please don’t use Russcenities like that in my presence,” I said as I scanned him.
“You’re a danhuang?” he asked.
“I’m a danhuang,” I replied.
“Jiu jing nin shenme shi hou neng zhun bei hao ni?” Bochvar bared his nacreous teeth.
“Tchu nian xing tchi ri xia yu shi,” I lit up.”
‘Labelling his stories “binary bombs” due to their bipartite structure, Sorokin began them with a straight-faced mimicry of dry, middlebrow Soviet prose. Then, midway through, he “detonated” this discourse, the depictions of Soviet banalities splintering into scenes of phantasmagoric violence, overflowing with libidinal energy and the convulsions of living language. Sorokin’s attempts to unearth the obscene substrate of Soviet “metaphysics” from beneath the dreary surface of its “physics”— reading the “winds of time” and sculpting speculative visions of the future. These temporal “optics” are the keys to understanding Sorokin’s work, for they lie at the heart of his understanding of the metaphysics of his native land. As he has stated: Russia is the ideal place for alternative histories. This is because no one in our country, from the president down to the lowest bum, has any idea what awaits us. Without a doubt, this is El Dorado for any writer. This is Russian metaphysics. I’ve said it many times: our lives oscillate between the past and the future. We do not feel the present. Either we reflect on how wonderful things used to be, perhaps how awful, or we attempt to guess at the future by divining the messages hidden in our coffee grounds.’ — (Ben Hooyman, LARB)
‘There shall come a time when no moshujia shall be able to save you from losses and disappointments. Remember what it says in the Tao-te Ching: “By moderation one can be generous.” I’m sure that the great Lao was writing about love, rips laowai. In our doubtful age, it’s very easy to paint the rhinoceros. It is much more complicated to sculpt a little soldier out of prostate pus while still being an ethically conscientious being. I wish you bright dreams, my babe of rare tenderness. And quiet thoughts concerning my prostate.’
‘Now to be VERY serious: I love you unconditionally, just as I love my own spleen, but if you don’t take care of these scribblings, I will turn you inside out and, on each and every one of your internal organs, will write its Chinese name in Russian with black Japanese ink.
Think about that, rips hushuo badao. Boris’