The quieter the world freezes, the more they write about it.
Everyone has forgotten about events, late dinners, ceremonies, openings, presentations, overseas vacations and even a wide celebration of the New Year - to a certain extent, there was an event crisis.
But literature is a phenomenon that flourishes precisely in constrained circumstances.
And suddenly, this very year, the loudest and most unexpected ceremony of presenting the country's main literary prize "Big Book" took place.
First, this time the list of finalists included 13 books and 15 authors - two books were co-authored.
Vasily Avchenko and Alexei Korovashko wrote a biography of the excellent Russian writer and geologist "Oleg Kuvaev: A Story of an Unregulated Man", and Georgy Arosev and Yevgeny Kremchukov, remotely, as it should be now, wrote the novel "Division by Night" - one of the authors lives in Berlin, the second - in Cheboksary, but who are now hindered by distances, they have been canceled.
So, there are 15 finalists against the usual seven or eight.
It turns out that last year they wrote more books worthy of the final than usual.
It should be recalled here that in 2020, books are evaluated, which, as a rule, were written in 2019.
I wonder how many finalists will turn out based on the results of this year, which has almost been experienced by all of us?
And what kind of books will they be?
Second, for the second time in the fifteen-year history of the award, the votes were recounted because, when voting, the difference in points between potential winners was too small to be convincing.
This is how the votes of the jury consisting of one and a half hundred members of the Literary Academy were distributed, which, for example, includes oligarchs, bankers, journalists, publishers - in general, respectable people.
Third, of course, no one expected such a result.
Nobody could have predicted that these books would receive the country's main literary prize.
These are the books that are more for critics and other writers than for readers.
The third place went to the novel "The Former Lenin" by Shamil Idiatullin.
Everything is clear here - this is a clear, topical novel with a harmonious plot and a bright, recognizable texture.
The novel is about the girl Lena, who lives in modern realities - poisonous small towns and dumps in the family, where people cannot agree on which dirty politicians to sympathize with them, and therefore how to raise children.
At some point, it turns out that everything that was Lenino is no longer hers, but the past.
Further important is the story of the heroine overcoming these circumstances.
The story is not just slim, but at the same time fashionable and timeless.
The second place - glued together like a giant patchwork quilt, formally scattered, but united by the talent of the author, the text of the poet Timur Kibirov "The General and His Family".
These are thousands of reflections and memories gathered together - which, it should be noted, is characteristic of Kibirov's poems (you can, for example, recall his nostalgic poem about the fortified chatter "Solntsedar").
All this is extremely witty, but, perhaps, has a specific character: it is something for our own people, for those who understand, although it is quite easy for perception.
For example: “The aunt who went down in history, who said that there was no sex in the USSR, was, of course, wrong, and she meant, the poor girl, most likely pornography and prostitution, and not conscientious childish debauchery, which Soviet citizens indulged in with might and main and citizen ".
Here you need to understand the context, but who doesn't understand it?
The first place went to Alexander Ilichevsky with his novel Newton's Drawing.
Very conditionally, the plot of the novel - it is far from alone - can be described approximately like this: the hero-physicist goes to Israel to find his father, but is looking for God and, in addition, visits the Pamirs, Nevada and Moscow.
Hundreds of episodes are united by two phenomena: the invented by Ilichevsky hero and the love invented by Ilichevsky to describe something for a long time and wordy, finding pleasure in the details that overlap each other, taking the reader not even from where they started, but from that turn , where the thread of the story was lost, three hundred lanes of Jerusalem.
This is a book that critics, literary academics, and fellow writers must love.
This is, in general, a paraphrase of an old anecdote: “Colleague, have you read Ilichevsky?
- No.
And you?
"And I asked first."
Quote from the novel: “Sitting on the ridge of the train in front of the current, like banks along the river, the landscape, looking at the terrace hills covered by the evening steam, at the elephants leaning over armfuls of chopped branches and at the children waving from the rapids, for the first time, we discussed the working idea that would keep me busy for the next few years. "
Here, a rude person like me might say that the only thing relevant to action is that the heroes have discussed a working idea.
But now there are no prizes for action, the reader is offered to rise to the level of initiates.
What is the surprise of these results?
And the fact is that the prize also provides for a popular vote, as a result of which the first prize was received by Mikhail Elizarov's novel "Earth".
As everyone expected.
Because "Earth" is a real, detailed, dynamic, interesting Russian novel for the reader.
The hero goes through initiations typical of Soviet and Russian people, such as a pioneer camp, the army, a bandit showdown, work in a cemetery.
And it becomes clear that he must belong to a special kind of people - to the high-grade Masonic clan of real diggers.
It may seem that the novel is dedicated to death, but in reality it is dedicated to the place that death occupies in life, to the fact that any life leads to death in one way or another.
This novel has everything - complex symbolism, heroes that you want to sympathize with, and heroes that you want to flee from, sound philosophical reasoning, descriptions of deep and ceremonial Russia, human destinies and complex problems of choosing a life path.
But what one wants to read, it turns out, cannot be rewarded.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.