Summary of the “Oprichnik Day”
Sorokin definitely abuses the reader’s trust: Moho, Samsp, Marog, Bti and Shma have not yet disappeared from memory, but Potiks, Wax, Baldochay, Erokh and Samosya are already on their heels, and this is not the next echelon of the “brothers of Light” – from the monumental “Trilogy of Ice” was left only a thawed puddle, – but, God forgive me, the oprichniks.
The weekday of the main character, Andrei Danilovich Komyagi, begins with the fact that his “mobile phone” is ringing. Ringtone – three impacts of the whip, moans and sobs in the gaps – indicates the inclinations of the nature of the host’s apparatus, which are confirmed in the chronicle of the next 24 hours to the fullest. Pressing the dog’s head on the bumper, the oprichnik goes to gnaw out and sweep out sedition; in return, he has the right to count on unimpeded passage to the Kremlin, the percentage of operations connected with customs clearance,
Sorokinskaya Russia in the late 20s of the 21st century looks like Durgin’s imagination with his “new oprichnina” and the authors of the “fortress Russia” project. Shocking for the adherents of the idea of progress, the country is organized according to the medieval model: monarchy, class division, corporal punishment, official status of the Church are restored; The citizens were burned voluntarily. Someone described the situation may seem gloomy, but it is difficult to qualify “Oprichnik Day” as an anti-utopia, because those ideas about the social processes that Sorokin projects into the future can not be called pessimistic. In the end, the “totalitarian state” in Russia is a tautology, so what can you put your nose on? no no. on the contrary, the era of Ivan the Terrible is not so much Eisenstein as Gaidai, a textbook for comedy. So in the future, modeled after the sixteenth century, it’s more fun than scary.
It’s a very funny novel, and the funniest thing is how it’s written. It’s hard to say why
Western radio voices – those in general mate retell the content of “Crime and Punishment.” Is it funny? Still it would not be funny.
“Day of the Oprichnik” is a real, old-sacred Sorokinsky hit, in the same playfulness that “Hearts of Four” and “First Subbotnik”. This is predictable, user-friendly. impeccably corresponding to the expectations of the public Sorokin – regardless of whether she is sick of her speech activity “kaloed” or she admires his “narrative variety.” It’s Sorokin, who finally turned the ignition key to the left and stopped flashing in the side mirrors of the reader, irritating him with his speed capabilities and the unpredictability of the trajectory. However, he certainly would not approve of this kind of metaphor; “elegant literature,” one of the characters of the Oprichnik Day says, “it’s not a motorcycle for you,” and there’s no doubt that we hear the author’s voice here.
Yeah, those days have passed when Sorokin appeared as a rider of the apocalypse in a futuristic helmet, which, pressed against the fairing, runs across the counter to, let us say, the literature of the future; the present trishaw, on a feathery couple, stuns in the extreme right row, hilariously wobbling, happens, and along the roadside, and even along the ditches, no, you can not blame him for violating the speed regime.
The novel entirely, for one hundred percent, consists of gags-classic Sorokin’s, time-tested gags: an indispensable homosexual scene, a mischievous group rape, a heated debate about an allegedly well-known, a foul play, an excerpt – “turn,” a visit to a variety show, consisting of enchanting rooms, a three-page narcotic hallucination, finally joke self-mutilation for the altered Soviet song “Let’s drill each other’s feet – and on the long journey, for many years.” “We lower the drill under the table, turn it on and try to get into someone’s foot from one time.” You can stick in just once. “
So “Oprichnik” is a linguistic fantasy? Hardly, describing the new Sorokin, it is necessary to focus on the theme “Sorokin and language”; it seems that the language itself no longer causes Sorokin to inflow blood to the cavernous bodies. The goal of “elegant literature” is now tickling, a comic effect, and it is not the language itself that clears up (the truth trickles out), but the people who regulate it; and Sorokin, who was previously supposed to say that he “demonstrates the totalitarian nature of the language”, now, having changed his helmet to a pensioner Panama, demonstrates only human stupidity – yes, the stupidity of his compatriots, with their amusing inclination towards a totalitarian form of self-organization; they are people – a source of absurd and comic. “Day of the Oprichnik” is an excellent comedy – a cheerful story with a plot,
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