“This is me, Eddie” Limonov in brief summary


A young Russian poet, Eduard Limonov, will emigrate with his wife Elena to America. Elena – a beauty and romantic nature, fell in love with Eddie for his, it seems to him, an immortal soul and for his sexual abilities. Edichka and Elena are very fond of having sex, they do it under any circumstances, say, during Solzhenitsyn’s television show.

However, very quickly Elena is bored with a beggarly emigrant life, she begins to get rich lovers of different sexes and does not take poor Eddie to her entertainment. Eddie continues to love Elena, he is not even against her lovers, if only she continued to sleep with him. Elena does this less and less often, and Eddie, in complete despair, tries to cut her veins, tries to strangle Elena, and soon the spouses begin to live separately.

Eddie receives a “welfare” – allowance in the amount of two hundred and seventy-eight dollars, lives in a tiny room in a dirty hotel, which, however, is located on one

of the central streets. The circle of his compelled communication consists of emigrants – weak, lost, crushed by life people who believed in American propaganda and found themselves in a humiliated state in America. Eddie stands out from these people with her love for expensive and fancy clothes, to which he spends almost all his money.

He tries to work in a restaurant with a baseball, an assistant to a waiter, – among people in this profession it is customary to drink after customers from glasses and eat off the meat snacks from the plates. Eddick also does this, but soon leaves the work unworthy of the Russian poet. Later, he sometimes works as a loader.

All his thoughts are still occupied by Elena. “Though bitches, though adventurers, even bandits, but all my life together.” Why did she abandon me? ” Here and there he meets in huge New York, the traces of his love: for example, the letters “E” and “E”, scratched with a key on the elevator door in a hotel.

Eddie undertakes several attempts to change her life, and it is quite traditional for a Russian

writer: to be able to teach in any of the countless American educational institutions, and the attempts are rather fantastic: she proposes herself as a companion to a rich lady who published an advertisement in her newspaper about finding a partner for travel.

Edichka is a leftist, sympathizes with all the anarchist, communist and terrorist movements, believes that the world is unfairly organized, that it is abnormal when some people are born poor and others are rich, and hopes to join one of the combat organizations and take part in some other event, revolution. On the wall of his room hangs a portrait of Mao. Meanwhile, he goes to the meetings of a modest Labor Party, but they seem too boring to him.

In search of new sexual partners, Eddie understands that, since “women are disgusting”, it’s time to master the man’s love. He gets acquainted with the rich elderly homosexual Raymond, they have a mutual attraction, but Raymond recently had a new lover, and Eddie is not sure she can give Raymond what he wants, a gentle great feeling. However, Eddie’s desire to lose this kind of innocence comes true soon enough. Staggering at night in some suspicious areas, he meets a black guy sleeping in the ruins, almost certainly a criminal, throws himself into his arms. And the next morning, while lying in his hotel, Eddie thinks that he is “the only Russian poet who managed to… deal with a black guy in a New York vacant lot.”

Eddie also has other lovers: another black Johnny, a Jewess Sonia and an American Rosanna, but he still can not forget Elena. He sometimes meets with her, and every meeting responds in his soul in a hell of a pain. On the fifth anniversary of his acquaintance with Elena, he finds himself in a house where she cheated on him, and this bitter coincidence forces him to forget himself with beer and marijuana until unconscious.

Eddy’s best friend is New York. On his high heels, he can bypass the day of three hundred New York streets. He bathes in fountains, lays on benches, walks in the heat on the sunny side, chatters with beggars and street musicians, watches children, visits galleries: he enjoys the rhythm of the great city. But for a second Eddie does not forget that somewhere in this city lives his Elena.

It periodically erupts aggressive desires: steal Elena, ask a medic friend to extract from her womb a spiral that protects her from pregnancy, rape her and keep her imprisoned for nine months until she gives birth to a child. And then bring up the child that gave birth to a beloved woman.

In her unbridled thoughts about Elena, Eddie comes to the conclusion that she is still a child, she does not know what she is doing, she does not understand what kind of pain she is capable of causing people. And that someday she – never really loving – will understand what it is, and the one who she will pour out all this accumulated love will be happy.

But by chance, Elena’s diary gets into Edik’s hands, from which he learns that she understands much that she pities him and scolds herself for such ruthless behavior, and it turns out that she understands something, but that’s not the point, but the devil knows what.


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“This is me, Eddie” Limonov in brief summary