Hey guys, really impressive analysis, speaking as a Russian and a someone who's read a bunch of Pelevin, you're very much spot on with regards to many aspects of the book, some of which I hadn't even thought of before until I heard your podcast.
I have a couple of notes though, in no particular order:
1. You are not appreciating enough the magnitude of the event that was the dissolution of the Soviet Union. That was a truly formative experience for 200+ million people, _especially so_ for the generation that was only just entering the adult life, the 20-30 yrs olds. One day you were out there working in your lab, or in your factory, or your workshop, and the next day you find out that your country no longer exists, your lab is defunded, your savings are worth shit, and your next salary is in a form of rubber boots (if that's what your factory was producing). I'm not even mentioning the actually violent stuff, the century-long sleeping grudges along the national borders of the former republics, you can read up on history of the Caucasus later. In Russia alone, tens of millions of people woke up one day to find out their life, in every single aspect, is going to be irreversibly changed, and not in a good way. Early 1990s in Russia were absolute chaos, crazy, crazy times.
2. One characteristic photo of the period, which no doubt served as an inspiration for some of the stuff in the book: https://cs8.pikabu.ru/post_img/big/2016/08/30/6/1472549789164958307.jpg — the building in the background is the building of the Government (colloquially known as "The White House" around here), it's covered in dust/tar after the events of 1993, when some actual tanks shot it up, and the billboard in the foreground depicts an ad for LM with the tagline "A date with America". Can't make this shit up.
3. My impression of Pelevin as an author is that he's a pretty serious Buddhist and a somewhat unserious esotericist. So I interpret the exercises in esotericism, like the Sumer mythology parts in Generation P, as a form of author's self-entertainment. I think, and this is a totally amateurish opinion, he simply likes to put us, the readers, into these little rat mazes with no actual exits, just for the sake of doing so or maybe as a vehicle for the story. I might be wrong, and there's something else to it, but that's my impression after familiarizing myself with large parts of his corpus. The Buddhist bits, however, are very serious, it's quite obvious from his other works that Pelevin thinks a lot about the questions of existence, conscience and such — thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking.
4. Ad business. You're right to observe that Russians have had no actual experience in ad production and we had no actual working theory of what an ad is or what it should be. However, at least some of those weird / hallucinatory / nonsensical ads were actually produced by the big western names. One of most iconic ad campaigns was for the Imperial Bank, produced by none other than Timur Bekmambetov, who went on to become a director / producer with some recognition in the West. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5NKw6i3Ldo (turn on subtitles; Tamerlan ad around 4:00 is my personal fav)
5. Fifth-legged dog Pizdec (Phukkup). I guess with the current events you could definitely claim that it is us, Russians, we are that dog causing havoc everywhere, although back then I've interpreted it as a play on the cruelty and sheer destruction that is the history of Russia. From a revolution into a war into another revolution into a world war 1 into a civil war into a stalin's cleansing into another world war into a cold war into afghan war into a coup d'etat into a chechen war into another chechen war, you get the picture. There's this old Chinese curse, "may you live in interesting times", for anyone born in Russia that's, like, Tuesday. (personally, I'm sooooo tired of living the history, man)
6. There's a film adaptation of the novel by Ginzburg, I consider it to be quite decent. Last time I checked, it was available in Apple store and maybe someplace else. Don't touch the more recent Empire V movie though, it's complete crap.
7. Pelevin's works got quite commercialized after ~2010, he publishes a book a year and the quality is very, let's say uneven. My personal favorites of his are "Chapaev i Pustota" (Chapaev and Pustota / Buddha's Little Finger / Clay Machine Gun) — very hardcore Buddhist novel in the historical setting of Russian Civil War, and also a short novel called "Omon Ra" — that one is probably the easier one to crack.
8. If you still have the stomach for more Russian stuff, I can't not recommend Sorokin's "Sugar Kremlin" — very different author, but often placed in the same category as Pelevin for being ever-prescient, if very dark. Well, that's Russians for you people, we have Dostoevsky as a part of the middle school course.
This one was not published by us. We do one podcast episode each month, usually published around the first weekend of the month. We announce the book that it will be on about 2 weeks before on our social media, so be sure to follow us there if you want to read ahead for future episodes.
Yes, that's exactly what I would want to do. Must read the book before listening to the discussion. Need to time to order and read it.
I followed on Twitter. Don't see an announcement on future books. Maybe you can create a Substack post about the next book so that we can easily be notified and post comments about it.
Hey guys, really impressive analysis, speaking as a Russian and a someone who's read a bunch of Pelevin, you're very much spot on with regards to many aspects of the book, some of which I hadn't even thought of before until I heard your podcast.
I have a couple of notes though, in no particular order:
1. You are not appreciating enough the magnitude of the event that was the dissolution of the Soviet Union. That was a truly formative experience for 200+ million people, _especially so_ for the generation that was only just entering the adult life, the 20-30 yrs olds. One day you were out there working in your lab, or in your factory, or your workshop, and the next day you find out that your country no longer exists, your lab is defunded, your savings are worth shit, and your next salary is in a form of rubber boots (if that's what your factory was producing). I'm not even mentioning the actually violent stuff, the century-long sleeping grudges along the national borders of the former republics, you can read up on history of the Caucasus later. In Russia alone, tens of millions of people woke up one day to find out their life, in every single aspect, is going to be irreversibly changed, and not in a good way. Early 1990s in Russia were absolute chaos, crazy, crazy times.
2. One characteristic photo of the period, which no doubt served as an inspiration for some of the stuff in the book: https://cs8.pikabu.ru/post_img/big/2016/08/30/6/1472549789164958307.jpg — the building in the background is the building of the Government (colloquially known as "The White House" around here), it's covered in dust/tar after the events of 1993, when some actual tanks shot it up, and the billboard in the foreground depicts an ad for LM with the tagline "A date with America". Can't make this shit up.
3. My impression of Pelevin as an author is that he's a pretty serious Buddhist and a somewhat unserious esotericist. So I interpret the exercises in esotericism, like the Sumer mythology parts in Generation P, as a form of author's self-entertainment. I think, and this is a totally amateurish opinion, he simply likes to put us, the readers, into these little rat mazes with no actual exits, just for the sake of doing so or maybe as a vehicle for the story. I might be wrong, and there's something else to it, but that's my impression after familiarizing myself with large parts of his corpus. The Buddhist bits, however, are very serious, it's quite obvious from his other works that Pelevin thinks a lot about the questions of existence, conscience and such — thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking.
4. Ad business. You're right to observe that Russians have had no actual experience in ad production and we had no actual working theory of what an ad is or what it should be. However, at least some of those weird / hallucinatory / nonsensical ads were actually produced by the big western names. One of most iconic ad campaigns was for the Imperial Bank, produced by none other than Timur Bekmambetov, who went on to become a director / producer with some recognition in the West. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5NKw6i3Ldo (turn on subtitles; Tamerlan ad around 4:00 is my personal fav)
5. Fifth-legged dog Pizdec (Phukkup). I guess with the current events you could definitely claim that it is us, Russians, we are that dog causing havoc everywhere, although back then I've interpreted it as a play on the cruelty and sheer destruction that is the history of Russia. From a revolution into a war into another revolution into a world war 1 into a civil war into a stalin's cleansing into another world war into a cold war into afghan war into a coup d'etat into a chechen war into another chechen war, you get the picture. There's this old Chinese curse, "may you live in interesting times", for anyone born in Russia that's, like, Tuesday. (personally, I'm sooooo tired of living the history, man)
6. There's a film adaptation of the novel by Ginzburg, I consider it to be quite decent. Last time I checked, it was available in Apple store and maybe someplace else. Don't touch the more recent Empire V movie though, it's complete crap.
7. Pelevin's works got quite commercialized after ~2010, he publishes a book a year and the quality is very, let's say uneven. My personal favorites of his are "Chapaev i Pustota" (Chapaev and Pustota / Buddha's Little Finger / Clay Machine Gun) — very hardcore Buddhist novel in the historical setting of Russian Civil War, and also a short novel called "Omon Ra" — that one is probably the easier one to crack.
8. If you still have the stomach for more Russian stuff, I can't not recommend Sorokin's "Sugar Kremlin" — very different author, but often placed in the same category as Pelevin for being ever-prescient, if very dark. Well, that's Russians for you people, we have Dostoevsky as a part of the middle school course.
Cheers.
Thank you very much for your reply! We're glad you enjoyed and appreciate your thoughts and insight.
Is this book published by antelope hill?
What is the next book? Where do they notify?
This one was not published by us. We do one podcast episode each month, usually published around the first weekend of the month. We announce the book that it will be on about 2 weeks before on our social media, so be sure to follow us there if you want to read ahead for future episodes.
Thanks for the reply.
Yes, that's exactly what I would want to do. Must read the book before listening to the discussion. Need to time to order and read it.
I followed on Twitter. Don't see an announcement on future books. Maybe you can create a Substack post about the next book so that we can easily be notified and post comments about it.
PANDA PANDA PANDA