2 Essays for Essa

7. Professional minimum literary criticism

The profession of literary criticism presents practically no problems. It's within anyone's reach. Anyone with the memory capacity for a couple of magic words. No kidding. Two words will ensure you a pleasant social circle and an acceptable consumer basket in our complex world. Some people find it hard to believe, but am I even going to lie to you? Do I need it?

The first word is 'conceptual’. Phew. I understand, it sounds antiquated at first. However, after a week of training, it will start pouring out of you on its own, where you didn't even expect it:

‘Look! Look! That birdie is so conceptual!’

And as soon as it starts babbling out like it's oiled with a ton of grease, you'll have 50% of the steering wheel of any UW functionary of literary rank in your pocket. Because although each of them understands or misunderstands it in their own way, they all sense in their gut that this hard-to-pronounce thing is appraising, by default. The core of the trick is not to go into explanations; let them get it from your intonation, or with a trained sense of smell, that their conceptualism is truly top-notch. They'll get hooked alright, no escape, so will also adopt it:

‘Bro, check out the conceptual dump truck on that redhead tramp over there!’

But you know, you need a stick too along with the carrot. And the other 50%, with which you can harass a guy to death, is all summed up by the term 'secondary nature.' And no less than to a heart attack.

What, heard the jingle of a familiar bell, my friend? Huh? Well, the 'heart attack' part here is just for the sake of figurative language; you're not so stupid as to whack a hen with golden eggs. But ask this entire pen-scratching, keyboard-click-clap-clacking henhouse: what is it there about ‘secondary nature’ that scares them to uncontrollable urination? They won't answer! But they fear it more than cockroaches fear dust.

Let's say a literary critic gave out a remark to a novelist:

‘After the second chapter, your latest one smells of secondary nature.’

And that's it. And we're losing a man. He's gone nuts, depression has taken over, then binges… And what binges! Not a single Alcoholics Anonymous group wants to accept him! They're afraid, damn it, that just looking at him will break their own ties; they're human, after all. And the poor guy, carelessly knocked down by a critic, will travel to the churchyard in the supine position—R.I.P. with the rest of the saint martyrs! Another victim of that moron, the literary critic…

And what makes a Buffalo Bill out of the deadly term? What… Did I tell you to Google it? I did. But you didn't go, you lazy Qlippoth. And without a clue about capillaries, how are you going to grasp the horror of secondary-nature writing? The one that rose as a monument produced by a force mightier than human hands to a pair of experimenter thugs? C. + A., in short.

8. Algebraic Primer

Repetition is as necessary to life as rebars to reinforced concrete. For those not engaged in the creative arts, it poses no problem at all, just as, say, three meals a day are for us. Or for you. Perhaps for them too.

(Although I won't make any claims about them. It may easily be five times in their daily routine. In any case, I've experienced up to three 'shakes' of varying intensity in the space of 5 minutes. But how can you guess the meaning when they're communicating with clicks only and that wave-like 'dzz-dzz-dzz' of a silent drill within you? Was I used as food? Or, on the contrary, a toilet? It's all too ambiguous. In any case, over the next two years, I've sort of recovered… But enough of this qlippothology; I'm getting back on track for the target audience, before they scatter from the loop.)

The term 'secondary nature' fairly accurately captures the essence of the phenomenon, but it's a bit long. Typing it out on a keyboard is tiring. It's more logical to follow the path provided by algebra and replace the concept with a convenient, concise formula instead, with ‘w-i-wb’:

Double-U, Eye, Double-U, Bee.

The fear of bee bites drives the creative public to the brink of some kind of bullshit like Malevich's Black Square. For those who disagree, I urge you to fill your free time with contemplating the masterpiece, three times a day after meals.

(Aha! The ranks of aesthetes have thinned noticeably!)

And why? Simply because the unspoken goal of creativity is to prove that you're not like all that. Like, you have a special individuality sitting within you. Hence the ensuing, sometimes dire, consequences.

‘Be it even worse, but different,’ my second mother-in-law liked to repeat, quite often, and, for some reason, to me on top of it. That's why I learned this Ukrainian proverb.

Despite this, since the beginning of the Special Military Operation, I've maintained a non-interventionist neutrality, just like Sweden once did. I don't make public statements or appeals. What's the point? Those who serve the state, not the people, are only capable of doing worse.

Let's return to the act of any pair of already familiar capillaries at the 'is' point, now denoted briefly and sweetly: w-i-wb. And given that 'wb' inevitably becomes 'w', let's ask ourselves:

Question: How many rotations—that is, acts of the philosophically rotary system w-i-wb—have occurred since the revelries of C. + A.?

Answer: A hell of a lot, and more to the power of x³.

And what hope is there now for the arch-dummy lovers of novelty? Do they have any chance? The answer is in the negative.

Where does literary second nature come from? Only an extremely inattentive thinker could ask such a question. And is he even a thinker at all? The fact of the matter is that it doesn’t come out of nowhere, but is always here. Inescapable and everywhere. Jeans with torn knees on every second person. Fashion is secondary nature for millions, with its periodic revival after 10 to 15 years. Regularly.

The result of the non-stop spinning of the w-i-wb shebang

Examples of secondary nature are innumerable; they are at every step. I come to the cinema to watch an action movie or open it on my mobile phone. New! You haven't come across this one yet. But you know ahead of time that when a cabinet with a glass door flashes into the frame, it means that very soon the hero will smash it with his fist to say 'fuck!', and the dubbed one-voice translation will explain: 'damn! damn!', although the pair of smuggled in 4-letter ones was not even around.

Then the chase, of course, the gearbox clicks, the boots dance on the pedals. Sirens are howling… How do you know? Be grateful to secondary nature for being so wise. Through it you get what you yourself wanted—a feeling of deep satisfaction… Just on a different straw bedding…

But it’s not the cinema’s fault! That nit wrote the script because she had never seen anything in literature other than pieces of second nature! So that you watch the same crap and be happy again and again…

Double-U, Eye, Double-U, Bee! Double-U, Eye, Double-U, Bee!

And so in everything, for life. Try as hard as you want to invent something sophisticated and innovative, and feel like a pioneer of the wheel, but still the ubiquitous tail of w-i-wb will wag in your mind. Inevitably.

9. Anti-secondary tricks

The box of literature is immeasurably fuller than in other areas and villages, overflowing with secondary materials. Packed. They drop over the edges. And they continue to grow in their total mass, heap, and volume per capita. This is what prompted me to propose to a plasterer with a wrench turner to take a step beyond their everyday bullshit. Take a look at what the critics eat, and drink, and snack on in their literary eatery.

Moreover, there is little cunning in the literary interior. It’s just that their front door is painted with terribly conceptual graffiti to discourage inquisitive visitors. After all, they have imagined themselves as a separate caste, and so they maintain a perimeter defense against those who have not infiltrated their closed shop in the disguise of a serviceman at their venerable joint venture…

Where does secondary nature begin? From the repeating of what has been said before you.

'Where does the homeland begin?' was said before me, and I prudently put this in quotation marks. Like, yes, I know—it’s not mine, and therefore I highlighted it—as required by the laws of punctuation in regard to quotes—with complete respect, as demanded by the etiquette of the mafia, with its lawless codes.

It would seem like a trifle, those tiny bug-like quotation marks, but now not a single literary critic will blame me for blatant plagiarism. Let him try, and I’ll drag him through the courts for libel about the theft of intellectual property from strangers. Yep, with the bugs installed, I am already an honest taxpayer, a scrupulous quote-maniac, bringing to the masses gold mines that were deposited by a prospector unknown to me. Before me.

Thanks to quotation marks, I am an example of terribly crystal cleanliness. However, I don’t recommend repeating it at home—my wife will say: 'All their husbands are normal wretches, but you!…' Yes, we know, we’ve heard enough…

Let's move on. With sorrow. Past.

'I remember' is no longer a quotation here, and even if there are quotation marks, they are not for copyright protection, but for making clear that it’s a part of the disassembly ahead to check if secondary nature is present there, or if it will pass the test for unsullied virginity.

Yes and no. In the system, this combination was scrolled zigzillions of times. In literature, no one will attempt to claim the pair as their own; therefore, it is a novelty and using it is not subject to criticism.

'I remember the wonderful…' Oh-oh! It smells like something was fried, but it still keeps beyond any jurisdiction, because—

‘I remember the wonderful expression’ (Ha-ha!—here you go, critic! Suck it!) ‘in the mouth of our company’s sergeant…’

And finally:

‘I remember the wonderful moment as you appeared before me…’

That’s it, pal, you've rammed the brick wall, drain the water now. This is already a clear-cut quote from any angle. It’s already no-go without a muzzle… eh? Without quotation marks, I mean. This is plagiarism, bruh; for this, the literary critics will go unleashed to the fullest and will dump, damn, all your aggravating misdeeds to increase the concerted outcry.

However, take a look at this here too:

‘I recollect the wonderful moment…’

Quote? Plagiarism? But the mizzen mainsail into their throat! With full rigging!

Still, those crooked sharks don’t stop. They come up with a new article against your beautiful trick—'versification'! The same thing as secondary nature, only the pants are put seat-to-front (by the by, in a couple of years they will become a squeaky trend on global fashion catwalks). And through this fashionable verdict, under the article of versification, the brethren again fell into bondage to literary critics.

Writers of all continents, unite! I proclaim with manifest loudness: there does exist secondary nature, but there is so much of it that it is no longer there. Nothing else but it is besides; it has filled and exhausted all the limits there. Therefore, the task of the writer is putting the thing in a pose (i.e., to transpose the texture of the material in such a way) that he gets an enormous kick out of it. So that, re-reading, he would die with laughter, and while dying he could say to the literary critics: 'Fuck you! And I’ll fuck you on sight in the otherworld.’

10. How can a genius survive?

The question of my geniusness has long been answered unequivocally. Too much evidence has accumulated under whose pressure I'm forced to admit that yes, I am a genius. And now it's too late to change anything; I'm forced to go on living with this ancient Greek nickname.

The most indisputable sign of genius is a failed family life. It wasn't my idea, but each of my two initial (and frankly naive) attempts to create a home completely confirmed the truth of this statement.

Children were born, yes, yes, but as for 'for better or for worse, until death do us part…' that somehow didn't work out, sorry, move over. You can't argue with genius nature; it’s our inherent jaguar spots.

But it's better for my current wife not to know about this. So she doesn't get upset in advance after almost 40 years of marriage and producing three children in close cooperation. I don't think she'll be too surprised to find a genius on her doorstep. She's probably already figured it out herself. She's simply avoiding airing the topic out so as not to further inflame my delusions of grandeur. And right she is, as usual.

Medicines for any ailment are incredibly expensive these days, and I'm already a burden on her. My pension covers half the monthly rent for a one-room apartment (not including utilities), and everything else—food, clothing, internet, and so on, right down to shaving foam—is all on her, everything from her tailor's needle. And for this reason, I owe her not a lifetime, but rather more.

And herein lies the main challenge: how to compensate for the torment of peaceful (well, almost peaceful) coexistence with a genius when he himself is already gone—on the other side of the inevitable divide?

Hmm… I'm afraid even an intimate acquaintance with the Qlippoth won't help in solving the equation. But a genius, even if only occasionally, can make an effort for his own personal benefit. In his spare moments of rest while plowing for the entire human race.

So, I cast my mind back and forth regarding the problem, then picked it up, dusted it off, and—something finally glimmered at the end of the tunnel… Yes, a glimmer of a possible solution. But it rubs shoulders with the mystery of my origins on the maternal side. The business plan looks utterly non-Slavic. Too brilliant a plan for retribution. There's even some smack of the synagogue in it. The Jewish tricks in the style of the Old Testament, you know.

On the other hand, if, after two years of Nazi occupation, no traces of circumcision were found on my grandfather, then… No, it's too late. All the loose ends are in the air. But the question arises: how could I even come up with such a plan?

However, more on that later. After all, this work was conceived not only for the sake of stokers and carpenters, but primarily for that segment in our global society whose Adam’s apple jerks instinctively at the sight of a blank sheet of paper in A4 format. Although they don't know it, I promised them (as I did the plasterers), and now it's time to start from a fresh leaf, so to speak. After all…

11. Another secret revealed

Probability theory quite clearly allows for the possibility that someone, accidentally opening this book, will somehow reach this exact point in the text without the skimming or leaps of a gist-hunter. Because probability theory is full of compassion and kindness. Orphanage children often mistake it for a kind mother.

But I want to reveal a little secret not to the gullible youngsters, but to those who have somehow managed to stomp all the way down here. The fanciful meandering that’s brought you to this spot wasn't just for leisurely strolls. Far from it! There was also a cunning intent to lure the reader onto uncharted paths of personal reflection, so that they wouldn't swallow everything that floats up on the waves of lines. Like those ducks on the pond swallowing that piece of lard tossed by that Baron Munchausen, who didn't want to waste his pennies on a Yandex taxi, but instead devised a way to harness our feathered friends to deliver his beloved self to his home.

That's why I called you to cross the line, to step beyond the fucking circle where everything has already been decided for you, where your role and duty is to run in the same wheel with a squirrel. Rattle it and rat. In turn. Who on who? Let them sort it out for themselves.

Whether my underlying plot has succeeded will show on the rest of the promenade legs (but only honestly, without jogging or running!) on the way to the coveted finish line. And if you're hooked on the thrill of independent wanderings beyond the pale, welcome aboard! And it doesn't matter what color you are: bay, roan, black, or even dapple! There are no racists among writers…

Racism is the preserve of close-knit flocks, herds, and packs. A writer (as it bears repeating) is a loner; he must remain aloof. And only by fulfilling your destiny will you earn the title of TJFL and the right to wear the large round medal 'True Judge of Fine Literature', crafted from golden foil by your own hands. And you won't be fooled by yet another clown, elevated above a crowd of squirrels with their wheels. From the outside, it's clearer. They know nothing of what they're doing. Nothing of where they're trotting to…

12. Choosing a Target

Now, finally, even I understand why I started all this mess.

Well, of course! Get good at staging literary criticism of any text, and then, once you've acquired that sort of skill, you can easily grab any bull by the horns and use them as free equipment for boosting your literary IQ, which I'm pumping up at the 'Bodybuilders Without Borders' gym. Also for free, as a part-time janitor there.

So, fellow cabinetmakers, how about we sandpaper this or that m-b writer? Yeah, no problem! We’ve got slews of them.

But then a sudden thought stopped me: what's going on? Have I developed some kind of addiction to trampling on our own? Or can't we find abroad an m-b writer deserving a good rap? Seems to me, in a jiffy! They're just like other people out there, and we can use any for our ‘bitch!’.

(First of all, 'bitch' isn't a swear word, but an exclamation that really helps with the press and jerk. Hard to believe, huh? Ask any muscleman at any gym. If you're not afraid, of course. They're unpredictable, you know. I asked one something today, and how many weeks I'll have to wait for an answer—only the barbell knows.)

Take this dude, for example, whose last name alone is enough to stir up trouble. Some pronounce it ‘PalanEEk’. Beautiful! A ring of echo from interstellar voyages. Yet, a close look at the letters in his name says to me: ‘PalanyOOk’. (Which brings him closer geographically; the dude’s of Zhitomir roots, no doubt.) Good news: they both share the same name—Chuck. Well, hello there, C. P., let's figure out your true self!

Chuck Palahniuk literally burst onto the American literary scene on the eve of the wild '90s. His Fight Club is still remembered, as well as the movie of the same name: Action! Action! Action! High-rises are collapsing from explosions (too bad the soundtrack didn't include the Zveri band screaming, 'Blocks! Neighborhoods! I'm going out in style!'), and Brad Pitt is gnawing on the barrel of a Luger shoved into his throat. The countdown is on, from nine to absolute zero. And it's still unclear what will happen first: the final gunshot or the entire high-rise exploding, while Brad keeps sending his charming smile back through the barrel.

Well, how's that for a hook? Got you?

It's no wonder Chuck's bestseller has become a bedtime story for a couple of generations. True, real boys of America don't quote it like a couple of previous generations used to show off their quotes from The Godfather. Because Chuck doesn't just stack things in your head to be used at a moment’s notice. All he dumps there is Action! Action! Action! — it's blazing.

Since 1996 (the year the globe was infected by the aforementioned product), decades of fruitful effort have passed. A stack of bestsellers, a ton of awards. Chuck is a symbol of success, the American Dream embodied. For true art lovers, he's as recognizable as the Ford brand logo inside an oval wheel. Forty years of tireless work have given him every right to sit in an armchair by the fireplace and tell a story or two about his fifth or tenth fellow writer, not forgetting his own beloved self. This is precisely what this venerable master of literature has filled yet another of his books with…

From such an exquisite, I would even say sophisticated, annotation, many have already guessed (except for the literary-squirrel-crits from the UW) which book I'm hinting at here. Yes, yes, and again—yes! Chuck Palahniuk, Consider This, 2020!

For even in the distant overseas, in the land of victorious democracy, in the 50 states that have become home to a rabble of immigrants from all over the world, there are people who care about the fate of literature at the complicated crossroads of today's historical process…

(By the way, anyone seeking a New Year's address for a clown placed against the right wall at midnight? You've already guessed who to order it from. Right, dear compatriots?)

13. Resisting the Temptation of Ornithology

In Consider This, the author generously opens access to his personal secrets of the craft for a modest fee – $9.18, or 590 rubles in Russia. (In 2020 prices and exchange rates, of course.)