Street Art in Russia
What's it like, former comrades, living in Russia following the collapse of the glorious Soviet Union?
One sure-fire way to find out is to read German Sadulaev's 2008 novel, The Maya Pill,
where we join Maximus Semipyatnitsky, an office worker, a middle-aged
middle-manager for a frozen-food import company in St. Petersburg, who
must deal with a carton of pink pills having Alice in Wonderland
properties that the Dutch have accidentally slipped into their shipment
of potatoes.
German Sadulaev provides much detail, laced with
satire, relating to middle-manager Maximus and his everyday office life.
However, in typical Russian epic fashion, Mr. Sadulaev expands out to
explore profound metaphysical questions and compresses down to the
deepest, darkest existential regions of Maximus's tormented soul. Ah,
those Russians!
The Maya Pill has it all: social and
cultural commentary aplenty as Maximus juggles his visions of Britney
Spears and other Pop icons, dreams of his Khazar ancestors where he
himself is a Khazar hero, pops hallucinogenic pink Dutch pills (oh, the
places Maximus will go!), toils for his employer, Cold Plus, has a fling
with the Goddess of Sex, Spring, and Fertility - and even does battle
with Satin himself.
There's one particular humongous howler -
The Red Banner Chorus serves as Maximus' wake-up call, blasting so loud,
the music wakes up the neighbors in his apartment building who complain
by banging on the water pipes. Oh, the bitter irony of listening in the early 21st century to a
recording of that rousing communist song sung with full open hearts
(here's a link where you can watch and listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh2mF...).
The pride of the singers and tears of the audience make abundant sense
when we think of their parents, their grandparents, their
great-grandparents spending decades toiling in fields as peasant-slave
farmhands locked into lives with no more freedom than a farm animal.
The
Red Banner Chorus plays on as Maximus and his generation have been
tossed out of the fortress of communist ideology and into a cultural
sub-zero post-Soviet Siberian tundra to fend for themselves. Lots of
luck, people! Oh, well, you can dream of getting a middle-management job
where you can drive back and forth to the office. But what happens,
when, like Maximus, you realize that dream office job is nothing more
than a pile of crap, the play of maya?
The Maya Pill is a
lively philosophic satire that will bring to mind Vladimir Voinovich,
Victor Pelevin and Vladimir Sorokin. Special thanks to Dalkey Archive Press for publishing and Carol Apollonio for her excellent English translation and insightful Afterward. For lovers of fine literature, highly recommended.
Russian-Chechen author German Sadulaev, born 1973
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