Pelevin generation n analysis. The functionality of the language game by Viktor Pelevin

480 rub. | 150 UAH | $7.5 ", MOUSEOFF, FGCOLOR, "#FFFFCC",BGCOLOR, "#393939");" onMouseOut="return nd();"> Dissertation - 480 RUR, delivery 10 minutes, around the clock, seven days a week and holidays

Shulga Kirill Valerievich. Poetic and philosophical aspects of the embodiment of “virtual reality” in the novel “Generation “P”” by Victor Pelevin: Dis. ...cand. Philol. Sciences: 10.01.01 Tambov, 2005 158 p. RSL OD, 61:05-10/1081

Introduction

Chapter I Ways to embody virtual reality phantoms in the novel “Generation “P”” Viktor Olegovich Pelevina 21

1 Polysemantics of the title of Victor Pelevin’s novel “Generation “P””. Definition of virtual reality

2 Simulacra: “creativity” and “creation” in V. Pelevin’s novel “Generation P” 44

3 Criticism of “positioning” as a philosophy of life in post-Soviet society 58

4 Mythopoetic aspect of the novel “Generation P” 73

Chapter II Artistic means of depicting virtual reality in Victor Pelevin’s novel “Generation P” 88

2 Functionality of the language game by Viktor Pelevin 102

3 Intertextual means of exposing simulacrum reality 115

4 Compositional techniques for creating an esoteric myth in Victor Pelevin’s novel “Generation P” 129

Conclusion 142

List of used literature 146

Introduction to the work

Victor Pelevin is one of the brightest artistic personalities in the literary process of the 1990s - 2004s. The writer’s work fits organically into modern literature, which is determined by such a characteristic tendency as the synthesis of different styles.”

Viktor Olegovich Pelevin became one of the popular Russian writers in the early 1990s. His works were first published in magazines under the heading “Fiction”. These were the first stories (the fairy tale “The Sorcerer Ignat and the People” (1989), “The Reconstructor,” “The Prince of the State Planning Commission” (1991), “The Tambourine of the Upper World” (1993) and the stories “The Recluse and the Six-Fingered” (1990), “The Blue Lantern "(1992). The writer's novels "Omon Ra" (1993) and "Generation P" (1996) showed the author's clear desire to philosophically comprehend modernity, as they were distinguished by the freshness of their vision, wit and satirical focus of the image.

Most researchers declared the work of Viktor Pelevin to be postmodernist, although this modern prose writer, in our opinion, does not fit into the strict framework of only this direction.

Criticism defines the modern historical and cultural situation as “non-literature-centric,” since supposedly fiction in our time is no longer the main focus of ideas, hopes, hopes, ideological models, and the writer has ceased to claim the role of a prophet and teacher in beginning of XXI century, when a new term arose instead of “reader” - “consumer of literary products,” meaning a person with a different cultural experience and intellectual outlook. The modern “culture consumer”

1 Modern literature, according to most scientists, is in a “productive” crisis. Literary studies is also in crisis and is not getting help, to use the words of I.N. Dry, “support” methods and trends: postmodernism, post-realism, post-romanticism and others, since the essence of artistic processes lies in the synthesis of various trends observed

raised since childhood by audiovisual media of mass communication, unfortunately, will give preference to remakes rather than novels by Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. One of the reasons for this is that the literature of the 19th century affirmed mainly the values of humanitarian progress. This enlightenment faith in progress was lost by the end of the 20th century, like other traditional axiologies, so readers do not find the undeniably high values of classical literature established in our reality. There have been significant shifts in the picture of the world, in the concept of man, in ideas about the role and tasks of the artist, which are reflected in the works of postmodernism.

“It cannot be said that Russian postmodernists do not dream of a national revival, but they consider its main condition to be the overcoming of authoritarianism of any kind, liberation from utopias - both social and transcendental, “postmodernization” of consciousness and the unconscious. They place their emphasis not on religion, but on culture. Postmodernists deconstruct the project of the Spirit (including the Christian metanarrative), which meets with the rejection of people with a worldview of the traditional religious type. But it is precisely the postmodern reorientation towards the cultural interpretation of the religious coding system, the rejection of the linear principle when approaching history, that serves as a known counterbalance to the growth of fundamentalism , which today is perhaps the main danger for humanity."

A researcher of modern literature must also take into account the fact that if realism and modernism were disdainful of the stereotypes of mass consciousness (defining them as vulgarity), then postmodernism discovered that it is these stereotypes that shape the reality in which we live. It is necessary to distinguish between mass “low”

words are everywhere among all artists.

literature that exploits these cultural and artistic stereotypes (and, at best, creates new combinations of them), and literature in the true sense of the word, which addresses the essential problems of existence. Victor Pelevin, whose work is not of equal value, in his best works strove for the same traditional goal of Russian literature - to develop a metaphysical plan. He "groped" Eternal values in the elusive simulacrum reality, which he doubted main character novel “Generation P” by Vavilen Tatarsky.

Postmodernism gave literature a new dimension, expanded its horizons, and at the same time confronted writers with extremely complex tasks: acquiring multidimensional, nonlinear artistic thinking on the scale of entire cultural and historical eras, mastering all types of style, combining an artist and a philosopher (historian) in one author , literary critic, cultural scientist, etc.), search for means to recreate the plurality of truth, modeling virtual worlds, a qualitative update of literature, the intellectual level of which must correspond to immeasurably more complex ideas about the world. Tasks that postmodernists have essentially just begun to implement and have not realized them in their entirety. Perhaps these are indeed tasks ahead for an entire cultural era, but the work of Viktor Olegovich Pelevin is most directly related to them.

The threat that could cause the “end of literature” is associated with the development of computer virtual reality technology, the capabilities of which leave cinema and television far behind and open up prospects for the creation of interactive art. The viewer, introduced into computer virtual reality, turns out to be a participant in the film, who watches, experiencing the same

6 experiences, as in life itself, chooses at its own discretion various options different scenes and thus creates new versions of the film. The impact of interactive art is enormous.

“Interactive art is wrapped in swaddling clothes,” but it is precisely this art that is being written about today as the art of the future. According to Viktor Erofeev, literature still has a chance to withstand this new competition: “The only way out for the continuation of literature is the creation of such a text when it is included in an interactive connection with the reader’s consciousness. The reader himself models the meaning of the text, starting from himself and in this modeling, revealing himself and exposing himself.<...>In fact, there is a splitting of the energy of the text, which is deprived of its one-dimensionality and survives due to fertilization in the reader’s consciousness.”

Literature will not survive if the main ethical and aesthetic categories are absorbed into the text as virtuality, that is, “never” realized, but a real possibility. Currently, literature continues to be in close contact with technology. As you can see, this process cannot be avoided: further computerization is expected, and the end of book culture is predicted.

Just as with the advent of the printing press, book products replaced handwritten texts, today the computer floppy disk has replaced the book. The computerization of literature undoubtedly affects both the nature of reading and the nature of creating works. The variability of different versions of the text being read increases an incalculable number of times. The text has lost all stability; it can be played out in a new way every time. Postmodernist literature is, of course, more ready for such a transition.

Much convinces us that postmodernism is not only

“noisy rain”, but also a bridge to the future. “We still have to “go forward from postmodernity, and not backward...”, states Viktor Erofeev.

Mikhail Epstein writes about postmodernism as a new phase in the development of literature, although starting from the previous one, but closely related to it: “Postmodernism was a reaction to utopianism - this intellectual disease of the future, which affected the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. The future was thought to be definite, achievable, feasible - it was assigned the attributes of the past. And so postmodernism, with its aversion to utopia, turned the signs upside down and rushed towards the past - but at the same time began to assign to it the attributes of the future: uncertainty, incomprehensibility, ambiguity, an ironic play of possibilities.” The work of Victor Pelevin is somewhat different from general postmodern trends, according to most researchers, in its affirming pathos.

Considering that among “today’s newest writers,” Pelevin has the greatest right to claim the role of, if not “ruler of thoughts,” then still a literary leader for his share of the “reader’s pie,” K. Kedrov, traveling “in the labyrinths of the latest prose,” singles out they contain Pelevin’s novel “Chapaev and Emptiness”. As a result, the researcher has the opinion that Pelevin, of course, will find understanding among readers. "Literary Gazette" called Pelevin a "popular writer", I. Rodnyanskaya - an "excellent writer." M. Lipovetsky puts Pelevin on a par with the authors of postmodern cultural and aesthetic orientation: D. Galkovsky, V. Sharov, Z. Gareev, A. Slapovsky, A. Korolev, the specificity of whose prose, according to the researcher, he defines as “artistry”. S. Kornev goes even further and places Pelevin in world literature next to H. L. Borges, J. Cortazar, C. Castaneda, partly F. Kafka and

G. Hesse: “This is accessible, fascinating and extremely clear philosophical prose with a touch of mysticism and otherworldliness, easy to understand and with concentrated content.”

The publication of the next work caused a large flow of articles of an evaluative nature. Let us note that this approach to Pelevin’s work was the most widespread before. An attempt at a deep analysis of Pelevin’s texts is carried out, perhaps, only by S. Kornev, but he also moves away from a specific analysis of the text and determines Pelevin’s place in the modern literary process and classifies his work as a special “school”: Russian Classical Post-Reflective Postmodernism. The researcher states that “nobody writes now the way Pelevin writes.” Not everyone agrees with the categorical nature of this statement, but one cannot help but pay attention to the obvious features of Pelevin’s prose, which allow us to speak of its vivid originality.

The need for a deep analysis of V. Pelevin’s prose is also indicated by another “loud” statement: L. Rubinstein writes about Pelevin’s claim “not to “good”, but to “new” prose, based on other, extra-literary technologies [software]. The same idea is confirmed by B. Dmitriev, who writes that “at the end of liberal reforms, real literature about modernity appears, strange and ambiguous, like our life.”

One can further quote the polar assessments “exposed” to Pelevin by critics, so that the conclusion about the absence of a single point of view would be even more convincing. There is only one certainty: huge interest in Pelevin’s prose. The popularity of this author among the mass reader is evidenced not only by the circulation of his books. Pelevin's novels and stories have been translated into many European languages, as well as Korean and Japanese. For his collection of short stories, The Blue Lantern, he was awarded the small Booker Prize in 1993. In 1997, the novel

“Chapaev and Emptiness” was also nominated for a major Booker Prize. In the same year, he brought the author the main domestic “fantasy” award “Wanderer”. In 1998, Pelevin appeared on the pages of The New Yorker magazine, one of the most authoritative publications in the world of literature, on the list of the six most promising writers in Europe. A. Genis writes that Pelevin is part of world literature“not as a Russian writer, but as a writer simply - this is the best that can be.” In 1999, they already talk about him as a performer (whether good or bad is another matter) of some cultural role.

But popularity, as we know, cannot always be the reason, much less the justification, of scientific interest. Pelevin's popularity is not limited to the mass reader; he is also not spared the attention of the so-called “elite reader”. Such “diverse” popularity speaks of the demand for cultural phenomena at the end of the century this kind, requires serious scientific study and, therefore, an explanation of the origins of such a phenomenon.

Although V. Pelevin became known in the early 1990s as the author of science fiction works that evoked many critical responses, basically the reviews boiled down to a reaction to the extraliterary aspects of the writer’s work and his behavioral strategy. Among such reviews, one should highlight the more “aesthetic” reviews of R. Arbitman, D. Bavilsky, A. Nemzer on the novels “Omon Ra” (1992) and “The Life of Insects” (1993). " According to researchers, early stories, novels, demonstrated the main trends in the development of this author’s prose and made clear his desire to create a number of paintings with varying degrees of authenticity modern life and consciousness. At the same time, the writer postulated

1 Arbitman, R. Victor Pelevin. Omon Ra. Tale. Banner. 1992. No. 5 / R. Arbitman // Lit. newspaper. -1992. - No. 35 (August 26) - P.4; Bavilsky, D. School of the new novel / D. Bavilsky // Nezavisimaya Gazeta. - 1996. - September 7. - P.7; Nemzer, A. Mr. Lomonosov’s objections to entomological

variability of views on the surrounding reality.

Reviews of the novel Chapaev and Emptiness, which appeared in 1996, turned out to be more mixed. A. Genis characterized it as a literary work that widely popularizes the Buddhist worldview, and correlated the conflict of the novel with the system archetypal images And mythological motifs, I. Rodnyanskaya, V. Kuritsyn, S. Kornev, D. Bykov 1 noted the freshness of the writer’s approach to influential modern dichotomies and myths, the fascination of the plot, the courage in handling some “literary conventions.” In turn, S. Kuznetsov, P. Basinsky, A. Arkhangelsky, N. Alexandrov developed the thesis about the failure of V. Pelevin as a prose writer in view of Low quality and the obvious opportunism of his texts.

The writer’s novel “Generation P” (1996) aroused particularly high reader interest and for this reason the maximum number of publications appeared in periodicals. I. Rodnyanskaya, S. Kostyrko, A. Roiphe defended the merits of this work by V. Pelevin, pointing to its innovation as the reason for its rejection by most critics. However, even A. Genis and V. Kuritsyn admitted the “underdevelopment” of the novel and the author’s excessive focus on the reader’s tastes. Perhaps there were almost no neutral points of view, with the exception of the position of L. Pirogov, repeatedly reproduced in his publications, including those dedicated to V. Pelevin.

A. Genis considered Pelevin the best “singer of virtual reality”: “Pelevin is a poet, philosopher and writer of everyday life of the border zone. He inhabits the junctions between realities. At the place where they meet, vivid artistic effects arise - one picture of the world,

Mr. Pelevin's studies: Victor Pelevin. Life of insects. “Banner”, 1993. No. 4. - P. 16. 1 Rodnyanskaya, I. This world was not invented by us / I. Rodnyanskaya // New world. - 1999. - No. 8. - P. 39; Kuritsyn, V. Russian literary postmodernism / V. Kuritsyn - M.: 2000. - P.25; Kornev, S. Clash of voids: can postmodernism be Russian and classical / S. Kornev // New lit. review. - 1997. -№28. - pp. 244-259; Bykov, D. “Blue Lantern” under Booker’s eye: [About V.’s prose

11, superimposed on another, creates a third, different from the first two. A writer living at the turn of the era, he populates his stories with heroes living in two worlds at once.”

Sergei Kornev, in a lengthy review “The Clash of Emptiness: Can Postmodernism Be Russian and Classical,” notes that although “formally, Pelevin is a postmodernist, and a classical postmodernist not only in terms of form, but in content...”.

In another article “Guardians of Dichotomies. Who and why doesn’t like Pelevin among us” S. Kornev emphasizes “that pain points Pelevin's are the same as those of the Russian classics, except that they are packaged somewhat differently, in relation to a different cultural environment. The main theme of Pelevin’s work is the hero’s self-knowledge in a situation of “bad reality”, when there are social storms and cataclysms around or the dominance of sleepy, dead souls" And this problem is solved entirely in a classical manner: through the primacy of spirit over matter, transcendental values over the lures of material existence. What is it that adherents of classics and high spirituality don’t like? Only that Pelevin is relevant, that the sermon that is in his books is addressed specifically to the conscience of our contemporaries, and not to the conscience of Pushkin’s contemporaries. S. Kornev emphasized: “However, if we ignore the Buddhist and virtual exoticism, the main ethical idea of Pelevin’s texts is the same one that Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and after them, many thinkers of the beginning of the century unsuccessfully tried to convey to their contemporaries. This is the idea that the source of all troubles is not social disorder, but moral inferiority, underdevelopment of personality, inability to live a full life inner life, - an inevitable consequence of which, in turn, is

Pelevin] / D. Bykov // Capital.-1994. - No. 7. - pp. 57-59.

general social disorder."

For Sergei Kornev, Viktor Pelevin is a mystic, a Buddhist, opposed to Christian ideology.

Social satire for Pelevin is only an auxiliary means, since he is against “reality” in general, and not just against Soviet/post-Soviet reality. He needs the latter only as a source of illustrative examples, cases when the general illusory and absurd nature of this world is revealed without any embellishment. That is why Pelevin seizes on any glimpses of absurdity and nonsense in the world around him, finds them even where others do not notice them, and brings them to complete grotesqueness in his texts. For Pelevin, as a mystic and Buddhist, the elements of absurdity and insanity in Western, late Soviet and current Russian reality are not a perversion of the “normal reality” that is still believed in the West, but, on the contrary, the most genuine, unadorned cross-section “ reality" when it is exposed in all its illusoryness and emptiness.

The researcher believes that the socio-critical, feuilleton aspect of literature itself worries Pelevin least of all - this is what, for example, is connected with the choice (in “Omon of Ra”) of such an ungrateful object from the point of view of satire as the USSR space program, which was like times the most real, exemplary section of Soviet reality. It is clear that there is no “topical satire” (“revelation”, “exposure”) in in this case no, it would hardly occur to anyone that our space program was fabricated, just as the American “flights to the moon” were fabricated in Hollywood in the 70s. Pelevin's satire unfolds on a different, more fundamental level. In both this and other Pelevin texts, its object is “life for show,” the dominant practice of social life in the modern world.

self-hypnosis, when the entire life of people is subordinated to the acquisition of attributes of prestige and well-being, which arouse envy and respect in others, but have no real meaning.

The novel “Omon Ra” (1993) brought fame to Viktor Pelevin,
because the plot of the novel is scandalously provocative, Soviet
space program, is presented here as a total
organized fiction serving ideological purposes
propaganda, its “real” meaning is the commission of bloody
sacrifices that feed the magical structure

socialist state, caused a negative effect. “The novel was perceived as an evil satire on the total deception of Soviet propaganda, and only a few paid attention to the unexpected solipsistic ending of Omona Ra, in which it turns out that no rockets even thought of flying anywhere, and all this happened only in the minds of those doomed to death.” cosmonauts,” since “one pure and honest soul is enough for a red banner to rise on the distant Moon.” The novel “Generation P” (1998) received an even higher reader rating, but was judged even more strictly than the prose writer’s previous works. A. Genis and V. Kuritsyn considered it unsuccessful, “underdeveloped” and overly focused on reader tastes. Despite the seeming abundance of responses, it is only recently that a trend towards a thorough scientific understanding of Viktor Pelevin’s work has begun to emerge. In 2002, the first dissertation of A.V. appeared. Dmitriev “Neo-mythologism in the structure of V. Pelevin’s novels”, which provides a scientific analysis of the writer’s works from the point of view of the use of mythopoetics in them. Fairly noting that “neo-mythological consciousness” is a property of the cultural mentality of the entire 20th century, and mythological stories, motives, structures are actively used in the creation of artistic representations, the author of the dissertation believes that myth

begins to be perceived as existing not only in an archaic version, but also as a property human consciousness in Victor Pelevin’s novels “Chapaev and Emptiness” and “Generation P”.

Indeed, the work of V. Pelevin is characterized by neo-mythologism as a special kind of poetics, structurally oriented towards the plot-figurative system of myth, a kind of intertextuality, which is defined (accepting the definition of I.P. Smirnov) as “<...>a term of a broad generic concept, so to speak, intertextuality, which means that the meaning of a work of art is fully or partially formed through reference to another text that is found in the work of the same author, in related art, in related discourse or in previous literature.”

The researcher is right that the diverse themes of Victor Pelevin’s stories organically include mythological plots, built on the material of domestic life and revealing the deep essence of social processes. This primarily concerns the novel “Generation P” and “Chapaev and Emptiness”. The realities of the surrounding world interest the writer as an auxiliary background for displaying human spirituality.

The analysis of neo-mythologism as the main feature of the poetics of V. Pelevin’s novels is updated by A. V. Dmitriev, since it is the mythologems that take Active participation in the structuring of the artistic world of most of the writer’s works, being an active element of his poetic system. The researcher rightfully proves that neomythologism can be called one of the most important features plot structure of V. Pelevin’s prose and one of the main means of demonstrating the author’s presence in the text. Really, artistic specificity novel as a genre as a whole creates the most acceptable conditions for productive

use of neomythologism. This is especially characteristic of a novel created in the bosom of postmodernist poetics. One can completely agree with the research of A.V. Dmitriev, since postmodernism, by definition, is characterized by an interest in myth mainly in the latter sense. Theorists of the movement justifiably introduce the concept of postmodern sensitivity as an awareness of the deliberate unjustification of any hierarchies that claim to be absolute systems of priorities, the impossibility of the existence of any authentic picture of the world, the mythological nature of any authoritative “view of the world” (C.-G. Jung). From the mythologemes perceived as such, V. Pelevin undoubtedly creates the artistic world of his texts.

Although the work of Victor Pelevin that interests us is touched upon by A.V. Dmitriev in his dissertation, but the analysis is carried out only from the standpoint of the functioning of modern mythologies in the structure of the novels “Omon Ra” and “Generation P”. To fully understand the place last novel in the writer’s work and in modern literature in general, this research is clearly insufficient. Outside of the dissertation work of A.V. Dmitriev remains such important problems of Pelevin’s artistic discourse as methods of consciousness of virtual reality.

Dissertation research by Kwon Zheng Im “Modern Russian postmodern prose: Venedikt Erofeev and Sasha Sokolov”, Bugoslavskoy O.V. “Postmodernist novel: principles of literary interpretation (“Novel” by V. Sorokin and “The Last Dream of Reason” by D. Lipskerov), Zharinova O.V. “The poetic and philosophical aspect of Victor Pelevin’s works “Omon Ra” and “Generation P””; Azeeva I.V. “Game discourse of Russian culture of the late 20th century: Sasha Sokolov, Victor Pelevin”, although they do not touch upon the problem of virtual reality in Victor’s work

16 Pelevin, but allow us to see similar artistic processes in the field of plotting and creating an image of the world and personality in postmodernist works of writers.

A review of articles and reviews, as well as dissertation research available to literary studies today, allows us to establish the low degree of elaboration of the problem of philosophical and poetic discourse that interests us in Victor Pelevin’s novel “Generation.” P".

The relevance of research is determined by the need for a general synthesis of the poetic and philosophical features of Viktor Pelevin’s work using the example of one of his most controversial and complex novels “Generation P”, which allows us to gain a deeper understanding of the logic of the development of Viktor Pelevin’s work in the 1990s, which, in turn, coincides with the priorities today's science of literature - a study of the problems of the poetics of the modern literary process.

Object of study is Victor Pelevin’s novel “Generation P” in the aspect of identifying ways to model virtual reality in it.

Subject of study becomes the ideological, philosophical and poetic basis of Victor Pelevin’s novel “Generation P”.

Objectives of the study: to determine ways of embodying the poetic and philosophical features of the virtual information technogenic society in Victor Pelevin’s novel “Generation P”, its destructive impact on the consciousness and subconscious modern man.

Study the poetic and philosophical structure of the novel “Generation P”;

analyze the artistic means of creating “virtual” space and time in the novel by Victor Pelevin;

identify the genre-forming components of the work;

determine the place of the novel “Generation P” in the work of Victor Pelevin.

Research methods: a combination of hermeneutic and historical-functional approaches to the study of works of art.

The dissertation research is based on working hypothesis: the image of a society of high computer and information technologies, the study of the phenomenon of the impact of virtual reality on the consciousness and subconscious of modern humanity allows Victor Pelevin to create an original poetic and philosophical image of a “shortened universe”, a vivid symbolic image modern world.

Scientific novelty of the dissertation is that it provides a holistic, generalized analysis of the most complex and controversial work of the talented representative of modern literature, Viktor Pelevin. An idea is given of the novel “Generation P” as a landmark phenomenon of Russian postmodern literature. The subject of a special monographic study is the axiological and poetic aspects of Victor Pelevin’s prose. Main provisions submitted for defense:

The novel “Generation P” by Victor Pelevin is a landmark work that determined the peculiarities of the worldview of the “Next” generation, along with the works of other bright writers of our time (T. Tolstoy, L. Ulitskaya, V. Sorokin, A. Slapovsky, V. Tuchkov, M. Paley, D. Lipskerov).

Closely related to the problem of meaning human existence, problem

The virtualization of reality was embodied in the novel “Generation P” in the multiple meanings of the novel’s title, its epigraph and dedication to the “middle class,” which does not exist. The novel transfers the post-perestroika generation in the space of the former USSR from the real dimension to the mode of virtual simulation, defining generation “P”: as the generation that chose the “abroad Pepsi” (although in fact there was no choice); as the generation of the end (which is symbolized by the ancient folklore “dog P...ts”); as a generation “producing a rumbling and colorful emptiness” - a simulacrum information world that has become the spiritual sphere of Russian people; and also as the generation of Pelevin, an artist who conceptualizes virtual reality.

Depicting the fate of the central characters, Victor Pelevin emphasizes that virtual reality created by a cybernetic information system threatens the individual, as there is a total replacement of God's creation with artificial robots. And simulacra, conceived as a sign system, absorb the very life of the human individual, narrowing the sphere of the spiritual to catastrophic proportions. This process is shown especially clearly in the example of the transformation of the concept of “creativity” into “creational agency.”

A grotesque exaggeration of the impact of the Western way of life - “positioning” as a philosophy of existence in modern Russian society allows the artist to recreate a terrifying picture degeneration of humanity, the transformation of people into “oranuses”, primitive products of a world where the cult of consumption reigns. In modeling the simulacrum world image in the novel “Generation P”, the writer successfully uses current neomythologems depicting the cult of Baal - the Dollar, with the help of which the total

manipulation of society. At the same time, Victor Pelevin, satirically

exposing the essence of ideological manipulation, expresses an obvious

reality.

5. Characteristic means of artistic representation,

widely used in the myth of the “new Russian”, diverse

techniques of language play with Anglicisms as hybrids of modern

consciousness, as well as varying the intertexts of folklore,

biblical symbols and images of world literature.

Methodological and theoretical basis dissertation

research is an integrated approach to the phenomena of literary

base created by M.M. Bakhtin, Yu.M. Lotman, E.M. Meletinsky,

B.A. Uspensky, R. Barthes, J. Derrida, J. Genette, as well as

postmodern theorists I.L. Ilyin, M.N. Lipovetsky, M.B.

Epstein, V.N. Kuritsin, N.N. Mankovskaya.

Theoretical significance work is that the dissertation contributes to a deeper understanding of the theoretical aspects of the postmodern novel, in particular the ways of embodying simulacrum reality satirical means. Practical use

The results of scientific research can be used in developing methods for interpreting postmodern prose in lecture courses on the history of Russian literature of the 20th century, and when delivering special courses on the problems of modern literature.

Approbation of dissertation research

The main provisions and individual problems of the study were discussed many times at meetings of the Department of Russian Philology

Tambov State Technical University, were presented at International scientific conferences in 2003, 2004, 2005. in higher educational institutions of Ukraine: the cities of Kharkov and Lugansk, as well as at the Scientific Conference of Young Scientists of the TSTU in Tambov.

Structure and scope of work

The work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion, notes and a list of references.

Introduction includes a justification of the topic, relevance and novelty of the study, a review of critical literature, and also determines the research methodology, its goals and objectives.

The first chapter, “Methods of embodying virtual reality phantoms in the novel “Generation TG” by Viktor Olegovich Pelevin,” is devoted to the analysis of the mythopoetic structure of the work, the problems of replacing creativity with “creative”, exposing the lack of spirituality of life: “positioning” a person with the help of advertising slogans, identifying the functionality of biblical symbolism as the main way of depicting the author's consciousness.

Chapter two, “Artistic means of depicting virtual reality in the novel “Generation P”,” analyzes techniques for comparing esoteric mythology with the modern “simulation” of reality; exposing the substitution of the spiritual for the material through the satirization of advertising slogans; features of the plot; as well as artistic techniques of language play and intertextual ways of depicting the phantomism and chaos of the surrounding world.

The conclusion contains conclusions on all sections of the dissertation research. Main content of the work presented on 158 pages. The list of used literature includes 139 titles.

Polysemantics of the title of Victor Pelevin's novel "Generation "P"". Definition of virtual reality

The novel “Generation P” created a sensation primarily among the multimillion-dollar Internet users. As D. Golinko-Wolfson testifies, “on the global Internet, Pelevin’s novel has received nationwide – or rather all-user – fame: it is linked to almost every high-status cultural site; in Internet periodicals there is an overabundance of blitz polls about the title of the novel; Interactive remarks about it are periodically published by critics who have placed their bets on the cultivation of cyberspace, for example, S. Kornev, S. Kuznetsov or V. Kuritsyn.”

The fact that the novel was widely in demand precisely by the electronic media audience testifies to its relevance and the fact that the aesthetic tastes of young people are affected. From Pelevin, by the vocation of Internet criticism, they expected cutting-edge literature - in the likeness of the replicated “Chapaev and Emptiness”; We were expecting another folklore-matryoshka mix of Hollywood action films, Mexican soap operas, Soviet psychiatric stories and Jewish jokes. And they saw in the novel “Generation P” endowed with high literary merits “an entertaining pamphlet portrait of the Moscow middle class, enterprising poor workaholics of middle age and mediocre. Their life views, as well as the stylistic foundation of the novel, are the legacy of Hemingway’s intellectual romance, Salinger’s adapted Buddhism, the Aesopian futurology of the Strugatsky brothers with the addition of Castaneda’s psychedelia and the broken ecstasy of Irvine Welsh.” But this time Pelevin offered the reader not ordinary literature, but “rather, a polyphonic Internet Chat imitating printed fiction (literally “chatter,” i.e., an instant exchange of opinions in real time). Among the heterogeneous information content of this chat is also a software package developed by the author for writing a modern, too modern, novel, the entire set of software necessary for this. Instead of the expected literary burlesque, Pelevin designed a computer-programmed matrix modern novel, disguised as a topical social feuilleton. “The author himself turns into a much more conventional figure than Eikhenbaum’s storyteller: he serves as the “hardware” that provides the entire writing technology, or hard drive, where the databases necessary for varying the plot are accumulated. This is, apparently, what a novel-browser consisting of digital arabesques should look like in the modern cybernetic era, as advanced “Internet critics” note.

Modeled by the standards of cyberspace, Pelevin’s new novel seems to scan the history of the generation that made and was made by the nineties, transferring it from the real dimension to the mode of virtual simulation. “It is listed under the heading “Generation P” - among the astronomical number of printed and online interpretations of this term, “Pepsi generation” or “Pelevin generation” predominate. This is a generation of thirty-year-olds, who, since Brezhnev’s childhood, have been addicted to foreign “Pepsi” in bottles produced in Novorossiysk. Twenty years later, it continues to consume the dupes and remnants of someone else’s Western experience (albeit in domestic packaging), having failed to adapt hastily imported goods and LV (liberal values) to the New Russian confusion.”

This above-mentioned look at the novel “from within” the Pepsi generation clarifies a lot about artistic design writer: there is indeed a tendency to simulate a new reality for Russia in which modern humanity, defining new spiritual guidelines is included in the ideological and thematic setting of the novel by Victor Pelevin.

“In the end, Generation P is a production novel. Only, unlike classic industrial novels telling about cement-ties-space stations, the theme of this book is the production of that rumbling and motley emptiness in which our lives pass,” admitted Victor Pelevin.

Advertising and the process of its creation are “the lens through which stereotype and convention human consumption become more monstrous than in reality” (M. Grymzov), therefore this sphere of life in the post-communist space was chosen by the writer to recreate and deconstruct the simulacrum virtual reality, which has become the spiritual sphere of new generations of Russian people. M. Lipovetsky is right when he asserts that “the new novel was born from the sad discovery of the fact that this fundamentally individual strategy of freedom easily turns into a total manipulation of the tops: simulacra turn into reality en masse, in an industrial order. Each advertising clip is actually a simulacrum of happiness and freedom, clothed in the virtual flesh of quasi-reality: “Freedom begins to be symbolized by an iron, a sanitary pad with wings, or lemonade. This is what we get paid for. We sell it to them from the screen, and then they sell it to each other, and to us, the authors, it’s like radioactive contamination, when it doesn’t matter who detonated the bomb.” In this situation, there is not so much difference between the creator of illusions and their consumer. With “mass reproduction” the creator is replaced by the creator, and Peter the Void is replaced by Vavilen Tatarsky. “Pelevin could not help but think when he wrote this novel, who, during the period of “weighty reproduction of simulacra,” will replace him, Viktor Pelevin, or more precisely, how much will remain of Pelevin if he wants to hold on longer to the role of the cult writer of the “P” generation?” Further, the researcher notes that over Pelevin’s novel, of course, the shadow of Jean Baudrillard hovers. It was with the light hand of this philosopher that the concept of “simulacrum and simulation; - became the banner of postmodernism. It was he who was the first to talk about the fact that TV, and primarily advertising, blurs the boundary between the real and the illusory, creating a massive flow of images of power and lust (respectively, anal and oral wow factors, as Pelevin calls it). These images may be related to reality, or they may be a more or less skillful illusion of reality; their main function is not reflection, but in modeling the real and the consciousness and behavior of the consumer.

By destroying any correspondence with reality, simulacra, according to Baudrillard, blur any purpose of human activity, which in turn “makes the distinction between truth and falsehood, good and evil, uncertain, and ultimately establishes a radical law of equivalence and exchange, the iron law of power.” Naturally, according to Baudrillard, power itself, becoming dependent on the hyperreality of simulacra, is replaced by a system of fictions. Those who read Pelevin’s novel remember that it ends with the August crisis, which, according to Pelevin, arose due to the overproduction of simulacra: the chief programmer was selling “black PR” to the left, i.e. hidden advertising of certain goods, contrary to concluded contracts for hidden advertising of completely different goods. Unmasked, he took posthumous revenge with a virus built into the system that wiped out the entire virtual government.

Simulacra: “creativity” and “creation” in V. Pelevin’s novel “Generation P”

The depiction of reality as a simulacrum (a copy without the original) is characteristic of many writers of the new generation who turned to postmodernism (D. Galkovsky, E. Radov, Y. Buida, M. Shishkin, I. Yarkevich). Their intellectual and philosophical foundation consists of ideas and concepts equivalent to the concepts of “the world as text”, “the world as chaos”, “pluralism of truth”, “anti-logocentrism”, “language game”, etc.

Victor Pelevin in his stories “The Recluse and the Six-Fingered” (1990), “The Prince of the State Planning Commission” (1991), “The Tambourine of the Upper World” (1993), “Omon Ra” (1993), “Zombification” (1995) implements all the principles of Russian postmodernism , making an attempt to characterize the Russian national character in modern conditions: in conditions of totalitarian substitution. Even the very title of the novel, “Generation P,” contains a “shimmering simulacrum”: it contains many meanings that touch each other at “one semantic point.”

Anna Narinskaya, deciphering the title of the novel, reasons as follows: “Pelevin’s new novel is called “Generation P” - “Generation P” (that is, “Pepsi”, as it turns out on the first page). As one computer (or rather, computer keyboard) connoisseur of mine noted with delight, the name itself is a kind of charade: the English G and Russian P are on the same key. So “Generation P” is the same as “Generation G”. Perhaps this will explain something to someone.”

The interpretation of the simulacrum of existence is contained both in the text of the novel itself and in the writer’s interview. Everywhere the importance of the problem of “profanation”, the substitution of truth felt by new generations, is emphasized.

The interviewer asked a question: “In “Chapaev and Emptiness,” although not without puns and irony, they directly talked about “the most important things,” for example, death and future life. In “Generation P” you profane these “most important things”. Does this mean that you, like many writers of the new generation, believe that it is impossible to talk about anything seriously in our time?” Victor Pelevin replied: “The most important questions are beyond the reach of profanity. Try to profane, for example, the fact of death. It turns out like in a doubles english graffiti: “God is dead. Nietzsche. - Nietzsche died. God". But in “Generation P,” it seems to me, nothing is profaned, except, perhaps, various ideologies, which I would not classify as “the most important things,” at least in my life. Indeed, by showing “the simulacrum of ideologies, the writer is searching for an alternative reality” in which there is no deception. Further to the question: “Your book plays on the idea that the world is ruled by a “secret lodge” of advertisers. Do you really see new folklore or even a new Bible in advertising?” - the author of “Generation P” emphasized the following: “Unfortunately, I am increasingly inclined to the conclusion that the world is ruled not by a secret lodge, but by an obvious mess. By the way, a book was written about this. The fact that advertising has become a source of new folklore has long been obvious. But I prefer to see the Bible in the Bible."

Viktor Pelevin’s answer to the following question is also significant: “The attack on the media, accusing them of manipulating society is ubiquitous today. Hollywood makes big-budget films about the evil media - Truman's Show, Wag the Dog. Do you feel yourself in this stream?” Victor Pelevin replied: “The very idea of a “clash on the media” is a kind of oxymoron, because this attack can be carried out seriously only through the media themselves. Most media doesn't really remind me of the non-commissioned officer's widow. I don't think the media manipulates society because it is impossible to manipulate an abstract concept. But the media certainly manipulates consciousness. This is their only purpose. For this to become clear, it is enough to think at least once about what so-called information is and what its substance is. It's not even a matter of what line the media draw and whose interests they reflect - it's their very nature. Marshall McLuhan compressed the whole problem into a great aphorism: The medium is the message. (“The medium is the message.” - “Expert”) The best translation into Russian of the word media ( plural from medium) - “mediums”, something like spiritualists, are a very respectable company. As for the “jet” - I don’t know. Andrei Voznesensky urged us to avoid getting caught in the jet. All I can say is that I really like Wag the Dog, but I think the problem we're talking about is reflected more clearly in Dark City. (Wag the Dog is a film by Barry Levinson about the media manipulating society, Dark City is a film by Alex Proyas about the labyrinths of the subconscious. - “The Expert”).

From the writer’s statements it is clear that Victor Pelevin is looking for a “national idea” that has dissolved in virtual reality post-Soviet period, devoting his works to exposing the widespread ideological “substitution”. One of the important aspects of the simulacrum of reality is the replacement of creativity with “creation”.

“Producing emptiness” is the replacement true creativity what advertisers call “creation”. Viktor Pelevin emphasized the authenticity and reliability of the processes depicted in the novel in his interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda: “A writer must write good books, the rest is a matter of taste. For example, politics is of little interest to me. And what’s going on with the government is written in detail in the second part of “Generation II.” By the way, it’s even amazing how much everything coincides with the text - it feels like it’s being used as a script.

The hybrid Russian-American name “Generation P” reflects the same reality that exists, but is perceived as relative, since modern media can put any simulacra into people’s minds. Boris Tuch wrote about this: “For readers (including those who suddenly recognized themselves in the heroes of “Generation P”), it was a shock that Pelevin describes not the distant or recent past (the break with which was ideologically declared), but the late Deltsin (smoothly transitioning into early Putin's Russia. Moreover distinctive feature the world of denotation, as structuralist philologists say (that is, the nature from which pictures are written), is the ultimate indistinguishability of the real and the virtual.”

Advertising slogans as a form of expression of the author’s consciousness in the novel “Generation P”

The novel “Generation P” is a sharply satirical work, revealing the extraordinary talent of a satirist in its author. As evidenced by the analysis of the literary text, the following author’s idea is affirmed in “Generation P”: the consciousness of modern man is determined by neo-mythology, and more specifically: by the mythologemes imposed by the mass media, from which it is structured. Even the consciousness of modern man, freed as much as possible from the influence of easily ignored mythologies, still does not avoid their influence. Unlike other works, for the first time in the novel “Generation P”, V. Pelevin’s hero does not strive to fully follow the logic of actions imposed by Sirruf and the spirit of Che Guevara (figures partly related to Dima from “The Life of Insects”, Chapaev from “Chapaev and Emptiness”: these are characters “correlated in function with the figures of archaic myth testing the cultural hero) who adapt to the new reality, achieving “a kind of version of nirvana.”

Before the hero of the novel came to the top of the “ziggurat” of post-Soviet society, he created for himself the image of a “cool creator” with the help of scripts he wrote for advertising slogans and plots for video clips. The author of the novel, placing in his work many “products of the mind” of Babylen Tatarsky, satirically ridicules the main vices of modern society.

Sergei Kornev believed that the writer in “Generation P” sought first of all to destroy the complex of basic dichotomies supposedly characteristic of the consciousness of the modern, post-Soviet intellectual:

“In the world of Pelevin’s texts, not just individual cliches and stereotypes of the current intellectual consciousness are questioned, but the very basic binary oppositions on which it rests, which form its foundation - that is why Pelevin does not suit anyone, that is why the ostracism was so complete and harsh” .

S. Kornev’s rather harsh assessment in the article “Guardians of Dichotomy” is entirely devoted to the isolation of mythologies and a whole series of binary oppositions, which are first affirmed and then consistently exposed by V. Pelevin.

The intelligentsia, according to this researcher, has developed, among others, a mythology according to which - “We are good, but those cattle who read our books, watch our films, listen to our music - they only eat all sorts of nasty things, but from real art, from high, good and eternal refuses. Therefore, we either do nothing and take care of our crystal clear intellectual soul, or we engage in hack work to earn our daily bread.” ... The dichotomy underlying this compromise - “full-fledged, but precisely for this reason, unnecessary creativity” - hack work, commercial “chernukha” or unprincipled agitprop - turned out to be a real find.”

V. Pelevin, according to S. Kornev, destroys this mythology by the very fact of his creativity with the “double coding” technique. He does the same with another “basic dichotomy”: - S. Kornev names among the main critics of V. Pelevin’s work, those who did not accept it, intellectuals who occupy “the niche of defenders of high spirituality and national cultural heritage,” because "Pelevin destroyed the dichotomy that elevated their position as popularizers and commentators of the classics to the rank of civil feat: the spiritualized dichotomy cultural heritage/ unspiritual modern culture."

V. Kuritsyn confirms the thought of S. Kornev, saying that the slogans in the novel “Generation P” are intended to “absurd” the special role of the intelligentsia in the affirmation of spirituality: “The history and culture of the New Age are driven by the idea of the existence of a radical Other: the Enemy or Transcendence.”

Confirming the presence of revealing pathos in V. Pelevin’s texts, Boris Paramonov proves that “... his style, simply put: a pile of punning absurdity with a clearly emphasized parodic quotation.” “The presence of “pun absurdity” largely contributes to the debunking of the mythologies that the intelligentsia follows with the help of advertising texts that they believe.

The narrator in Victor Pelevin's novel structures puns in advertising texts using literary and generally general cultural reminiscences. This reveals a similarity between the styles of V. Pelevin and V. Sorokin, whose novel “Blue Lard” appeared simultaneously with “Generation P”. V. Sorokin’s famous pun: “You are not Goya. You are different."

Mark Lipovetsky in the article “Blue Fat of a Generation, or Two Myths about One Crisis,” comparing the novel by Vladimir Sorokin and Viktor Pelevin, declares these writers “literary leaders of postmodernism,” who embody in their works the objective disunity of the individual and society, the loss of faith in the possibility of restoration harmony in the surrounding reality.

Indeed, disunity, duality, splitting of the world and the consciousness that perceives it are already present in the very title of the work, combining English word"generation" and Russian "P". Epigraphs following the title of the novel of poems by Leonard Cohen (on English language), bring a touch of drama from the awareness of the crisis of what is happening in their home country.

“I love the country, but I can’t stand what’s happening in it...” - this line of Cohen’s verse sets the tone of tragic criticism that permeates the entire novel.

Victor Pelevin depicts reality as an “overproduction” of simulacra (copies without originals). In this he is helped by a cross-cutting artistic device - “mixing languages”: the novel contains many Anglicisms and expressions in English. English, as the language of prosperity and economic well-being, is mixed with Russian. “This entire novel is written in a fantastic mixture of Russian and English, where the same text and even just a word is endowed with a dual meaning due to its dual status, that is, it becomes a metaphor on the fly.”

The confusion of languages symbolizes the collapse of traditional thinking, spiritual mutation, as a result of which terrible hybrids of perverted consciousness arise. A “Tower of Babel” arises, which is being built by generation “P”, who cannot understand each other and live in a “virtual” simulacrum reality. All these processes lead, according to the writer, to “monkeyization”, to the primitivization of the spirit.

The functionality of the language game by Viktor Pelevin

One of the main in a special way The emphasized characteristics of Victor Pelevin’s poetics is its gaming mode, which is generally aimed at affirming the infinite variety of meanings of virtual reality, expressing the author’s position on this matter.

The concept of “virtual reality” is defined as: “Artificial realities: which arise due to the influence of a computer on consciousness.” In this case, the consciousness is immersed in some fictitious, computer-generated possible world in which it can move, see, hear and touch virtually. In a broad sense, virtual reality is any altered state of consciousness: psychological or schizophrenic delirium, dreams, drug or alcohol intoxication, a hypnotic state, for anyone who is somehow forcibly limited in space for a sufficiently long time. long time. V. Rudnev notes that virtual reality is fraught with a paradox. The etymology of this word - truth (virtus) contradicts its meaning, which for the bearer ordinary consciousness synonymous with something like “imaginary, fictitious, illusory.”

The philosophy of the 20th century considers language to be a more “fundamental reality”, which is part of the “true” reality, since in addition to the plane of expressing meaning and meaning (content), it also has a plane of material form (expression). Reality is unthinkable outside of language. Hence the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, according to which it is not language that is oriented by reality, but reality by language, because each language expresses reality in its own way. To know reality, you need to know the language. Thus, any reality, except language, is virtual. And V. Pelevin’s novels, filled with language games, become video game scenarios that express virtual realities.

A. Antonov drew attention to the peculiar linguistic experiments of Viktor Pelevin, which he leads in two opposite directions, namely: “On the one hand, he,

It seems that he is striving to return the word to its pristine purity, to revive “dead” metaphors, that is, he is engaged in what Viktor Shklovsky called “detachment”, and George Orwell called “criminal translation from Newspeak to Oldspeak.” Therefore, many of his heroes are endowed with a keen sense of language and never spare time to stop and reflect on the meaning of a particular word or phrase... And at the same time - destroying the “good old” Newspeak, Pelevin immediately creates another “new” language , however, is not “universal”, but, so to speak, “disposable”, functioning only within the framework of a “separate” work. It would be natural to call such a language “internal.”

“Inner language” by Viktor Pelevin, according to A. Antonov, is focused not on truncation, but on increasing meanings. “All Pelevin’s linguistic constructions like “one of the same,” “May knows him,” “peace to your world,” or “May to your harvest” not only do not destroy the previous meaning of the word, but give it another, additional one. Therefore, “huge red words PEACE, LABOR, MAY” decorate the gray facades of Uran Bator at the same time as Uran Bator mothers scold their children in front of them for the “bad” word, “ Chafer» .

In the novel “Generation P,” as in many other works, the extensive literary intertext “no matter how it is played out (largely due to parodic and playful quotation), acts as a correlate of the grotesque.”

For example, citing political texts from the era of perestroika, Viktor Pelevin gives a murderously grotesque assessment of the political and economic processes of this time: “The USSR, which began to be updated and improved approximately at the same time when Tatarsky decided to change his profession, improved so much that it ceased to exist (if the state is capable to get to nirvana, it was just such a case).”

I. Rodnyanskaya rightly emphasizes the importance of the language game and notes: “Pelevin’s texts with their four times abused, and for me - language that corresponds to the internal task, calmly line up in this series of great, significant and simply noticeable works, with their special means - the means of modeling imagination - explaining “what is happening to us”.

By pumping and compressing “special” vocabulary, be it the vocabulary of Marxist-Leninist ideology (“Omon Ra”), a pre-perestroika slogan and poster (“Day of the Bulldozer Driver”) or the “language of science” (“Built-in Reminder”), and moving it into “alien sphere,” Pelevin achieves a kind of “qualitative leap”, after which the word is torn away from its direct meaning and, as it were, “translated” into another language.”

A. Antonov draws attention to other transformations of the word, when “polysemy” turns into its opposite - “non-meaning in general”, the word becomes a sign of emptiness: “... the main feature of Viktor Pelevin’s prose lies precisely in this instability, in the elusiveness of the flow of one world in another, in constant balancing on an almost indistinguishable border, in its continuous, “stalker-like” secretive transition.”

Researchers have focused on the predominance of playful aspects in Pelevin’s work: “The feeling of the illusory nature of Pelevin’s worlds is enhanced by their reminiscence, secondary nature, and literary nature... Pelevin prefers to deal not with the “immediately real”, but with already literary processed material, transforming it, contrasting it with the ordinary ghost world. It is parodic and allusive. And sometimes - openly, “in the forehead”.

Everyone chooses for themselves how to live and who to be. Before you think about a relationship with another person, think about yourself, take care of who you are.

(Sorry for some slang and non-literary words)

Pelevin in the episode “Homo Zapiens” (and we will talk about this episode in the future) shows how, under the influence of the media, a continuous modification of a person occurs into a remotely controlled, weak-willed cell of a huge senseless organism ORANUS. A person, according to the author, is no longer a person, but a dependent virtual subject who reacts to impulses sent by ORANUS through and through the media. These impulses determine the behavior of the subject and all possible mental processes and reactions.

When the TV is turned off, the subject no longer receives pulses directly, but a "residual magnetization" effect occurs when pulses are generated automatically. With constant and regular exposure to the media, the subject is, as it were, irradiated and then impulses arise spontaneously in his consciousness as a background against which all other thoughts appear.

Such modern model a person, his behavior, consciousness and society as a whole cannot be taken seriously. Since it came from the pen (more precisely, with the help of a mystical tablet) of the main character - V. Tatarsky, who regularly takes psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs, has no family, goals, interests and is the image of a typical gloomy loser-drug addict, capable of producing and selling hallucinatory delirium, and use the money to buy another portion of hallucinogens.

But on the other hand, there is some truth in this nonsense, and quite a large one. It's no secret that modern society is a consumer society and a society obsessed with consumption. And actually this problem is not new; America has been worried about this for a long time. Their society began to consume intensively before the Russian one. And the rate of their consumption is quite higher, but we are in a hurry, trying to reach their level. We have something to strive for and someone to focus on.

The influence of the media is enormous, it shapes public opinion, it forces one to compare oneself with the models broadcast by the media. Compare others with these samples. To experience sincere voluptuous pleasure when approaching models and to suffer when far from them. If it is impossible to achieve exemplars, one must spend one’s whole life in suffering, in an anxious pursuit of them. Human nature is devalued, feelings are devalued. The only thing that matters is who wears what, what car they drive, and what house they live in.

The author does not find anything bad in such a world order. Here I agree with him, since I also don’t find anything wrong in this. This is how the world works. Television and the Internet did not arise on their own; they were born as a result of human demand and effort. It’s stupid to complain about where the world is heading, but at the same time push and roll it.

The only thing I disagree with Pelevin is the impossibility of choice, the impossibility of getting rid of influences and impulses. Although here the author contradicts himself, asserting the complete impossibility of ceasing to be an ORANUS cell and breaking all ties with him, and then says that this would be a huge spiritual feat, but then finally puts an end to the impossibility of such a breakthrough.

I do not consider man to be a weak-willed creature. I believe that everyone determines for himself what influence to be under and what impulses to be driven by. Consciously or unconsciously, a person makes a choice, but he makes it of his own free will. You can throw away the TV, you can go to the taiga, to a desert island (fortunately, the borders of our country are open), stop using cellular communications, and protect yourself from consumer society. In the end, stop going to a job you don’t like, for the sake of being able to consume unnecessary things. Stop looking for happiness, and start producing it. Or just be happy - Jast be - in the spirit of Pelevin. Everything is simple and nothing needs to be complicated.

It can be assumed that society is so zombified that it is not at all possible to escape from this dependence. But to me this sounds like an excuse from a suffering alcoholic or drug addict, that I would be glad not to use, but I am already an alcoholic and drug addict. The choice has been made, it is useless to fight, all that remains is to obey the impulses.

Humanity is vicious, vices change from era to era. The media is a vice, a disease of our time. Those. The media is only a distributor, a causative agent of the disease. But I cannot agree with the statement that absolutely everyone is infected with the disease!

I don't mean giving up consumption completely. Failure to use gaskets and washing machines. These are the most ingenious inventions, it is stupid and uncomfortable to ignore them. I mean those people who are aimed at consumption in itself as such: better, bigger, more fashionable, more prestigious, look like everyone else! Look your best! Be like them! Be like these! Silky hair! Big tits! The neighbor has more! Add size and speed! Faster, higher, stronger! Etc.

People are infected by this race, it is not clear why and it is not clear where. Who is catching up with whom, and who is overtaking whom, is also not clear, and by and large it is not interesting.

Man is the creator of his own destiny, he himself determines whether to rejoice or suffer, cry or smile, degrade or develop. Man is free and has free will. If Pelevin had understood this, he would have stopped being carried away by psychedelics and would not have created such a negative, hopeless and all-hating atmosphere in his works.

Man is free! Is in this world happy people who choose to be happy, and modify ORANUS into a useful source. Like the global financial market - ORANUS swallows hundreds of thousands and spits out one. And in this case, connections are not broken, they are transformed. And ORANUS turns from a meaningless polyp into a source of spiritual and physical food, allowing one to grow, develop and become cultivated.

In this case, the media turns into a unique and universal teaching aid that allows you to classify any concepts, worldviews, learn any language, and take advantage of any world knowledge and experience. Everyone chooses for themselves what to draw from the media: follow the wow impulses or transform them into a management and construction tool.

This is my point of view and in my mind it is fully justified by theory and practice. Buddha is still able to convey with his words any person “to the other shore, to unfettered freedom.” And everyone chooses to hear these words or not.

Maybe Pelevin is sad because he cannot pull out the sinking and dying generation Pi, snatch it from the clutches of ORANUS, or in this context, turn it around, direct it in a different direction, change its trajectory.

So he is not God. (At least in my perception, he is too far from this image.) Where do such claims come from? Humanity develops according to its own laws. Each individual has the right to develop in their own way. Of course, most people choose ready-made templates and samples. And they develop according to them. It's convenient and gives a false sense of security. This could be a road to nowhere. This could be the end of the world or its anticipation. This could be a TV show. But this is everyone's personal choice. And, as they say: “The bad path is no less important than the good one, and maybe even more important.” Here you can begin to reason about what is good and what is bad and come to the only opinion that everything is neither good nor bad. Therefore, I prefer the expression: “Everything that money can buy is already cheap.”

I rarely read more than two or three books by any author. As a rule, this amount is enough to understand all subsequent works and, with all the desire, not to extract anything new from them. Pelevin is no exception. Before that I read “DPP from Nowhere to Nowhere”, “The Sacred Book of the Werewolf” and “The Life of Insects”. The author is undoubtedly talented and original in his style of unraveling complex thoughts and ideas. But it’s not close to me, since stories about the use of fly agarics and toadstools, and the effect they produce, do not impress me, but repel me.

This is similar to how Pelevin’s hero talks about whether a man in clothes with patches can teach him something. This is approximately the same attitude I have towards Pelevin. Listen - I listened, or rather read, but the desire to leave as quickly as possible and not meet again only grew stronger.

I became acquainted with Generation Pi thanks to a course assignment. Pelevin is still the same: emotionally intense, incredibly believable in his delirium, immorality and lack of love.

From this point of view, it is difficult for me to imagine that a book can act as a “vaccination against the disease.” But still, I deeply hope that at least one of the many “virtual subjects” obsessed with consumption, after reading this work by Pelevin, will be able to stop, realize in which direction he is moving and change it. A person is not a tree.

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.

Analysis of the novel “Generation P”

V. Pelevin’s novel “Generation “P””, the main pathos of which is the denial of the ideology of consumption, is of great interest in this sense. This is the story of the career growth of a graduate of the Literary Institute named Vavilen Tatarsky, “unclaimed by the era,” who becomes an advertising worker - first a copywriter, then a creator. Then the creator of television reality, replacing the surrounding reality, and, finally - one step remains - a living god, the earthly husband of the goddess Ishtar. One of the important applied themes of the novel is humanistic and educational. Although most people already realize that advertising and politics (the boundaries between which are very vague) are essentially unscrupulous things and that chewing Tampax without sugar is not at all the highest happiness in life, Pelevin clearly and professionally, at the level of terminology and technical details, only slightly exaggerating, shows exactly how advertising and political lies are made. This novel touches on one of the nerve centers of modern life.

The main structural element of “Generation P” is the trinity. It is formed by two groups of characters. Some of the characters in the novel are alternative mental states of the main character Tatarsky. At the moment of communication with Pugin and Khanin, Malyuta and Blo, Gireev and Azadovsky, he seems to split into two. Parts of his personality conduct a dialogue with each other. The other group consists of three - Gusein, Morkovin and Farseykin. They are needed to connect the plot. Morkovin acts as the main television presenter of the action unfolding in the novel. He completes all sorts of evolutions, having exhausted his function, at the very end of the story, when Tatarsky reaches the Golden Room, that is, the harmonious final state of the soul. It was at that moment that the role of presenter passes to Farseikin. Huseyn leads the hero's fate in the initial phase and tries to break into the narrative once again. But the road along which Hussein was going to lead Tatarsky was rejected both times. Thus, we see a combination in the form of a double trinity: three leading and three alternative pairs of states, from which the hero temporarily chooses one and then overcomes both. The first pair of possible states of Tatarsky are Pugin and Khanin. The taxi driver who returned from America and the Komsomol functionary, like intermediate dependent states, alternately die in the hero’s soul. Their physical death as a result of gang warfare is, of course, an allegory. “...This virtual Pugin, like a heavy metal from the end of the periodic table, existed in Tatarsky’s consciousness for a few seconds and disintegrated.” And Khanin stayed a little longer. Malyuta and Blo are the second pair of states. The west-oriented Blo and the soil-oriented Malyuta have similar features to the first pair (emigrant and official). They represent a longer lasting condition. At the very end, Malyuta is removed from the Beekeeping Institute. This is Pelevin’s choice, one must think. They say that the universal has triumphed over the national. “Kill the state within you.” "Enter the civilized family of nations." And other wonderful prospects, personified in the image of Blo. His brothers do business in coffins, the demand for which has increased due to banking disputes (Debirsyan Brothers Funeral Home). The third pair of states - Gireev and Azadovsky - symbolizes Tatarsky's social choice. The first personifies the free flight of the soul, which the main character has strived for all his life. But “traces of humiliating poverty” in Gireev’s clothes and apartment (holes in his pants, cheap vodka) stop Tatarsky’s movement towards this state. In addition, Gireev, despite his spirituality, finds himself completely captive to the television monster, succumbing to other people’s delusional advertising fantasies, which are created by the “Beekeeping Institute”. Azadovsky is a master of television nonsense himself. Azadovsky is a state worth striving for. And Tatarsky reaches him. True, Tatarsky does not repeat Azadovsky, but reaches a new state, comprehends the Self and turns into the husband of the goddess Ishtar, that is, he himself is deified. Reflection of symbolic existence in the novel Everything comes down to money, because money came up against itself a long time ago. V. Pelevin After the collapse of totalitarianism, the means of imitation cease to be obedient instruments of dictatorship, but do not disappear and acquire an autonomous existence. The main character of the novel, music video director Tatarsky, cannot help but assume that the “means of electronic communication” that control the state are still an instrument of some secret dictatorship, but, in the end, he is convinced that there is no dictatorship more powerful than the dictatorship of virtuality itself. The philosophical idea of the novel expressed in the insert treatise is that since television is made by people, and people’s consciousness is formed by television, then the essence of modern sociality lies in the self-sufficient, looped existence of the television image. In the modern world there is no man, man is reduced to a television image, which - in fact, in the end - also does not exist, since it only depicts, copies reality, but there is no reality. Having gone from bottom to top in the media structure, the hero masters the goals and principles of operation of this structure, the goals and principles of creating false name-symbols. The principle of creating false symbols is based on the principle of pandemonium, that is, the mixing of everything: languages (primarily Russian and English), cultures, religions, historical facts, personalities, etc. (here everything is indiscriminate: oriental symbols, Latin America with Che Guevara, Russian birches and kosovorotki, cowboys in jeans, medieval romance, Christian symbols, etc.). A giant of advertising thought is one who can rhyme pants with Shakespeare or Russian history. With the era of television comes an era of confusion of times and spaces, in which there is only one measure - money, and everything else is a commodity. Even space and time become commodities (they are rented out and sold). Symbols, being torn out of their cultural and historical paradigm, are deprived of their true content, as a result of which the possibility opens up to interpret them on the basis of any associations. Thus, the Prophetic Oleg, symbolizing the national character, is interpreted as a symbol of materialism, and the slogan arises: “How the Prophetic Oleg now gathers in Constantinople for things. This is where the Russian land stood and stands.” Democracy (within the corporate line of television people) is interpreted as a demo version for the tops. False symbols give rise to false styles. Two main styles emerge - Western and false Slavic. The essence of the Western style is to promote, through Pepsi-Cola, the victory of the new over the old, the victory of everything “cool” and capable of moving ahead. The essence of the false Slavic style is a play on the feeling of philistine patriotism and adherence to “our” traditions; the set of images used here is primitive: birch trees, churches, bells, untucked red shirts, beards, sundresses, sunflowers, husks and some others like that. In general, all the heterogeneous and varied multitude of advertising images creates one single image - the image of a happy person (and happy in a primitive way - as a rule, this is bodily comfort, selfish security). Advertising shows people other people who have managed to be deceived and find happiness in the possession of material objects. She seeks to convince that consumption of the advertised product leads to a high and favorable rebirth, not after death, but immediately after the act of consumption.

Despite this brilliant development, at the age of eighteen Tatarsky happily lost his first passport, and received a second one for Vladimir.

In the summer, in the village, he read a small volume of Boris Pasternak. Poems, for which he had previously had no inclination, shocked him to such an extent that for several weeks he could not think about anything else, and then he began to write them himself. He forever remembered the rusty frame of the bus, which had grown obliquely into the ground at the edge of a forest near Moscow. Near this frame, the first line in his life came to his mind - “The sardines of the clouds are floating south” (later he began to find that this poem smelled of fish). In a word, the incident was completely typical and ended typically - Tatarsky entered the Literary Institute. True, he did not pass the poetry department - he had to be content with translations from the languages of the peoples of the USSR. Tatarsky imagined his future something like this: during the day - an empty auditorium at the Literary Institute, interlinear writing from Uzbek or Kyrgyz, which needs to be rhymed for the next date, and in the evenings - works for eternity.

Tatarsky experienced a feeling of instant and piercing recognition. These were pointed high-heeled boots made of good leather.

Yellow-red in color, stitched with blue thread and decorated with large gold harp-shaped buckles, they were not simply tasteless or vulgar.

They clearly embodied what one drunken teacher of Soviet literature from the Literary Institute called “our gestalt,” and it was so pitiful, funny and touching (especially the harp buckles) that tears welled up in Tatarsky’s eyes. There was a thick layer of dust on the boots - they were clearly not in demand by the era.

Money is the main mythology of the novel. Most of the other symbols are essentially just contextual metaphors for money. In my opinion, Pelevin’s novel “Generation P” well described the picture that emerged during the transition from socialist to democratic power. The psychological make-up of people of that time is well shown, which, in principle, remains almost unchanged in terms of symbolism. This novel became very educational for me, pointing out many shortcomings of the government, “holes” in people’s minds. All of Pelevin’s books are good in their own way, “Generation P” has absorbed some moments from his works that have already been published: A father calls his son a strange name associated with an ancient civilization - from the novel “Omon Ra”, the main character meets an old friend, also a writer, and this meeting takes the sad fate of the protagonist to a new stage - from the novel “Chapaev and Emptiness”, episodes “from the life of the cool”, a uniquely witty look at the mechanisms of Russian business - from the story “The History of Paintball in Russia”, and a little more ideas successfully used in Pelevin’s works. But the book is still very interesting to read - as you read, you become immersed in the main character’s problems, understand their meaning, and everything falls into place. “Generation P” gives a clear idea of how the human personality can degrade under external influence, turning into a puppet of advertising and the flow of the public, loss of individuality.