Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.89 AVERAGE
3.89 AVERAGE
місцями дуже й дуже непогано:
- "гегельянство, кантіанство і метафізика" - лайка на всі часи, треба буде взяти на озброєння;
- ненав'язливі, добре вписані в сюжет філософські роздуми про первинне і вторинне, від "кто сдает продукт вторичный, той снабжается отлично" до міркувань, що кого наслідує: творчість життя чи навпаки;
- ідея, що утопію можна зруйнувати, тільки збудувавши її.
якби він ще трошечки менше блазнював, було б зовсім хороше.
- "гегельянство, кантіанство і метафізика" - лайка на всі часи, треба буде взяти на озброєння;
- ненав'язливі, добре вписані в сюжет філософські роздуми про первинне і вторинне, від "кто сдает продукт вторичный, той снабжается отлично" до міркувань, що кого наслідує: творчість життя чи навпаки;
- ідея, що утопію можна зруйнувати, тільки збудувавши її.
якби він ще трошечки менше блазнював, було б зовсім хороше.
I'm really in the middle with this one. It certainly has its moments. Outright hilarious moments and as a critique of and a satirical rip on the Soviet Union it's hilarious. Doubly so if you consider that the satirical existence of this future Communism is more or less what Western and American propaganda would have you believe communism is. The kicker that drives that point home about the western anti communist propaganda picture is a late reveal of the 'Genialissimo's personal political ideology.
Maybe it's Russian authors but this book is just much longer than it needs to be and it's treatment of women and the main characters opinion and treatment of women is so painfully out of date.
The book also gets quite Meta in the same vein as the Matrix 4. Which means this was the worst time for me to read it because the whole Meta thing has been overdone recently so it fell a little flat on my end.
Maybe it's Russian authors but this book is just much longer than it needs to be and it's treatment of women and the main characters opinion and treatment of women is so painfully out of date.
The book also gets quite Meta in the same vein as the Matrix 4. Which means this was the worst time for me to read it because the whole Meta thing has been overdone recently so it fell a little flat on my end.
Welcome to dystopia, soviet-style. If you like your satire roasted to well-charred black comedy, this novel weighing in at over four hundred pages will be a memorable feast. I laughed so hard reading The Fur Hat, I wanted to laugh even harder – Moscow 2042 gave me the chance. Vladimir Voinovich fans of the world unite; I join your ranks, comrades.
It’s 1982 and we’re in Munich with exiled Russian author Vitaly Kartsev when he learns from a friend Lufthansa Airlines is offering flights back and forth through time. Marvelous. Vitaly tells us he always wondered what his homeland would look like in the future.
He books a three hour flight for Moscow landing in 2042. Any trepidation or anxiety revolving around risks taken in such time travel is completely whisked away when Fräulein Globke down at the travel agency informed him there is absolutely no limit on the amount of drinks a passenger can be served during flight and all drinks are free of charge. Sign me up! Airtight logic - after all, Vitaly Kartsev is both a writer and a Russian and can always use a free-of-charge drink.
No sooner is Vitaly booked for his trip to the future then all sorts of people want in on the action: an American publisher offers three million for his story, a king of an Arab state demands he retrieve secret information, a buddy from the old days now linked in dubious ways to Soviet politics wishes to rekindle friendship, and most significantly, Leo Zilberovich, his literary agent, insists he take the next flight from Munich to Toronto to meet with a former labor camp inmate and a true Russian literary genius complete with impressive beard: Sim Simych Karnavalov.
Voinovich has praised Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his other writings but in this work the famous Gulag Archipelago author is on the receiving end of repeated jabs from his sharp, lampooning needle. Even the novel’s title, Moscow 2042, can be seen as a takeoff (futuristic sequel, perhaps?) of Solzhenitsyn's August 1914.
After landing in Toronto, driving through a forest and arriving at Simych’s gated estate, Kartsev is in store for all sorts of shenanigans, beginning with being stopped at the entrance by two Cossacks, one white, the other black, both with a walrus moustache and armed with long swords.
Looking closely at the white Cossack, Kartsev recognizes him as none other than his literary agent Leo Zilberovich. Kartsev shouts a hearty hello and asks why the costume. Ignoring the question, the mustachioed guard demands to see identification. Kartsev replies by sticking a middle finger in Leo's face.
Calm down, Vitaly, you will be obliged to deal with absurdities and farces right up until the moment you leave for Munich to board the plane flying you sixty years into the future.
And once in Moscow in the year 2042 - future shock with a vengeance. The novel’s dark humor lies in contrast: Moscowrep, the city’s inner ring, the first true communist republic, is judged by its inhabitants a perfect utopia, a glowing diamond, the pinnacle of all prior human achievement.
However, listening to all their doublespeak and taking in the reality of this sordid, grimy, stinking, suffocating city, our literary narrator quickly detects their utopia is a sham.
Take one instance: Can you imagine having to stand in a long line to turn in your shit to the local authorities so you can get a pass to eat dinner? But this is standard procedure, since, after all, it has to be, for, as they say in the Moscowrep, primary material (food) is secondary material (human excrement). To argue against this practice so continues those same brainwashed natives, smacks of metaphysics, Hegelianism and Kantianism.
Change is desperately needed. More specifically, what is needed is a godlike hero returning to Russia in all his glory riding on a white steed. What is needed is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Woops! Excuse me, I meant to say Sim Simych Karnavalov.
I highly recommend Vladimir Voinovich's comic masterpiece. Russia's future will never be the same again.
Russian author Vladimir Voinovich, Born 1932
adventurous
funny
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
quite the enjoyable dis-distopian tale. funny, outrageous, with a perfectly flawed narrator, and the ridiculousness that only people with the best intentions can create.
the cherry on this delectable dessert was the afterword, written in 1990, where the author is forced to answer some heavy claims of precognition regarding the fate of soviet communism. tragically hilarious.
the cherry on this delectable dessert was the afterword, written in 1990, where the author is forced to answer some heavy claims of precognition regarding the fate of soviet communism. tragically hilarious.
I'm not a student of either Russian politics or literature,, so I'm sure plenty of the deeper meaning (and possibly the jokes) passed me by on this one. That being said, I'm enough a child of the Cold War - and Voinovich is enough of a writer - that I didn't feel lost or let down. My sister asked what I was reading. I showed it to her and said, "It's funny as hell. It's a lot funnier than it looks from the cover." She, of course, replied, "It would have to be."
Moscow 2042 came out in 1986, written just a few years before perestroika and glasnost and the reforms that swept through the USSR. If you were around back then, you know the images that the American public received of life under communism - bread lines, ridiculous bureaucracy, censorship, drab clothing, heavy vodka drinking, plenty of propaganda at work. Interestingly, that's nearly exactly how Voinovich portrays his dystopian version of communism at work. Now, I have no real idea how day to day life in Moscow went in the early 80s, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't quite as glum as we were led to believe. Reading this one boosted that feeling - if it was already that bad, the dystopian, possible future would have been a hell of a lot worse.
I wondered a few things while I read this one. Who is he satirizing with his working class writer hero, ready to ride into Moscow on a white horse and be declared Tsar? How much of what he was satirizing was already happening and how much was extrapolation? And what is up with so many writers giving their late-middle-age alter egos young, willing, sexually gifted women to fuck? I mean, sure, I get it. But really? Were there honestly that many Russian spy babes out to rub their naughty bits up on aging writers? I doubt it. Probably helps keep warm, though.
But there were still plenty of tasty little bits to enjoy. The horrors of vegetarian pork. The concept of food and shit and whether one is the other. Long bills on caps to prevent the people from looking at movies projected on the clouds. I do tend to love books that take government control to the absolute extreme. Reading them is like whistling past the graveyard: can't happen to me! Nope, not here!
Moscow 2042 came out in 1986, written just a few years before perestroika and glasnost and the reforms that swept through the USSR. If you were around back then, you know the images that the American public received of life under communism - bread lines, ridiculous bureaucracy, censorship, drab clothing, heavy vodka drinking, plenty of propaganda at work. Interestingly, that's nearly exactly how Voinovich portrays his dystopian version of communism at work. Now, I have no real idea how day to day life in Moscow went in the early 80s, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't quite as glum as we were led to believe. Reading this one boosted that feeling - if it was already that bad, the dystopian, possible future would have been a hell of a lot worse.
I wondered a few things while I read this one. Who is he satirizing with his working class writer hero, ready to ride into Moscow on a white horse and be declared Tsar? How much of what he was satirizing was already happening and how much was extrapolation? And what is up with so many writers giving their late-middle-age alter egos young, willing, sexually gifted women to fuck? I mean, sure, I get it. But really? Were there honestly that many Russian spy babes out to rub their naughty bits up on aging writers? I doubt it. Probably helps keep warm, though.
But there were still plenty of tasty little bits to enjoy. The horrors of vegetarian pork. The concept of food and shit and whether one is the other. Long bills on caps to prevent the people from looking at movies projected on the clouds. I do tend to love books that take government control to the absolute extreme. Reading them is like whistling past the graveyard: can't happen to me! Nope, not here!
Appena finito e dentro di me sto facendo coreografie da ragazza pon pon. Questo romanzo è un capolavoro di satira politica e umana. Vladimir Karcev, il protagonista, è un pusillanime a cui viene offerta una grande opportunità: viaggiare nel futuro, visitare la Mosca di sessant'anni avanti, fare da testimone all'evoluzione del comunismo. Solo che il regime in cui si trova catapultato è semplicemente assurdo, una propaganda continua fine a sè stessa che, per capirci, potrebbe ricordare la Corea del Nord e il suo grande leader. Il grande leader, il Generalissimus, è stato sublimato a semi-dio. Poteri zero, propaganda 100. Mi è piaciuto particolarmente la ristrutturazione del linguaggio, con i mille apparati statali dagli acronimi assurdi e quasi impronunciabili. La scala dei bisogni è un'aberrazione della piramide di Maslow , l'apparato statale un Argo dai 100 occhi che scruta ogni foglia, ma non vede il bosco. La contropropaganda americana si fa a colpi di telefilm e pubblicità di McDonald. Tutti tradiscono tutti e quindi tutto rimane invariato. La rivoluzione, guidata da un assurdo mistico conservatosi in Svizzera per sessant'anni, è un piccolo capolavoro in sè, un magnifico esempio di finale circolare
The more things change, the more they stay the same, dicono gli inglesi.
Parlando appunto di Sim Simyč: il capitolo iniziale a lui dedicato è stato l'unico che mi abbia annoiato. Anzi no, mi ha irritato. Non è la prima volta che incrocio personaggi come lui, il primo che mi è venuto in mente è stato il Foma Fomič di [b:Il villaggio di Stepancikovo e i suoi abitanti|14623643|Il villaggio di Stepancikovo e i suoi abitanti|Fyodor Dostoyevsky|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1474833944s/14623643.jpg|925118]. Come "semplice" scrittore, barbuto ed esiliato perché contrario al regime, mi ha fatto pensare a Solženicyn. Probabilmente anche perché la descrizione della nuova Unione Sovietica comprende una Prima Cerchia che ricorda nel nome [b:Il primo cerchio|11932322|Il primo cerchio|Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320598416s/11932322.jpg|377937], titolo che a sua volta rimanda all'inferno dantesco. Voinovich è un grande nell'ammiccare al passato e nel deridere il futuro per criticare aspramente il presente.
Il romanzo fu pubblicato nel 1987. Il muro di Berlino e l'Unione Sovietica caddero nel 1991. Voinovich è morto nel 2018. Non avete idea di quanto vorrei potermi sedere a un tavolo con lui e sentirlo parlare di quegli ultimi 30 anni e di come il suo Karcev avrebbe potuto affrontare cotanto cambiamento.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, dicono gli inglesi.
Parlando appunto di Sim Simyč: il capitolo iniziale a lui dedicato è stato l'unico che mi abbia annoiato. Anzi no, mi ha irritato. Non è la prima volta che incrocio personaggi come lui, il primo che mi è venuto in mente è stato il Foma Fomič di [b:Il villaggio di Stepancikovo e i suoi abitanti|14623643|Il villaggio di Stepancikovo e i suoi abitanti|Fyodor Dostoyevsky|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1474833944s/14623643.jpg|925118]. Come "semplice" scrittore, barbuto ed esiliato perché contrario al regime, mi ha fatto pensare a Solženicyn. Probabilmente anche perché la descrizione della nuova Unione Sovietica comprende una Prima Cerchia che ricorda nel nome [b:Il primo cerchio|11932322|Il primo cerchio|Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320598416s/11932322.jpg|377937], titolo che a sua volta rimanda all'inferno dantesco. Voinovich è un grande nell'ammiccare al passato e nel deridere il futuro per criticare aspramente il presente.
Il romanzo fu pubblicato nel 1987. Il muro di Berlino e l'Unione Sovietica caddero nel 1991. Voinovich è morto nel 2018. Non avete idea di quanto vorrei potermi sedere a un tavolo con lui e sentirlo parlare di quegli ultimi 30 anni e di come il suo Karcev avrebbe potuto affrontare cotanto cambiamento.
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Xenophobia, Excrement, Religious bigotry, Classism
An interesting "Sci fi" in the Kurt Vonnegut tradition. Satire that is scathing. Fun.