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by Victor Pelevin
In a word (or two or three): i always thought the russians were godless
heathens
From Mr. Hipster:
Wow. Yikes. Um. I have completely reached
the limit of my reading comprehension. Remember those ERB
things you used to read in elementary school (maybe they were called
something else in your state) that were essentially torturous versions
of the SAT reading comprehension section? They came in different color
folders; pink being the easiest and like the back of the box was dark
purple and used ten dollar words and triple negatives in the questions--which,
of course, makes no sense when it's the reading that's supposed to
become more challenging, not the questioning. Point being that if
this book had a folder color, it would be the deepest, most bruising
shade of black. It's not even that the Russian-English translator
choose big, confusing words so much as the concept of the Russian
revolution and the delusions of it in the context of modern-day Russia
as an allegory of Buddhism is beyond me on so many levels. It's as
though I took not a single history class. Am I the only one who only
remembers learning about slash and burn agriculture and the feudal
system and that's about it? The fact there was even a revolution in
Russia only sounds familiar because I seemed to recall a Woody Allen
film called Love
and Death that may or may not have had anything to do with it.
In which he wore a funny hat and talked to a couple guys who looked
vaguely like Yakov Smirnoff. And to even imagine I took and Eastern
religions class... Granted I'm not a total idiot, but the thing kept
slithering from between my fingers. The book started of relatively
innocuously with a mysterious murder and identity theft and cocaine
and shooting and armored cars and shit and then it just gets wacky,
what with giant Arnold Schwarzenegger's and delusional, Nietzsche-spouting
commanders and this dual past/present world in which our main character
Pyotr Void seems to slip between at the drop of an eyelid. Every character
also seems to have names and aliases and nicknames and an unnatural
love for revolutionary poetry. Don't get me wrong, the little I could
glean from the text was pretty cool, but like most Buddhist garbage
about "there is no spoon" I hear, it drives me more mad than calms
me down. There IS a spoon, dammit, and I'll smack the shit out of
you with it! Perhaps this thing is best read with the Russian Buddhist's
companion open next to it, but I'll never know. Chalk it up to another
one I can shake my head at and wonder how and why I manage to do this
to myself time and time again.
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