"Love for Three Zuckerbrins" Victor Pelevin. Let's talk about the weirdness of love

The plot of the novel is as follows: the narrator inherits from his uncle a large box filled with old books and brochures on esotericism, learns to meditate, grows a third eye and becomes a clairvoyant. Cyclops - that is his name now - is the guardian of world harmony. Day after day it takes root in minds ordinary people, forcing them to make, apparently, small and insignificant decisions that actually determine the fate of the universe: he prompts the conditional Annushka to pour sunflower oil. Along the way, Cyclops discovers that the world is arranged like a game of Angry Birds, where evil demons with bird heads are trying to destroy the Creator of all things - the green pig - and for this they use people as living projectiles. Then envisions future destiny(in one of the possible parallel worlds, of course) the system administrator Kesha, into whose mind he is infiltrated as a neighbor especially often.

Kesha, an employee of the opposition site "Contra.ru" and a troll by vocation, spends all his time on the Internet, where he "uses the energy of public excitement, like a surfer wave," that is, throws what is known on the fan, enjoys the result and philosophizes:

“After all, what idiots are around. They believe the system is Putin. Or Obama<…>And the system is a luminous screen at a distance of sixty centimeters from the eyes. With whom we fuck, we consult and ask what news will be for us today<…>We think that half of us control the screen, and the other half is controlled by the special services, but in fact the screen itself has been controlling both us and the special services for a long time. This is what the system is. And how, one wonders, to fight it if we read about the fight against the system on the same screen? "

In Keshin's possible future, this metaphor is reified. Humanity is packaged in anti-gravity cells over the polluted earth, in which they float like embryos on the umbilical cords of tubes and wires implanted in the brain that supply food and illusions - a virtual reality that has replaced real life and there is no way out of it.

You can understand what kind of long years the author is tired of explaining the same thing to us no less than we are listening, and finally decided to speak it out completely: in his new book, fiction is a completely boring formality that allows, under the guise of a preface to a parable, to devote a third of the novel to a meticulous retelling of every damned yellowed page from uncle's box. Since Pelevin is still a professional writer, sometimes a faint remorse of conscience makes itself felt: “what I will devote the next few pages to may seem commonplace to someone” (not like the previous one hundred and fifty - you should probably understand), but in this way "my story will have at least some kind of theoretical basis."

However, from the point of view of the reader, God bless her, with a theoretical basis, there would be only a story. There is such a dastardly principle of the Soviet order table: in order to buy a scarce sausage, you need to buy sticky pasta with it. The writer can find the correct ratio of ingredients intuitively, the main thing is, in case of success, not to confuse what exactly in this order is sausage and what is pasta. The reader readily accepts wisdom while it is presented to him in an amusing form, and Pelevin was once a master at this. But when the reader is caught on a dubious satirical bait to feed a box of waste paper from the Path to Me store, he feels deceived, and not at all in the way the author might think. In Pelevin's novel, people are computer appendages that constantly press the lever like laboratory rats to get a new portion of pleasure. Pelevin, who over the years has raised himself a huge loyal audience of paranoid people who willingly succumb to the author's manipulations for the pleasure of solving them, decided to have a heart-to-heart talk with the reader, as if hoping that the rat, deprived of encouragement, would continue to press the lever for exercise.

There is a sure sign by which one can determine that a writer has lost touch with reality and is hanging, entangled with wires, in his virtual bubble surrounded by imaginary readers: he begins to praise his heroes like a street peddler - his goods.

Literary convention traditionally allows the writer to declare a hero a handsome man, a hero, or a sage: the reader willingly takes his word for it, because this assumption is the necessary engine of the plot. It doesn't take much to justify this credit of readership; all it takes is a good story.

But for this convention to work, the praise should be neither too insistent (this suggests that the author is trying to convince himself in the first place) nor too specific. They should leave room for imagination so that the reader can pull on the hero his own ideas about beauty and other things, just as Pelevin Kesha in the virtual future pulls on his living "social partner" the digital image of a pornographic Japanese schoolgirl.

In Love for Three Zuckerbrins, Pelevin innocently and non-stop admires the depth and wit of the clone characters and, worse, does not skimp on examples. This is imprudent. If it is stated that some "work should have inscribed his name in the history of world philosophy in golden letters, therefore Rudolf Sergeevich polished every word in it," it would be more prudent to refrain from citing this work, especially if in their own author's text people are "rotten by unpleasant entities" (apparently, from the word "nit"), trains "depart to an infinite number of different addresses", and metaphors like this: "There is such a joke about the blind, feeling an elephant - here I am<…>mastered a similar approach to ancient human wisdom<…>the affable trunk that touched my suffering lips was in fact the wet tail of the sixties drag culture, which was going into oblivion, ”- the irony is simply not readable.

If the hero is described as a "gifted troll", whose "ruthless, but precise words" were "especially remembered" by the author, then any words of his inevitably turn out to be ruthless, first of all, in relation to the author himself (the general rule, and in this case the words are: In Kiev, unknown persons in the uniform of Ukrainian militiamen were seen, who were exchanging rubles for hryvnias. Truly, such is you, man, and all your affairs under the sun ... "). Let the Pelevin reader be ready to see the innermost wisdom in everything, but for this he expects that at least the joke will speak for itself. Pelevin's funniest joke is this: “Today the word“ handshake ”means that a polite has already left at your address stone guest". The rest I will not even repeat, because the first time it was not worth inventing them. But the main thing is that the wisdom in "Love for Three Zuckerbrins" is too frank, it is interpreted on the example Angry Birds, is interpreted with Soviet cartoon, cries out the ten commandments, and again, and again, and again, and when on last pages the author writes: “if I felt in myself the inclinations of a preacher ...”, it’s even scary to think what would happen if he now doesn’t feel it.

Perhaps the philosopher Kesha reveals part of the secret of this dull sermon novel to us: “Drama, so you know, works only when the viewer forgets that he is watching a drama. When he remembers this, only nausea remains. What mediocrities write scripts for dream movie ... And for the whole reality too. " Apparently Pelevin is right, and reality is a dream, because when he tries to wake us up, we all really feel sick.

• Publisher Eksmo, Moscow, 2014

AT THE LITERARY POST

Victor Pelevin. Love for the three Zuckerbrins. - M .: "Eksmo", 2014.

"And so I wanted to say that this is not good ..."

L.N. Tolstoy... Afterword to The Kreutzer Sonata

The magazine "Ural" began this year with a brilliant review of Alexander Kuzmenkov's "Love for Three Zuckerbrins" by Viktor Pelevin 1. When the critic sent us his review to the editorial office, I had not yet read this novel, and therefore I had nothing to say. But now I can no longer be silent, because I have finally read Pelevin's novel. And I disagree with the assessment of our permanent author.

Pelevin always tried to speak with the reader in a simple and understandable language, to explain, literally chew on puzzling esoteric ideas for him. And yet Pelevin cannot be read diagonally, his prose is complex and philosophical in its own way. Even retelling the plot of The Zuckerbrins is not so easy. Let's start with the fact that the universe has a Creator (Ancient Boar), kind, but not omnipotent. The universe consists of many worlds, but these worlds are successively destroyed by some Birds. They rebelled against their creator. Their weapons are people, whom the Birds are trying to use for their own purposes: in the second part of the book (“ Kind people") This fight of the Birds (or bird-headed gods) with the Boar is presented in the scenery of the iPhone game" Angry Birds ". Only instead of a cheerful and senseless war of funny red birds with green pigs - a dark mystery. In the game, birds shoot pigs with a big slingshot. In Pelevin's novel, the scaffold with the Cross of the Headless is in place of the slingshot. The cross is covered with kabbalistic signs. In place of the round pigs - the Creator, the Demiurge. Its comic appearance can be easily explained: we see the Creator through the eyes of the Birds. “The Birds, admittedly, had a dark sense of humor. Black beads of anxious eyes glittered above the Creator's snout. There was something Stalinist in his thick wheat mustache. The Creator's mouth moved rapidly. Nicholas realized that the Creator was constantly repeating spells that renew the world. Reading his Kabbalah, he repaired the constantly disintegrating universe. "

Vladislav Pasechnik, who wrote a review of Pelevin's novel for the academic journal Voprosy literatury, noticed that the image of the universe came to the Zuckerbrins from the works of ancient Gnostics. Some sects of the Gnostics actually represented the God of hosts in the form of a large pig, which can be read about in the book of Epiphanius of Cyprus "Panarion".

However, for Pelevin, the Boar is not God, the Birds mistake him for God by mistake. At the same time, the Boar is omniscient and omnipresent. His countless incarnations or his countless assistants maintain the world order. One of them becomes the hero-narrator of the book. His name has not been given. Named, so to speak, the position - Cyclops. According to his position, he will be given a surname with initials: O.K. Cyclop.

The story is common in Pelevin's novels. An ordinary person becomes the chosen one of higher powers. A relative dies. The hero, along with an apartment near the Garden Ring, inherits a box with esoteric literature, which he studies, practices exercises for yogis and, in the end, acquires the gift of clairvoyance. Once in a dream (and dreams in "Zuckerbrins" do not differ from reality), members of a certain Retinue perform an operation on the hero, similar to that performed by the six-winged Seraphim on the prophet Isaiah. Pelevin draws an analogy not with the Bible, but with Pushkin's poem The Prophet.

He touched my ears

And they were filled with noise and ringing:

And I heeded the shudder of the sky,

And the heavenly angels fly,

And the reptile underwater passage ...

Having survived a similar operation, the hero gains omniscience and becomes a Cyclops. Its task is to prevent actions that could disrupt the world order. Not crimes, crimes are also part of the world order: a retired judge dismembers an elderly relative in the bathroom "in views of her country house", the bandits are preparing for a raid, checking weapons. For Cyclops, this is not a reason to intervene, because what is happening is in the order of things: “An ordinary city nocturne, on some days around it was even darker. None of these everyday outbursts of thanatos threatened either the stability of the universe or me personally. "

For Birds, Cyclops is almost the embodiment of the Boar-Creator himself, in fact, he is "a small functionary, a mask behind which power is hidden", not clear to Cyclops himself. The birds eventually track down Cyclops and hunt him down. Therefore, for the sake of safety, Cyclops is freed from the prophetic gift and returned to the world of ordinary people.

Birds, "wise and terrible engineers of death", not only fight with the Boar on equal terms, but also destroy world after world. In the end, they will destroy the Earth as well. But this process is very long. And the Birds are helped here by people who have become pathetic and obedient slaves to their gadgets.

The action of one of the five parts of "The Zuckerbrins" (but the most extensive) has been moved to the distant future. Simple people inhabited by residential units that adhered to the "anti-gravity platform" several thousand kilometers above the ground. These structures resemble bunches of rotting grapes. But people don't notice the inconvenience. They are almost happy. Instead of friends and neighbors, they have internet applications that you can install or remove, chat with them, swear, wink at them and even flirt.

Wires are implanted into the bodies of people. Air, water and food are supplied through special pipes. Classes are reduced to wandering around virtual reality and sex with a "social partner." You can give your partner any look: Marilyn Monroe, Yuri Gagarin, Mark Antony ...

Because of this plot, many readers and even critics have decided that Love for Three Zuckerbrins is a dystopia. What happens if people sit in social networks, troll each other on forums, browse porn sites and spend the earned money to buy virtual ammunition for virtual tanks in the game "World of Tanks".

Three suns are shining in the sky - three zuckerbrins, - the hearts of people suspended between heaven and earth are filled with love and tenderness for the three suns. These zuckerbrins are just "Birds encased in their holographic armor." Sun Zuckerbrins are at the same time something like "behind-the-screen guards" that look at a person "through the secretly switched on camera of a tablet or computer."

However, is it Birds? No, the Cyclops narrator tells us, and Birds are not birds: "Their bodies in the nude look more like worms or soft snakes," and their paws, beaks, feathers are just their armor. So, not Birds, but snakes? But then this is another gnostic image. Birds-Snakes are archons, spirits-rulers of the universe that enslave a person, inspiring him with drives, emotions, taking away his life force.

The title of the book itself refers to the names of two media moguls: Sergey Brin (creator of Google) and Mark Zuckerberg (creator of Facebook). The similarity with a dystopia is all the more since in Pelevin's world there is even an analogue of Orwell's Big Brother - a virtual "little sister" who simultaneously fulfills the hero's wishes and spies on him.

In fact, Pelevin does not write about the future, because writing about the future is as pointless as finding out what color the hair on the head of a child of a woman who has not given birth is. Pelevin only thickens reality, trying to show us not the future, but the present. Show and three possible forms of behavior, three ways.

The first way is to go with the flow, meekly obey the system established by the Zuckerbrin Birds. This is all the easier because the birds themselves inspire thoughts to people. The idea for Pelevin is not new: “Nowadays, people learn about what they think on TV,” it was written in “Generation P”. Now they find out - by iPhone or laptop. This is how Kesha, an employee of the Contra.ru website, a journalist, a system administrator and a troll, “goes with the flow”.

The second way is a rebellion against the system, which is organized by the terrorist Batu Karaev. But the system provided for the possibility of a riot, and the uprising turns into a farce. The terrorist hides from persecution, taking on the guise of Marilyn, a woman who has become ... Kesha's "social partner". The rebel has been living in sexual intercourse with a conformist for many years. Conformity and terrorism turned out to be sides of the same coin.

The third way is to simply ignore the system and remain yourself.

Critic Irina Rodnyanskaya once remarked: "Pelevin draws in and deeply recycles any information rubbish." In "Zuckerbrins" dirty linen is not only swearing of "creakles" with "quilted jackets" on Facebook, computer games with birds, pigs or tanks. There is something more interesting. In the twenties of the last century, the girl Nadia two-step was popular. Several frivolous songs have been written to his melody. But in all variants the first three lines are necessarily repeated:

Girl Nadia,

What do you want?

Do not need anything…

Maybe that's why Pelevin named his "positive" heroine by the name of Nadya. Girl Nadia. Of course, Nadya is Nadezhda, hope for the reader, but it would be too easy for Pelevin to dwell on this.

Nadia works in the same office as Kesha, but is not interested in politics, information wars, or even porn sites. Does not flirt, does not get carried away by anything. He only plants flowers. She eternally abides in "spiritual serenity" and is engaged in meditation, not even knowing what meditation is: "her thoughts did not bother her, because they had nothing to cling to in her."

After death, she gets a happy lot: Nadia becomes the angel of Spero. But ordinary people, who remained slaves of passions, and therefore slaves of the zuckerbrins that gave rise to passions, are embodied in the bodies of animals. The poet Gugin becomes a hippopotamus, Batu Karaev becomes a python, and Kesha, of course, becomes a hamster. So a philosophical novel is reborn into an edifying one. Artistic text turns into a sermon.

Of all the techniques, the author chose the worst. Discarding artistic conventions, explain to the reader how the world works, how one should live in this world: “I tried to depict the entire dark metaphysics of the Birds' struggle with what they took for God in the most simple and even caricatured form. If it is more difficult to formulate, you will get a theological treatise. " The treatise did not work, but neither did a good novel.

Pelevin was not the first to step on this mine. In the nineties, the authors of Our Contemporary (Rasputin, Belov, Bondarev), once popular and loved by the reader, abandoned prose and switched to journalism. And the reader left them. What is Rasputin and Belov, when Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy himself could not resist the temptation: "The conclusion, which, it seems to me, is natural to draw from this, is that it is not necessary to succumb to this delusion and deception," we read in the "Afterword to Kreutserova sonata ".

Pelevin explains approximately in the same spirit. Of course, the long monologues in The Zuckerbrins are not conducted by Viktor Olegovich Pelevin, but by Cyclops. How does he compare with the author? The hero-narrator is not always the alter ego of the writer. For example, the banker Styopa, the hero of the novel Numbers, is not Pelevin, nor is Kesha. The mental organization of these creatures is too primitive. But among the heroes of Pelevin, in fact, one can find the author's alter ego. It is not very difficult: “they are all poets,” Irina Rodnyanskaya once remarked. Peter Pustota from Chapaev, Vavilen Tatarsky from Generation P. There are even two poets in the "zuckerbrins". But the hippopotamus poet Gugin, "khochubais of Russian verse", is not suitable for this role. The readers recognized Dmitry Bykov in it. The red beard, which the author gave to his hero, did not help either. Pelevin's thoughts are expressed by Cyclops himself. Cyclops is a poet. His work is akin to the calling of a prophet, and the author himself likens the prophet to a poet.

For a quarter of a century Pelevin has been writing about the same thing: about the illusory nature of the world. But his success was brought not by preaching, but by literature. This time, it seems, neither the sermon nor the essay succeeded.

"Love for the Three Zuckerbrins" still claims to be " Big book”, But in the readers' poll, Pelevin is somewhere in the middle, yielding to Dina Rubina, and Valery Zalotukha, and Anna Matveyeva, and even the debutante Guzel Yakhina, who unexpectedly seized the lead.

Newspaper and network criticism has been scolding Pelevin for over a year. I'm tired of it. How much can you denounce and ridicule virtual world? It was as if the image of Pelevin, a satirist, an accuser, had faded. social vices, Russian Swift. Hipsters noticed that Pelevin did not know the way of life and customs of hipsters. Gambling addicts found that the writer was playing with an outdated version of "Angry Birds" in the book. The praises of ordinary readers are unlikely to please the author: “what funny garbage Pelevin wrote,” notes one reader. “The sprouts of goodness continue to grow,” concludes another.

The author of The Zuckerbrins read many serious books, from George Orwell's 1984 to the first and second Books of Yeu, written by Egyptian Gnostics in Coptic in the 3rd century AD. But his own novel turned out to be overly edifying, dreary and not at all fascinating. Through the mouth of the Cyclops, Pelevin appeals to common sense, and common sense almost always loses out to emotions, impulses, feelings. And Pelevin's readers will all the same, buried in smartphones, "feed the growing zuckerbrins."

1 Cf. Alexander Kuzmenkov... Cyberpunk in search of satori. // "Ural". 2015 No. 1.

A new book Pelevin is either several stories very tightly connected between each other, or a novel from several disparate parts. Whoever likes it more. A kind of super-history of the novel, uniting the book is the story of an unnamed Cyclops - suddenly enlightened young man, able to penetrate with his mind through worlds and spaces and "patch" the broken connection of times, keeping the world in balance. His memories of this "work" allegedly formed the basis of "Zuckerbrin". The sections devoted to Cyclops are largely theoretical - in them the author expounds the idea of ​​another created world, which, however, with some ideas quite traditionally intersects with the ideas of other Pelevin things. The second story is the story of the Pig (or rather, not quite the Pig), who created the world, and the Birds (or rather, not quite Birds) who want to kill this Pig by throwing people (or rather, not quite people) at him ... Yes, as always at Pelevin everything is not as simple as it seems. And the banter about the game about evil birds eventually turns into a study of the issues of fighting against God, the love of God for his creatures and the reasons for the injustice of the world. The second story is, in a sense, a dystopia, which develops the ideas of the "Matrix" and Pelevin's "S.N.U.F.F.", elevating it to the absolute. People have been sitting in cocoons since birth, seeing the images they have chosen on the monitor screen - but no one protests. Not only because all thoughts are listened to by supercomputers-zuckerbrins, but also because it is much easier to simply consume illusions than to break out of them into a vile gray reality. Nevertheless the main character this story, like other characters in cyberpunk stories, begins to grasp that something is wrong with this world ... Well, the third story, the shortest, tells about a kind and forgiving angel who gives everyone hope for salvation ...

I describe all the plots in such detail because most of the reviews of Zuckerbrin on the web have nothing to do with the book itself. The authors discuss the personality of Pelevin, his previous works, their place in Russian literature, the politics of the country, the fate of the world, whether Pelevin is still arguing about cake, etc ... in short, the reviews say everything except what is hidden under the cover. And this happens with almost all Pelevin's novels, which makes one think that not a single critic has read them. And if I did, I didn't understand. Although, "Zuckerbrins" in terms of understanding is the simplest of the author's books. The main ideas are chewed here so that even a generation of Twitter does not have the same mess in their heads that appears when they try to read a text longer than 140 characters, and the characters smoothly flow from one story to another in their different incarnations, and are another bundle for the whole story besides Cyclops. In addition, any reader will find something of their own in the book. Fans of Pelevin Buddhism will enjoy the story of Cyclops, fans of philosophy can meditate on the essence of the history of evil birds, fans of cyberpunk will admire the invention of the cyberpunk part of the book, and, finally, even those who were scared off by Pelevin's gloomy finals will be able to breathe a sigh of peace - by and large for all the characters everything will be fine one way or another. Anyway, "Zuckerbrins" are the most good work Pelevin. Here high power- not a cold, insensitive absolute, but kindness and warmth, the characters, despite all their shortcomings, will eventually become part of this warmth, and, finally, even evil will repent and be forgiven.

PS: Well, yes, of course: Pelevin was blown away, KG / AM, this cannot be called literature, read for cattle, publicized nonsense ... well, everything that accompanies every book by the author of the year since 2000. How can you write about Pelevin and not insert these phrases, which are obligatory for every review of him?

Score: 8

4. Who has read Heinlein's Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoe (as far as I know, this is the only science fiction work written in the genre of fantasy and not simple, but urban-dark-mystical, mixed with classic noir detective story - very atmospheric, beautiful and in what even the decadently refined early work of the writer, reminiscent more of Abraham Merritt than of RH himself), he may see some analogies with Houg with the Cyclops, again a Bird ... Well, in any case, I did.

5. Question: Do you think Little Sister is a counterbalance to Big Brother or a nod towards the Little Sisters from Bioshock? Although, it can easily be, and then, and another, and the third (I do not know).

The book is funny (he laughed, even laughed - so much so that my wife came to ask what I read there? - a lot), light (despite the fact that some short pieces were similar in their severity to the classic sorokin-corpse-loving coprophage), bright (very) and perky (like a question - "where did I write off something? tell me on which novel? or somehow I don’t understand, apparently I missed this moment in the confusion ..."). At the same time, of course, there is also the obligatory Pelevin sadness (when even the death of a hero is so life-affirming and bright, which no other writer can have a flawless victory of the main character). Nobody else writes like that.

Somehow one of my friends compared Pelevin and Sorokin. So, Pelevin can write like Sorokin, but Sorokin like Pelevin - never! Viktor Olegovich is too enthusiastic about the world (although he sees its shortcomings perfectly) and loves his heroes so much (whose shortcomings he sees no less clearly) that even a hint of that derogatory, trampling, grinding into powder, driving into dust and smearing into mud the attitude characteristic of auto RU " Blue lard", It does not.

Pelevin is also very scrupulous when creating worlds, which he carefully builds around his heroes, details them and saturates them with many linguistic beauties (puns, polysemantic meanings, etc.), but all this is done only so that once again the character breaks through this ideal sphere, this is the "golden egg of meanings", bursting out. And there is always a hole - from the inside, the shell is broken by a chick, which is time to change its habitat. Heroes grow and grow out of the worlds invented by their creator in almost all of his works (at least in stories and novels, as well as in many stories). Laughing at them, sometimes not quite kindly, aptly highlighting weak sides and unpleasant features, Pelevin, at the same time, does not deny them inner strength, which rips open reality with a surgeon's scalpel, after which, discarding unnecessary layers of this reality, leaving only a naked striving for light, for the new, for the unknown, for another, they go beyond the edge of the work, which by this moment is neatly completed. But the end is the beginning, because each book by Viktor Olegovich, describing the preparatory period, is a springboard for real life own heroes.

Because, perhaps, we can say that Pelevin writes magnificent prefaces to real life.

Score: 10

About 8 years ago it seemed to me that I would not read more of Pelevin. From book to book, the same thoughts are more or less successful, the humor is built according to the same predictable pattern: a play on words, paradoxical formulations, an eclectic interweaving of mythological images and symbols with topical ones. Moreover, the best variations on the theme seem to have been left behind. But nonetheless. Here is another book I have read - they have been very much praised. This time for sure the last one.

What can I say ... It is clear that the author has always found it more interesting to rant about his favorite topic than to compose plots, but nevertheless, in some novels and novellas, they still were, albeit quite simple. Here, however, there is no plot or any composition at all. It's just some soggy bread crumb that has fallen apart into pieces. The novel "Love for the Three Zuckerbrins" is not an integral work and, in general, a novel itself.

A piece dedicated to Cyclops looks like the beginning interesting story, but the story itself is virtually nonexistent. For some reason, a bunch of all sorts of reservations on the topic physical picture the world. What for? Fiction book has the right to its own reality and does not need excuses.

A piece about birds and God is absolutely unnecessary and uninteresting, it should be mercilessly thrown into the trash.

The piece dedicated to Kesha and the world of the future is the most complete and complete of all. It is quite entertaining, it excites the imagination. It was interesting to think about which of these futuristic predictions have a chance to come true. If everything else was cut off, then this part could be published as an independent story. And it would be better that way.

The idyllic piece about Nadia Spero probably testifies to a beneficial change in the inner world the author. An attempt to create a certain positive image ... more than that! positive female image, God forgive me. Trying to create a world that is not suffering. This is something new. But alas, the attempt was unsuccessful. All this, unfortunately, is completely flat and unconvincing.

Score: 7

When I first got my hands on Perevin's novel (it was Generation P) many years ago, it made a very deep impression on me. His underground-isoteric, purely "Peleven" style (just right to put into use such an appealing one) style was something new for me, not like anything else. Then Chapaev and Emptiness, the Life of Insects, rushed after, and the novel Numbers became the apogee for me. And here's a new novel, Love for the Three Zuckerbrins ...

Pelevin is the author, roughly speaking, of "one idea", and all his novels after Numbers differ essentially only in their decorations. At first, reading that “red is actually blue” was interesting and exciting, but then, when the same message is traced from novel to novel, it gets boring. Love for the Three Zuckerbrins is no exception in this regard. Already from the first pages it becomes clear that I will again have to face the mantra "red is blue", and the whole fuse goes out at once. The novel is no better and no worse than the latter, it is absolutely the same, which upsets me.

My rating is 7. For people who have not read Pelevin before, this novel will become perhaps something interesting and exciting (as for me in due time Generation Pi became). However, for those who have been familiar with the author's work for a long time, there is nothing new here (in any case, I did not find it).

Score: 7

Pelevin cuts off another layer of reality surrounding us and puts it on top of big cake their bibliography. It was the turn of information technology.

The relevance of what the book says is off the charts. The everyday life of an advanced user of the Kesha network has been refined with high quality, tendencies are felt. Kesha is a hero of our time: he has a job in the IT sphere (on which he trolls half of the Internet), he has not the cutest girlfriend Masha (with whom they had a fight, and today there was no desire to put up - all desire was sucked out by zuckerbrin Japanese girl in leggings), and he also has immeasurable contempt for everyone around him (thanks to which he does not feel so insignificant). More small parts like the Maidan, World of Tanks and the iPhone are also available, but it makes no sense to list them all.

In addition to the cross-cutting plot of Cyclops, the book is divided into three stories. The first of them is genius in its impudence and originality, comical in its philosophism. Through the pages comes a vague realization that it comes O philosophical view to the world through the game Angry Birds, where the Birds are evil deities, and the Great Boar (green mustachioed pig) is the main deity, whispering vibrations from which the universe extends. The psychology of the deities, the sensations of human weapons flying at the target - everything is done with a bang, you read and enjoy.

The second part, the most voluminous, is a cyberpunk dystopia, quite capable of becoming an independent story, but looking even better within the framework of the novel. After Orwell's 1984, this is the most terrifying dystopia. Especially in those moments when Ke sees his body shell. Outside of it is a world of illusions, a world-interface, a world of sublimation of emotions, life and everything else. The more details appear, the more terrifying the whole picture. And when it seemed that I would not be surprised at anything in the descriptions of the world of the future, the chapter began about Kesha's work, which everyone goes to when he runs out of sharing points. And at this moment the horror of the savagery of the world of the future covers itself: society feeds on the pain of its individuals, and pain in a sophisticated form. As it should be in dystopias, the main character comes across information about the origins of such a society, a kind of mini-conspiracy is organized, all this is here. There are also explicit references to Orwell: Big Brother - Little Sister, "Big Brother loves you!" - "The Zuckerbrins love me!" And, as usual in dystopias, a person appears who is ready to explain everything about it. incomprehensible world In this case, this role is played by the terrorist Batu Karaev. A very colorful type, at least the fact that the application with him is accompanied, in addition to Karaev himself, by cute lambs who drag bricks from one edge of the white screen to the other. There are also many small funny finds of Pelevin, such as the evolution of the image from 2D to 5S, the practical rethinking of the line of the classic "He will stop galloping horse, he will enter the burning hut" or symbolic commands before intercourse with his wife "Okay, pinis, rise and shine!"

The first two parts are united by the character of Kesha, Kesha of the present and Kesha of the future, and in both times he often masturbates. Here, not everything is as flat and obscene as it might seem. The fact is that, using the example of kesha masturbation, Pelevin shows how artificial devices suck him out of a person natural strength, all nature for which it was created by evolution. As a result, we have a complete sublimation of any natural need, the running of a squirrel in a wheel, imitation for the sake of imitation of life. The key engagement process is well captured in the following quote from the author: “Back in the twenty-first century, sex content took over most network traffic. And since then, its volume has only grown. Think about it - millions of pornography users spend all day boiling themselves on a hot stove that they themselves turn on under their butts. They trick their brains into lusting electronic receivers and antennas aimed at them. Copulate with silicon. "

The third part is the shortest and lightest of all. The story of the wonderful girl Nadia. She's Hope. She is Spero. This character - real light at the end of the tunnel, a breath of good against the backdrop of a stinking air of contempt, a happy ending in the flesh. At first, in the first part, Nadia was one of the employees of the cashier's office, in the end she becomes an Angel in her own Eden. High, complex and overlapping with others. Cyclops says that the events in Eden really take place in one of the versions of the future, on the other hand, the plot terribly resembles Pelevin's stories "Ivan Kublakhanov" and "Hotel of Good Incarnations", from which one can draw a different conclusion: everything that happens is the fantasy of the girl Nadia for several days before the explosion, when she was still planting colorful animals in flower pots and secretly talking to them. You can say that she was playing this very Eden in her head, or you can understand what Cyclops said in plain text. In any case, the part is no less exciting. I am sure that it is in her that those who wish will find the most hidden Christian meanings, besides the general concept of the zuckerbrin trinity.

Summing up, I will say that this book by Pelevin is strong, very original, relevant, often flying in high planes, which, in principle, should be characteristic of the themes of Eden and cyberpunk dystopia. One drawback is that reading it does not fly from page to page, it is rather heavy, unlike the similar ones "S.N.U.F.F.", " Pineapple water... "and" Generation P ".

P. S. It is rather strange to observe the same responses to the author's later works that, they say, all this has already happened, in other words, nothing new, etc. Why, then, actually write them? You, too, are repeating the same mantra :)

Finally, I will share my rhyme, which I wrote before reading the book, having heard its main idea somewhere, albeit in a more simplified form:

Under the motley triad of zuckerbrins

Between post-Soviet indirect links,

The dream of the pupils rushed forever

To empty but beautiful worlds.

The soldier was on duty at the post, where there were likes,

And where is the repost - a huge St. Bernard,

Where he walked, keeping himself "on the machine."

War ... eh, difficult times.

And life spilled over like a Klein bottle:

Maniac, football coach, counter-terrorist ...

Everything here is so bright, fun (probably),

But the main thing is that the computer does not freeze.

Score: 9

I don't know much about Pelevin's work, so I can't judge the presence or absence of self-repetition and the decrease / increase in his literary level. Once upon a time, more than 10 years ago, I tried to read his early works, and then I rather did not like them than liked them, and I stopped acquaintance with the work of this author. But the years have passed, we have changed, the world has changed; and Pelevin has certainly changed. And, having become interested in the judgments about this novel, I read it, and I rather liked it.

The Love for Three Zuckerbrins consists of four distantly related stories. This is the story of the narrator Cyclops about himself and the three stories he wrote.

The novel "Kind People" is a surreal story about how the Birds attack the Ancient Boar, using ordinary people as live projectiles. This is the author's mythology, inspired by the game "Angry Birds".

The story "Fuck the system" is almost a full-fledged cyberpunk. The world of the future, where people float in zero gravity, connected to the automation that supports their lives, while their whole life passes in virtual reality and in lucid dreams, also regulated by computer systems.

The part "Dum spero spiro" looks like a parable with a bright mood about the angel Spero and the talking animals that inhabit the world of Eden.

What I liked most of all was the story that connects the entire novel about Cyclops himself, a man to whom all the secrets of the world are suddenly revealed. It can be regarded as magical realism or as an urban fantasy about a hero with superpowers who is pursued by Birds - powerful creatures from another world trying to destroy our world. There is practically no action in this part, it mainly consists of reasoning.

Pelevin directs our attention to the most unsightly moments of our reality, including perversions. I would shake hands with Viktor Olegovich for the fact that he condemns pornography, even if, as is usual with postmodernists, he had something else in mind. Cyclops in "The Zuckerbrins" warns that if we do not change, we will inevitably find ourselves in that cyberpunk world where everything is decided for us in advance, even what kind of perversion we will suffer. Moreover, our world is already very close to this. But the philosophy of this novel is not decadent, merciless or hopeless; on the contrary, it is constructive, inspiring, humanistic. It is impossible to say right away how close this is to the truth, but Pelevin, in the words of Cyclops, assures us that we are able, by exerting effort, to create a better world around us.

As for the material, there is so much of it that there is enough for a dozen books. They throw you from politics to esotericism, from metaphysics to religion, from science to mythology ... And so zealously all these components are shuffled, flickering, replacing each other with the speed of pictures in a kaleidoscope, that a simple question "what is this book about?" the answer is not so simple. In short, then, probably, about how, in the era of mass computerization, a person is slowly but inevitably transformed into a vegetable with rewired brains, and the question of when digital technologies will replace him and communication, and love, and intimacy- just a matter of time.

The main message of the book, it seems to me, is precisely to remind people that they are people and that they should live like a human. The topic of biblical commandments is raised - albeit old and hackneyed - but "nothing better has been invented yet." Live right, do not do bad - and the universe will answer you in kind. You live in the world you deserve. If everything is bad around - delve into yourself.

Pelevin offers another unexpected, but quite logical version of the world order, with the usual dose of Buddhism, humor and eroticism. It turned out interesting. Of the shortcomings, I can only note the lack of the familiar ease of reading, which is inherent in many of his things. The text turned out to be somewhat "viscous", especially in the second half.

Many believe that Pelevin writes from book to book about the same thing. Perhaps, but he does it in different words every time. And not everyone can do that.

Score: 8

Yes, I thought that Pelevin would not be able to surprise me this time. I read a good half of the book with noticeable boredom - deja vu and routine. However, it seems to me, these sensations were created and pumped up by Pelevin specifically in order to stun, shock, give the text dynamics and, without waiting for the disgusting admiration to pass, to put the picture and concept of the world into the reader's head - this is how it is better absorbed. Ultimately, I was satisfied. As noted in other reviews, this is a surprisingly life-affirming book.

Pelevin Victor Olegovich

Love for the Three Zuckerbrins

The universe is made of stories, not atoms.

EXPLANATIONS AND JUSTIFICATIONS

This strange book contains three stories (one disproportionately long) - and an explanatory text that connects them into a whole. The connecting material (I called it "Cyclops") can be viewed as an additional story, completely documentary - although I admit that in this capacity it is useless: it has a long and detailed introduction, there is a conclusion, but there is almost no narrative part. instead of which the reader is waiting for several pages of my shaky reasoning, giving scientific pop.

I want to apologize for these shortcomings - but the book could not have turned out differently. I did not talk about Cyclops' work in detail for reasons that will be quite clear. On the other hand, I could not at all not mention Cyclops either - otherwise my three stories would lose all connection with each other: it would not be clear what they have in common, who they were written by and where they came from at all.

Therefore, I ask you to keep in mind: my goal is to tell not so much about Cyclops, but about what Cyclops saw and understood at his post. For a lot of this seems to me worthy of attention.

In my book, I sometimes use scientific terminology. I want to emphasize that I am not a physicist and generally have no technical knowledge. I'm just trying to explain the observable reality in terms that everyone knows, so as not to come up with too many neologisms. A physicist may find inconsistencies and contradictions in my story. In this case, I suggest that he come up with an explanation better than mine - and keep it as a keepsake.

The physical side of the issue is actually not very important to me. But she's pretty interesting. In the days of Galileo and Copernicus, it was supposed in the introduction to make a curtsey towards church dogma and correlate all hypotheses and assumptions with it, but today we must bow to scientific dogma in the same way.

And if I sometimes talk about "multiverse" and "multidimensionality", I do it with approximately the same feelings with which Galileo could have mentioned in his book the prophet Isaiah and the Angels of God: with a timid faith that the Holy Scripture was understood by me, a sinful sorcerer , at least partly correct.

The book has almost no connection with actual reality. I think that in our time it is more a virtue than vice versa.

With this I respectfully lay down my humble work at the feet of the Reader and the Reader.

Part 1. KIKLOP

GOLEM ILEEM

In the beginning, you should describe the point where all these stories converge - or, perhaps, where they diverge from.

Probably, they rather diverge - because only taking into account this central event do all the twists of the destinies that I have traced become understandable.

It was like a flash of magnesium that captured the characters in random poses - and sent their photographic prints into the future. I AM I say magnesium because the fire and smoke were real. The iPhone will not give such a flash even on a command from the NSA. Although, of course, who knows - I read somewhere that American smartphones can not only eavesdrop, spy and sniff, but also detonate on a signal from the center, piercing the auricle and brain with a directed explosion of the battery. Probably conspiracy humor.

But in order.

I AM knew that I would not remain Cyclops forever.

It is dangerous nervous work, which is usually performed no more than a year or two. Then the Birds grope in the fabric of our world the knot that throws them with sufficient precision to remove it - if necessary, along with the fabric itself. They no longer use people who happen to be nearby as weapons.

This is how they behave when they act blindly, and Cyclops accidentally appears in their field of attention for a few seconds. If they know exactly where to look for their enemy, they act differently.

How, I'll tell you now.

Right under me was workplace Keshi is a young man, a significant part of this book will be devoted to various states and forms. We can say that at that time he was the closest being to me - at least in a spatial sense.

Sometimes I allowed myself immodest, probably, entertainment - I tuned in to his mind and began to observe what was happening in the surrounding space through his eyes - and even through the prism of his consciousness. I AM perceived not only what he saw, but also the voices that rang out in his mind (I will not call them thoughts - since he did not hear half of them himself, and obeyed the other half without thinking).

Sometimes it was interesting, sometimes not very much. If, for example, he turned on his Japanese schoolgirls (this happened when there were few people in the office and Kesha was sure that no one would approach him from the back), his inner space filled with a gruff, soccer-like comment. Kesha, a retired honored bondage / bukkake worker, seemed to be explaining what was happening to the unintelligent laymen who watched porn with him. Such a layman in those minutes was me alone - but Kesha, in his imagination, broadcast the signal to a much larger audience. It is still amazing to what extent a person is a social being.

When there were too many people in the office to watch porn or play games with the computer, Kesha began to roll gape citizens on the Internet - like a World War II ace who flew to free hunt... The picture on the screen was made at this time completely decent and functional: any media worker today dives around the blogosphere for half a day.

Sometimes Kesha was distracted from the computer, looked at his colleagues in the office - and passed judgment on them.

He was the least cruel to the girl Nadya, who was busy with the buffet and landscaping the space - “if he cuts his hair normally and stops being afraid of people, he will find himself some Azeri bot”. He judged others more severely. He christened the editor-in-chief of the Contra.ru website (that was the name of the place where he worked) “shabesgey” (which did not prevent Kesha from currying favor with him every day - but life, as you know, is clownery). At the same time, Kesha sincerely believed that attraction to virtual Japanese schoolgirls was the norm, and Chief Editor- pervert.

Accordingly, the information product of Kesh’s home site called to himself the word “shabezgon” (he even muttered during the deadlines a dreamy mantra-verse “my shabezgon, my shabezgon - how many thoughts does he make”). He divided his colleagues at work into "stinkers" and "tired" (the former turned into the latter over the years, dropping their own - about like fading stars).

Modern book famous writer Victor Pelevin "Love for Three Zuckerbrins" received a large number of reviews. Among them there are those that praise the work, and negative ones. This book is a series of different stories that are closely related common themes... It is even difficult to list everything that the author wanted to say with his work, this is culture, and politics, and the future, and much more. This can only be understood after reading.

A simple young guy, not striving to achieve something special in life, turns out to be the owner of an expensive apartment. In it, he discovers a box that stores knowledge about the structure of the world and esotericism. Suddenly, this topic fascinates him, the guy even leaves his job to study the secrets of the universe. After a while, he gets necessary knowledge and can know what exists. He becomes the guardian of the world, making sure that balance and order are maintained in him. His name is now Cyclops. He has the ability to penetrate someone else's consciousness and see what is not available to anyone. He can also manage and direct, making the necessary changes in society. It is Cyclops who talks about what he sees in other people's heads, although he talks about some people in more detail.

The story about the system administrator Kesha, for example, shows many problems. modern society... He constantly surfs the Internet, one of his favorite activities is trolling, and sometimes he switches to japanese girl in a short skirt. He is vivid example dependence on social networks.

The writer in his book shows possible variant the future of our planet. People will work and live on the Internet, and their biological needs will be provided with special devices and equipment. Such people can hardly even be called intelligent beings. The work can be considered a tragicomedy, given that the writer, as usual in his style, did not avoid satire and caustic remarks, but if you think about the meaning, you can see a real tragedy.

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