(np) Palast on Putin

[Mark Kohut]

Knowing nothing about him, I look him up and find this:

"In Sorokin, Russia found its Pynchon." —Vladislav Davidzon, Bookforum

O boy O boy...I'm waiting too now...

On Sat, Mar 26, 2022 at 10:44 PM rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> waiting for this one. Sorokin's earlier book Day of the Oprichnik is
> scarily prescient considering the present day
>
> rich
>
>
> https://www.amazon.com/Telluria-Vladimir-Sorokin/dp/1681376334/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1648348947&sr=1-3
>
> *in the warring, neo-feudal society of this cross-genre novel for fans of
> Cormac McCarthy and William Gibson, the greatest treasure is a dose of
> tellurium—a magical drug administered by a spike through the brain.*
>
> *Telluria* is set in the future, when a devastating holy war between Europe
> and Islam has succeeded in returning the world to the torpor and
> disorganization of the Middle Ages. Europe, China, and Russia have all
> broken up. The people of the world now live in an array of little nations
> that are like puzzle pieces, each cultivating its own ideology or identity,
> a neo-feudal world of fads and feuds, in which no one power dominates. What
> does, however, travel everywhere is the appetite for the special substance
> tellurium. A spike of tellurium, driven into the brain by an expert hand,
> offers a transforming experience of bliss; incorrectly administered, it
> means death.
>
> The fifty chapters of *Telluria* map out this brave new world from fifty
> different angles, as Vladimir Sorokin, always a virtuoso of the word,
> introduces us to, among many other figures, partisans and princes, peasants
> and party leaders, a new Knights Templar, a harem of phalluses, and a
> dog-headed poet and philosopher who feasts on carrion from the battlefield.
> The book is an immense and sumptuous tapestry of the word, carnivalesque
> and cruel,
>
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 26, 2022 at 6:32 PM Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Yes, it's true,  Solzhenitsyn WAS more than a bit of an asshole.
> >
> > And not that great a writer, either. Ever tried to slog your way through
> > the Gulag Archipelago? Yikes.
> >
> > I recommend picking up Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. instead. A
> far
> > superior and more relevant work when it comes to the mysteries, both
> macro
> > and micro, of the human heart.
> >
> > Jerky
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Mar 26, 2022 at 5:15 PM jody2.718 via Pynchon-l <
> > pynchon-l at waste.org>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Larry Summers- I'd half forgotten about that clown. What a disaster,
> > along
> > > with the rest of the geniuses at Harvard, like Andrei Schleifer, who
> were
> > > going to "fix" Russia with "Shock Therapy," and ended up creating a
> > feeding
> > > trough for the Oligarchs, and maybe themselves. But Pinochet was only a
> > > more recent model for Putin. From an historical perspective, Putin is
> > more
> > > of what Solzhenitsyn was hoping for- a Tsar-like figure in concert with
> > the
> > > Orthodox Church that would restore morality and order, as opposed to
> the
> > > decadence of the West, which, in his mind, was destroying Russia at
> that
> > > time. In fact, Solzhenitsyn, who passed in 2008, welcomed Putin.
> > > Solzhenitsyn also could not conceive of Ukraine being anything other
> > than a
> > > part of Russia. Autocratic?- no problem, deeply ingrained in the
> Russian
> > > psyche.
> > >
> > > Right wing fascism has deep historical roots in Russia. No way was it
> > > going to be transformed into some Harvard version of western capitalism
> > by
> > > "Shock Therapy". Palast is right on.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> _____________________________________________________________________________________________
> > >
> > > "Vladimir Putin did not arrive from outer space on an abalone
> > > shell........."
> > > --
> > > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> > >
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>