The author of the book “Light Worlds” writes about everything at once – about the meaning of life, about a man and a woman, about the eternal and unshakable order of things.
When you open the book “Easy Worlds”, you discover an amazing neighborhood: autobiographical essays next to fantasy stories and statuses published on Facebook … We have chosen three quotes and three “Big Meanings”, you should never stop at anything – find your own by reading and falling in love new work of a great author.
semantic
“For a long time and habitually I am annoyed at the sight of Mu-Mu sweets. Pictured is a cow. In my opinion, everyone knows that the deaf-mute Gerasim drowned the dog Mumu on the orders of the evil lady, the end of the story. And now there are sweets (lollipops, or what? I haven’t tried it) called Frou-Fru. In Russian literature, Frou-Frou is the name of Vronsky’s horse, the horse that he killed by mistake, at the races, awkwardly dropping on his croup with a swing and breaking his back in half (there the hyphen crunched; where it is thin, it breaks there; Lord, what a genius writer, read who has not read); – this, of course, is a harbinger of the death of Anna Karenina. Loved and killed. There’s a lot of great stuff in there. For a hundred and fifty years in a row it was a dog and a horse. Two innocent victims of human passions. Lovely such names, and for both fate and death. Now it is a crooked cow and an underfruit. We’re getting stupid.”
Read more:
- Tatyana Tolstaya: “I see the author’s avatars”
Gender
“A man believes that a woman’s hand is arranged like a Swiss knife: there is a beer opener, and scissors, and a corkscrew, and some kind of chisel, and a hook, and tweezers, and a nail file, and a screwdriver, and pliers. It has built-in grippers for hot and tongs for receiving dirty plates. After eating, the man holds out the empty plate into space, and she herself disappears somewhere and, probably, washes. In the next generations, women will be born with a built-in salt and pepper shaker; evolution, I am convinced, is moving in this direction: After all, when a man, putting down a book inserted between a plate and a salad bowl, looks around the space around him and asks the universe the question: “Do we have salt?” He doesn’t mean that, does he? He knows well: we have salt. He just waits for the woman to unscrew, stretch, sprinkle and screw back.
Read more:
- Why do we like to slander
Philosophical
“And every time,” my mother recalled, “when the Lozinskys sat down to dinner, past them, past the laid, elegant table, quickly, with downcast eyes, one of the Levitskys passed with a full pot in his hand. First, a young and strong hand, and then withering and withering, and, finally, already covered with buckwheat, trembling, arthritic, senile hand. So what do I want to say to all of this? Yes, nothing so special. This is life, and the Lord, with childish, evil humor, makes sure that everyone gets their share in it: if you are Lozinsky, then they will give you their Levitsky so that he will not let you have a carefree and calm lunch; if you – Levitsky – He will take away, fence off from you a quiet, peaceful, longed-for toilet, in order to make you embarrassed while you are alive, not to know where to go. For what it is to us, why – we do not know. But in real life we are alternately either the Lozinskys or the Levitskys, aren’t we?”
Tatyana Tolstaya “Light Worlds”, publishing house “Editorial of Elena Shubina”, “AST”
Tatyana Tolstaya, writer, publicist, TV presenter. Winner of the “Triumph” award for the novel “Kys” (Eksmo, 2010). Together with film director and screenwriter Avdotya Smirnova, she hosted the TV show School of Scandal (Culture, NTV, 2002–2014).