Jane Ciabattari
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Thursday, May 5, 2011 7:01AM
Is Sorokin the Russian Bolano?
Although his arrival was delayed by visa problems, Vladimir Sorokin, with his leonine mane of silver hair, was much in evidence at the PEN World Voices Festival.
A daring samizdat postmodernist in the waning Soviet days, Sorokin was known for stories that threw grenades at the long forced march to socialist realism. He was onstage on April 30 in conversation with Russian-born n + 1 editor and critic Keith Gessen. (Footnote: Sorokin’s usual translator, Jamey Gambrell, was delayed in traffic, so FSG’s Mark Kirov stepped in, adroitly handling translation for the first half of the conversation).
Gessen described Sorokin’s "Normal," [The Norm], in which everyone goes about normal life and at least once a day eats shit. Gessen said that in some cases they put the shit in their tea....and then… “Where else?” He turned to Sorokin, who shrugged and said, "I don't remember. That was a long time ago."
Among other tidbits: Sorokin said he got the idea for "The Queue," which takes place in an interminable line—people fall in love, for instance, leave the line to go make love, and return--when he returned home late one night to discover people waiting in line outside a department store. They had heard American jeans would be for sale the next morning. In the Soviet era, people spent 25 percent of their waking hours on line (as opposed to online).
A performance of a play based on his sci-fi suspense saga "Ice Trilogy," just published by New York Review of Books Classics (also translated by Gambrell) was staged in the Old Gym on Mulberry Street. And Sorokin was one of a handful of panelists talking about where Russia is headed with chess champion turned commentator Garry Kasparov.
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