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Babylon
Главный герой романа, представитель поколения "П" с соответствующими юношескими идеалами, опускается до торговца в киоске, потом осваивает интеллектуальную халтуру на ниве рекламы, а в итоге становится... земным воплощением мужа богини Иштар, только вместо супружеской функции исполняет рекламную.
Вся прелесть пелевинского романа в том, что его каждый воспринимает по-своему:...more
Вся прелесть пелевинского романа в том, что его каждый воспринимает по-своему:...more
Published
(first published January 1st 1999)
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May 30, 2007
Quayar
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
those who work in advertizing or who want to understand Russian culture better, either one.
Victor Pelevin is like a pop culture-savvy and Russian Murakami, or like Tom Robbins but less snarky and less lyrical or something. I LOVE him. This particular novel is really interesting because it approaches the world of advertising from a unexpected perspective: in soviet Russia, the seller is the sucker! Some twists are a little hokey, but the final twist is worth the read. I am a huge fan of Russian authors like Bulgakov, Dostoevsky and co, and he definitely plays around with these classic...more
Scavengering the post Soviet psyche.
In some ways this is a mundane story of a uninspired young person making his way in the world and inadvertently moving through layers of society he didn't know existed. That's the story line in a nutshell, and you've seen that many times before. But the brilliant combination of place (Moscow), time (Yelstin), industry (advertising), and perspective (cockeyed and lonely paranoia) make this a really interesting book.
The main character Tartartsky is in a world seemingly moving from determinism to...more
The main character Tartartsky is in a world seemingly moving from determinism to...more
Story (6/10):
Most novels of great style, written quality, and characterization, are easy to follow. They present a clear, engaging path and may even surprise now and then, if they're particularly well done, but the elements fall into place as if they were meant to do so. The reader follows the protagonist on a linear path, cheers when he succeeds, and mourns when he falls. That is what makes great literature.
Homo Zapiens does not follow this formula. The reader wanders down an unconventional, so...more
Most novels of great style, written quality, and characterization, are easy to follow. They present a clear, engaging path and may even surprise now and then, if they're particularly well done, but the elements fall into place as if they were meant to do so. The reader follows the protagonist on a linear path, cheers when he succeeds, and mourns when he falls. That is what makes great literature.
Homo Zapiens does not follow this formula. The reader wanders down an unconventional, so...more
A really good novel. I had read the Lives of Insects before by Pelevin and I wasn't all that impressed but Babylon is much better. In a way it has things in common with the last book I read, A Bend in the River by VS Naipul, because both books depict what it is like when a country goes through a complete transformation, the Congo from a colony to an independent state and Russia from the heart of the Soviet Union to an unstable, hyper-capitalist, winner takes all frontier state. In both transitio...more
I was very taken with this novel, even though it’s in the Pynchonesque school I have little taste for these days. There’s a brilliance that tends to make the showiness and reasonable paranoia seem appropriate. Another way of putting it is that this is often a novel of ideas, a look at the world through advertising, with crazy theories that aren’t so crazy, or at least are brilliantly crazy, such as the oral and anal view of money, taken in and spent, that can only be appreciated by reading it. E...more
Осмиването на постсоциалистическата действителност не успя да ми влезе под кожата. В началото бях очарована от острия език на автора, от чувството му за хумор, което изглеждаше неизчерпаемо и иронията - в големи, огромни дози.
Към средата сериозно ми доскуча и въпреки въвеждането на нови персонажи и завръщането в повествованието на вече споменати лица, действието сякаш зацикли и започна да ме отегчава. Всичко описано е по руски мащабно - става дума за много пари, за много елементарни, прясно забо...more
Към средата сериозно ми доскуча и въпреки въвеждането на нови персонажи и завръщането в повествованието на вече споменати лица, действието сякаш зацикли и започна да ме отегчава. Всичко описано е по руски мащабно - става дума за много пари, за много елементарни, прясно забо...more
I'd like to think that I have a bit of a Russian soul. I stare down long, snowy views pinned down by the sheer weight of being, lose myself in massive novels, like to think that I fight for the proletariat, and attribute certain cleansing abilities to vodka. However, this is a Russia that is long since dead. The modern Russia is populated by thugs in tracksuits and all manner of slimy manipulators of post-Soviet malaise. This is the Russia Pelevin writes about.
"Once upon a time in Russia there r...more
"Once upon a time in Russia there r...more
An impossible to book to love or hate. Or: I loved reading it as much as it was a slog. Pelevin has said that it is up to the reader to apply meaning to his work, which is good because there were definitely moments that required me to give up on following a story and just accept what was happening.
Far from perfect, this is a novel that suffers from an abundance of ideas, though, in typical fashion, Pelevin somehow manages to get them in order (sort of). I read his short stories and his novella...more
Far from perfect, this is a novel that suffers from an abundance of ideas, though, in typical fashion, Pelevin somehow manages to get them in order (sort of). I read his short stories and his novella...more
i picked up generation p at dom knigi in st. petersburg in the late 90s. i'll admit i don't think i appreciated its brilliance at the time. we were still too close to it all, the fall of the soviet union and the rise of a new russia. but at last the time was right to read Pelevin again and fully appreciate him. my edition of this book is actually called Babylon, but from what i can see it is the same as homo zapiens.
it's difficult for me to describe adequately the brilliance of this book, the wa...more
it's difficult for me to describe adequately the brilliance of this book, the wa...more
I am so very pleased to have stumbled on this book.
Babylon is about a failed poet who learns that his ideas can make him quick cash in the growing advertising industry of Yeltsin-era Russia. He takes his cues from drug-induced hallucinations and is swayed by philosophy imparted by ancient Babylonians and Zen Buddhists. If that sounds like a weird, wild ride, it is. There was only one long chapter that delved a little too deep into philosophy for my taste; most of it was delivered in bite-size p...more
Babylon is about a failed poet who learns that his ideas can make him quick cash in the growing advertising industry of Yeltsin-era Russia. He takes his cues from drug-induced hallucinations and is swayed by philosophy imparted by ancient Babylonians and Zen Buddhists. If that sounds like a weird, wild ride, it is. There was only one long chapter that delved a little too deep into philosophy for my taste; most of it was delivered in bite-size p...more
This is the first Pelevin novel I've read. Homo Zapiens for me had a strong first half or so. It started to get weird with the Ouija board, but the book was still interesting; I had a reason to suspend my disbelief.
But then the plot just seemed to get lost. Like Pelevin had too many ideas and couldn't whittle them down. The whole way through the second half, I thought, This is what's happenening next? And looking back, some scenes didn't seem to serve much purpose.
I stopped caring about the re...more
But then the plot just seemed to get lost. Like Pelevin had too many ideas and couldn't whittle them down. The whole way through the second half, I thought, This is what's happenening next? And looking back, some scenes didn't seem to serve much purpose.
I stopped caring about the re...more
Given to me by a Russian friend to practice my contemporary Russian slang and grammar translation, this is a very funny novel on themes familiar to 1950s American comedies--Babylen Tatarsky is a stipend-dependent emo Soviet poet when the system crashes down in 1990. A wild and crazy school buddy brings him in to a brand-new Russian ad agency. how do you market to people who have never had consumer choice? What effect will advertising have on Russians? What effect will sex, drugs and consumer abu...more
finished it in one day. gave me the strangest dream: I wandered into some derelict building - I could see the sea through one window and some huge mountains through another - and met this flying dragon-fox-angelesque creature.
then we sat down like proper yoga people and had a cup of absent. talked about something - probably commercials and pepsicola.
afterwards I went out through the door and met Tatarsky, who asked me whether I had a light. Of course I had a light. but I couldn't find it.
this...more
then we sat down like proper yoga people and had a cup of absent. talked about something - probably commercials and pepsicola.
afterwards I went out through the door and met Tatarsky, who asked me whether I had a light. Of course I had a light. but I couldn't find it.
this...more
I liked this book very much although it was a bit tough to follow at times. It has a real existentialist feel to it. I liked it mainly because the subject centers around the advertising industry and advertising's impact on how people think and feel about life in general. Here is one of my favorite quotes:
"People want to earn money in order to gain freedom, or at a least breathing space from their interminable suffering. And we copywriters manipulate reality in front of people's eyes so that free...more
"People want to earn money in order to gain freedom, or at a least breathing space from their interminable suffering. And we copywriters manipulate reality in front of people's eyes so that free...more
This book is well worth the time it takes to get through it. It is another book I already anticipate reading again (this was my second time reading it) because the concepts (the "oral-", "anal-", and "displacing wow factors" - as well as the idea that the flow of money and material goods are just a necessary process, men and women being cells which inaugurate this process, in a larger organism termed "oranus") take some time to digest. To say nothing of Che Guevara's extended rant, which is deli...more
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Clearly Victor Pelevin wrote the bulk of this book sitting on the toilet or standing in the shower. He collected all his stray thoughts and tried to make them anecdotes in the life of a cipher of a character. This book suffers from the same problems that Tom Robbins continually stumbles over, which is that he wants to convey some grand idea and then he has one character ask a couple questions to fake a dialog, while the other character expounds endlessly with the writer's voice. Whereas Robbins'...more
Five stars for a book that I resent? Certainly why not?
From the second that I started to read the book I couldn't quite decide if I liked it or hated it. The book comes off a bit like an elitist ass hole. One of those guys who knows he is smarter than you and decides that instead of acting like a civilized person he is going to prove it to you by, well telling you things that don't make any sense and then acting like they do. and if that is not enough he will include diatribes against things th...more
From the second that I started to read the book I couldn't quite decide if I liked it or hated it. The book comes off a bit like an elitist ass hole. One of those guys who knows he is smarter than you and decides that instead of acting like a civilized person he is going to prove it to you by, well telling you things that don't make any sense and then acting like they do. and if that is not enough he will include diatribes against things th...more
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Oy, maybe the most cynical Soviet (or post-) novel I've ever read. Which is saying something. Our hero is an unemployed poet who ends up writing ad copy in post-Communist Moscow. It is suggested here that all world politics is literally the creation of admen, for reasons and purposes you don't want to know. Capitalism is analyzed sociologically and phenomenologically by a Buddhist Che Guevara through a ouija board. Horrendously cynical ad copy is imagined; is the worst the copywriter who deeply...more
The way the plot progressed in this novel was not what I was used to; this was a large reason in why I liked it. I don't mind being a little confused as to WHERE the story is going because it is still progressing, just not in the typical spoon fed intro-problem-solution-happy ending story. Pelevin's exploration of the anal-oral-displaced patterns from the perspective of Tatarsky's own exploration in contrast to Tatarsky's experience in the advertising industry was wonderfully written. I will def...more
Давно это было - конец школы. Очень понравилась книга. Казалось что-то свежее и другое. Но по сравнению с классиками литературы это что-то более простое и приземленное, хоть и с выпендрежем. Недавно попробовал почитать и показалось скучно и банально.
The book was quote interesting, but not really my kind of read. Among all the imaginary and not so much revelations, those that truly interested me were stories of post-Soviet Russia and references to ancient mythologies. Ending didn't have the closure I expected, but thanks to all the mysteries left untold, my thoughts still keep jumping back to them, as if trying to see something I missed, something that was obvious all along. Was worth reading anyway.
Je n'ai pas du tout aim? ce livre et je ne l'ai d'ailleurs pas lu compl?tement. Le personnage principal, Vova, entreprend par hasard une carri?re de publicitaire. Il progresse dans la soci?t? et s'enrichit en vendant du vide. Cependant les nombreuses digressions fantastiques et totalement irr?elles de l'auteur m'ont agac?e. Je n'y ai vu aucun int?r?t pour l'histoire.
Mind-blowing book about how propaganda, especially of the commercial kind, literally infects our being. Pelevin is as hilarious and deadly in his satire of what drives modern life. The setting is post-Soviet Russia, rushing towards capitalism, but the message can send a depth charge to America as well. The visual of the Russian Parliament as a pack of cigarettes is----excuse the modern allusion--priceless. This is a different kind of 5 stars than I usually give, and I am already pushing on to Pe...more
A brilliant insight into modern "media" culture. With witty cynicism Pelevin knocks off the rainbow coloured glasses to show us how flawed our obsession with media really is. Some great insights into the post-Soviet psyche in coping with an ever changing reality - many of which are just as relevant to other societies in the world as they are to modern day Russia. A very interesting read, you won't be able to put it down and will want to read it again.
Jun 13, 2012
Nic
added it
Stylish with flashes of brilliant (if dark) humour, well-captured by the translator. The theme of shallow consumer society and its cynical manipulation is universal. However, I suspect I missed some of the more specific cultural references and satirical barbs.
This book was really funny in some parts and initially i enjoyed it a lot; however, it got too philosophical and i didn't catch all the shots being taken at North America vs. Russia and how dumb human beings are. I think it is probably profound, but i just don't think at that level.
Mnogo mi je prijalo ovo postmodernističko ludilo, sa svojim simboličkim kolopletima, ezoterijskom dijalektikom i duhovitim socijalnim komentarima. Definitivno ću nastaviti sa čitanjem Peljevina, još jednom da me ovako zabavi i uvrštavam ga u svoje savremene favorite.
I'm sorry to say I did not enjoy this one. In fact, I got so bored with it I gave up on it half way through. Pelevin has lost his freshness-- I really enjoyed many of his earlier books!
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aka Виктор Олегович Пелевин (Rus)
"Victor Olegovich Pelevin is a Russian fiction writer. His books usually carry the outward conventions of the science fiction genre, but are used to construct involved, multi-layered postmodernist texts, fusing together elements of pop culture and esoteric philosophies. Some critics relate his prose to the New Sincerity and New Realism literary movements." (Wikipe...more
More about Victor Pelevin...
"Victor Olegovich Pelevin is a Russian fiction writer. His books usually carry the outward conventions of the science fiction genre, but are used to construct involved, multi-layered postmodernist texts, fusing together elements of pop culture and esoteric philosophies. Some critics relate his prose to the New Sincerity and New Realism literary movements." (Wikipe...more
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“In order for him to believe sincerely in eternity, others had to share in this belief, because a belief that no one else shares is called schizophrenia.”
—
21 people liked it
“How can non-existence get sick of itself?
Everytime you wake up, you appear again out of nowhere. And so does everything else. Death just means the replacement of the usual morning waking with something else, something quite impossible even to think about. We don't even have the instrument to do it, because our mind & our world are the same thing.”
—
12 people liked it
More quotes…
Everytime you wake up, you appear again out of nowhere. And so does everything else. Death just means the replacement of the usual morning waking with something else, something quite impossible even to think about. We don't even have the instrument to do it, because our mind & our world are the same thing.”
