Павло “Паштет” Белянський became very popular quite early, mostly because he was formed as a writer within the genre of “blogging gradually transformed into writing,” realizing that his short and funny essays in LiveJournal attract more and more fans and being encouraged by this day after day. “Я работаю на кладбище” was one of his first and is still the most famous of his books. It was published first in 2016 in Russian (as the author was one of those Ukrainian patriots who insisted on his right to speak and write books in Russian then, not realizing or trying to conceal the fact that his popularity as a blogger was in the first place encouraged mostly by Russians who always gladly support any investment in “their” culture) and even adapted into a movie (fortunately, Ukrainian, not Russian). I thought about reading it at the time, but I very soon disliked the author personally — I don’t remember why exactly but I remember that some of his remarks on Facebook looked appalling to me and many others. Still, despite his contradictory reputation, he was respected as a co-founder of the publishing house “ДИПА,” which published many books written by our soldiers (highly unpopular at the time and having close to zero chances of being published elsewhere). However, in 2018, he clearly demonstrated his despise for the current President and thus started to support the destructive-for-Ukraine messages of his opponents, which does not look too bad now, from our today’s perspective, but was quite disgusting at that time (especially for the patriotic authors who were published in “ДИПА” and their readers), and “ДИПА” evicted him (yes, the co-founder and one of the most popular writers published there — only from this, you can imagine how unforgivable his opinions were). So, you can understand that I did not have much interest in his books for years after that, especially considering that he wrote too many of them and looked like a typical case of graphomania.
However, right now, he is serving in the army, trying to communicate in Ukrainian, and even giving his books for translation into Ukrainian and republishing their new Ukrainian editions (well, forcefully, of course, as no Russian-language books have a place in the Ukrainian market and among our readers today), so I decided to give him a second chance and bought the new Ukrainian edition of “Я працюю на цвинтарі” and one of his recent books, “Бабуся вмирати не любила” (both were translated from Russian and republished).
Well, it is not the worst literature in the world, but I still regretted about buying and reading it. It was just very uninteresting for me.
I was especially bewildered by “Я працюю на цвинтарі.” This is a very small book, but, considering its high popularity, I expected some concentrated wittiness and overall something unusual, extraordinary. The book is based on the real-life experience of Павло Белянський who worked in funeral services for several years and, therefore, collected some interesting observations about various people and their behavior in these marginal circumstances that most of us do not know about. The idea is cool, yes, as any “professional insides” in marginal specializations, but the final result looks quite pathetic.
The book is really small and mostly consists of very short stories/essays, 1.5-4 pages in length each. The stories are very random, concern very different people and different situations, and although some of them definitely deserve to be told, the whole content of the book looks like the author tried to squeeze all the juice out of the most boring job in the world and probably even “added” some embellishments to compensate for its emptiness. Although some of the described situations are weird and thought-provoking, being related to grief and humanity in general, you mostly do not feel much compassion and warmth towards all those people. They quickly become a gallery of weirdos to you, very uninteresting in its essence, like any “Kunstkammer” (cabinet of curiosities). Maybe, if the book were larger and deeper, such an immersion into human nature would make much more sense, but this very short and fleeting format made me raise my brows, and that’s all.
Moreover, only about two-thirds of this little book is about the work in funeral services. After the author squeezed out of it everything he could, he still decided that the book was too small and disappointing (and rightly so), and thus he added some short stories about life in general. After that, the book was still too small, and so he added also some short stories about his family (which would later become the basis for another book, “Бабуся вмирати не любила”). From these “added” stories, you feel this graphomania urge especially poignantly — you can see how the author desperately wants to tell you something important, and beautiful, and interesting, and influential, but he does not know what to write about, he just does not have enough life experience and relevant thoughts about life.
(I was so bewildered about this book that I even watched the movie immediately after it in order to see how this apparently very empty material was transformed into a popular movie. The curious thing is that I (moderately) liked the movie, but this is because it has very little in common with the book. Contrary to the book, it has some interesting characters and profound stories, albeit very artificial, of course. At least, it’s funny and pleasant to watch.)