 Thank you for joining us here at the Mechanics Institute for our program. This is Robert Morales with celebrating the Russian writer Vladimir Sorotin, author of Toloria, in conversation with the translator and also tonight as a interpreter, Max Lawman. I'm Laura Shepard, Director of the Minister of the Mechanics Institute. And tonight we're very proud to present this event with quick, doggy, up high, and New York reading the books. Of course, we've all seen your lifting programs, so I hope that you'll enjoy all of the events that are happening in the next 10 days, also in the city. And please, for your survey, and at the end of the evening, if you could put your survey in the basket that's at the front door, I really appreciate it. I also want to thank Jen Boehr and Jamie Rill, and also to the panelists for our collaboration. If you're new to the Mechanics Institute, you were founded in 1854, and were one of several systems of violence, literary and cultural centers in the heart of the city. So, our general and its library, which is on the second and third floors, our chess club, which is down the hallway, and there's a chest that is going on tonight. And our literary programs and our similar film series, which is on the front of the audience. So visit our website, and please join us for our events. We'll follow by Q&A with your audience, and also folks with you on sale after a program, and you will have your folks on by the office. Vladimir Serovin's book is very controversial. He is a political revocateur, one of Russia's most controversial writers of exile. His new book, Toloria, offers a cautionary tale set in the future to help disturb them with warring zealots and tribal birds. Vladimir Serovin was born in a small town outside of Moscow in 1855. He's trained as an engineer at the Moscow Institute of Oil and Gas, but turned to art and writing, becoming a major presence in Moscow underground in 1980. His work was banded in Soviet Union, with his first novel, The Cube, which is also available from the New York Review of the Review of West Massachusetts, and was published by R. Cain Emery, dissident Andre Sinyasi in France in 1985. In 1992, Serovka's Therefore Hearts was shortlisted for the Russian Book of Prize, but was also very controversial as well as his Blue Lord, which caused demonstrations in the streets. In 2001, he received the Andre Belly Award for Outstanding Contributions to Russian Literature, and his work has been translated into more than 30 languages. He is also a screenwriter and also has written for opera and plays in short stories, and has won the Academy Award for several of his works. He is currently living in the Nukovar, the Nukovar, part of the Axis of the Perfect Place, and also in Berlin. Max Lawden is a novelist, musician, and translator. His translations of Vladimir Serovka's stories have appeared in the New Yorker and N-plus morning. In addition to eight Serovka's books, forthcoming from the New York Review of Book Classics and Dolby Archive Press, he is translating two books by Jonathan Littell and his work from New York. So please welcome our esteemed guest, Vladimir Serovka, and Max Lawden. So basically, we're going to read it, we've got 40 minutes, so we're going to talk a little bit about sort of the work we've done, introduced it a little, and then we're going to read a news story that is not available anywhere. So that should be pretty fun. But basically, to begin with, we were sort of thinking we'd talk a little bit about how the reception of the work has been different, given that we're dealing with two radically different periods, where sort of at the same time putting out the latest novels, and then the very early novels. And if you know what you guys work, you know, there's a very big difference. So therefore, it's quite an extreme book, whereas Gloria is a little bit more gentle and nice. It's also quite extreme. So, Vladimir, how does it feel to you to be dealing with these two radically different periods in your work being released to the English world at once? Better we should say a few words, but not all again. Yeah, yeah. Seriously, I'm trying to change it up that I was going to be an artist. But at the end of the day, I was going to be an artist. But at the end of the day, I was going to be an artist. I was going to be an artist. I was going to be an artist. The state exerted a lot of pressure on us back then, including in terms of profession. So I didn't actually get into art school, but I got into the Institute of Foil and Gas. It was right next door. My dad worked there and helped not to get into the art. Well, actually, in the end, I had to be an artist. Well, studying at the Institute, I did continue to occupy myself with drawing and graphics. And the later years of my study, I began to work professionally with designer. In general fashion, I would work down the sort of surreal drawing. And once a woman, my dentist said that one of her patients was an artist and he drew these sort of very strange pictures. And she offered to show my works. She showed them that I said that I made my way falling into Moscow. And into a circle of people who do something forbidden, free and original. So I began to visit the locket workshop as well as other artists I met with writers at the underground, and I began to try to write something nice. I tried this out as a teenager before. I've written this fantastic story. Not fantastic, it isn't very good. Including one ironic story. He told me so easily that I hadn't actually said that I translated it from English. And I made his way to our school. After that it seemed to me that literature is a very easy occupation, so I continued to draw. So it was in the underground that I sort of recall my own literary experience. And that which I did other members of the underground. That's how it all began. If we're to speak of the early facts, they were essentially coming out of source art. What is source art? You know what it is, of course. So it's the motherland of pop art. So it's his pop art need with Soviet visual propaganda. I began to do this with official Soviet literature using the method of socialist realism. If we're talking about the early stories that were in front of us next year, these stories in general were binary bombs. The first part of the text began as a hundred percent socialist realism. And then these characters as it were lost their minds. After the Soviet Union fell of course socialist realism also collapsed. I didn't write novels for seven years back then. Because life was changing very fast and a writer could touch up. And then entirely different texts began to be born, which were totally unconnected to social skills. So, but that's interesting because I think a lot of you've spoken about this before we've talked about it on this tour even that your own career is sort of like a binary bomb right where you have the early texts and then you have the later texts which almost become a little bit more dimensional in a sense because they're more continually operating within the Russian tradition. They're a little bit less conventional, a little bit more kind. But it's interesting to think about the transition because obviously what you just described is up to Lular right. So what happened from Lular to Luria, what that tenure here is interesting to me. So when we look at from Lular to Piafis to then the blizzard, you know, how do you, do you think there was as much of a change in that tenure period as there were, as there was from the early texts to Lular, or is it sort of a similar where you are operating in a similar mode the whole time. It's difficult to speak of an entire period of course. And this is given that my principle is that every book should be written in some style and should have its own geological and intent. It's as if they're written by a different writer that said. There are a lot of them. So that's why I think it's great. 90s. Maybe because of that credit to my homeland in the 90s that the stroke and the real writer because he doesn't have his own constant and consistent style. But avoiding or getting away if they're refracting a constant style actually is my style. It's difficult to say why it is this way. It's the writer's kitchen which is a fairly dark drawer as it were. And basically, every writer can make out very little within himself. And other writers can see a writer and not extend as well. Although of course they're very stupid, of course. Well for talking about because I think we're going to read the story pretty soon. It's a short program. It's interesting to think about then, if you can characterize I mean if you can characterize at all to change that because you're very good at explaining what happens between 1980 and 2000 right from 2000 onwards you don't that's when the writer's kitchen becomes very dusty for you. Because you understand your method very well with any of your career and obviously trying helps with that and distance but we're going to read it for context and new stories from a collection that came up. And what would you say changed between, let's say, blue lard and this, can you say, or what changes the way and how does it feel, is there a difference in the feeling of how you write and the intention and the target or is it just. Well, I was born in the Soviet Union. And then I lived in the period of his death. And then I came to the period of the Putin's reaction. So you understand, I was born in the Soviet Union, then lived through the period of collapse, then came the period of Putin's reaction. And so that these three periods, of course they influence literature and me to and that's perhaps I want to post a certain difference. Of course, I might excuse myself for this, but that's just the way it is. Um, so I guess we might as well just read this story now. Yeah. So this story is called prisms space from a new collection, and I won't be on English for a while so exclusive. Corus of the Cube. It's in her old love affair. It's necessary to love for the hundredth time. This is the stress of research. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Prisms morning begins monstrously, not having managed to properly wake up. She must make a tormented choice between cone and cube. These are two of her friends with benefits have been for a long time. And it's indispensable that she made this choice for the team on him time, accompanied by stress and tears. Who would you prefer today, cones rough translucent surface which exudes the aroma of the subtropics with the promise of unexpected heavy pennies under a waterfall or cubes chill smooth faces which are reminiscent of an impending kiss in the frost embraces the northern lights and a secret wish made of ice. Those are flows with delery, chuckles shells fish and streams of mad joys cube the witches with the calm sustained well being of the flame and the fireplace of an ancestral castle surrounded by snow covered tourists of a whistling descent from the mountains of comfy northern tales of unfolding life spaces totally new far from hustle bustle and unpredictability, all of which structure the world expanding out like an alpine valley into an infinite defined space which means neither walks nor disappointments. Prism amidst a maximum of the selection process. There's nothing more horrifying than this. She swallows a little pink sphere and washes it down with water. Little sphere makes the problem of choosing between cold and cube not quite so bitter as it removes the aftertaste of catastrophes in the process. I'll choose in the shower. Prism besides. Prism feels it. The ideal clarity of it in a powerful day. The overwhelming clarity of the perfect situation. It depends on these extraordinary conditions of life. In the mountains, the work of each and every one of its abilities is a pleasure to give to the earth. A warm water in the earth, on top of the cube. The cube is still an interesting cube. It breathes air. Of course, there is no need to tell the truth. Suddenly, there is a burning joy, a burning love. Of course. But it does not do such a thing in itself. With the power and appreciation of everything that is suddenly powerful, it likes it so clearly and accurately. She never makes her selection in bed, only in the shower on the toilet for doing her morning stretches. After sitting on the toilet for a little while, she takes a shower and chooses cube. She pronounces. And cube immediately enters the shower and braces Prism and presses her to him. Prism senses his ideal planes, his mighty volume, his bewitching weightiness, and his conspicuousness. She lets herself go on his immutable sharp corners, her faces rubbed against each of his planes, his corners pleasantly pressing and invigorating. Warm water pours down onto cube and prism. I guess I'd say cube is more interesting than comb, Prism besides. Of course, he lacks unpredictability, spontaneity, joy both hot and sudden, plus that burning and lava of cash. On the other hand, he fills me with such self confidence, such strength to overcome everything that's unpredictably dangerous. His faces are so clear and precise, but his corners are so mercilessly sharp and regular, that I immediately become stronger and more filled with self worth as an individual. Cube exudes protection, he strengthens me and expands the horizons of my confidence. After the shower, cube has a strong and flexible structure. It stretches, it stretches, it twists, it rises to its beauty, to its main body, above the ice, and it is soft and light. After stretching, Prism is given a point. Their bond is harmonious, it has a long relationship with the rest of the world. After a relationship, they can have an interesting conversation with each other. He reports only what makes it impossible for them to understand each other. He likes to tell about new, pleasant travels, many places already known, when it comes to the joy of meeting other people. The Fjordy castle on the edge of the hill. For cute, fluffy dogs, walking on a boat, on a fishing boat, a book. In the fjordy corners of the people, under the strong personal presence of clean, the most clean world, the sea of water, healing of wounds on the shoulders, and the sand. A crackling, rough, stone. After the shower, cube helps her to stretch and unwind, stretches, twists, pulling and twirling the musklet. After the shower cube helps her to stretch and unwind, stretches, twists, pulling and twirling the musklet of her young, beautiful body with his guidance. And he is wise and consistent. After the stretching, prism gives herself to cube. The intimacy is harmonious. It's a lengthy pleasure, growing and growing like the famous Fuller. A breakfast after their intimacy. A cube is a smart and interesting conversation. He informs prism only of that which doesn't force her to imagine the unimaginable or to lose herself in thought, which also might make her lose herself. He loves to tell her of new pleasant travels, but only in places already known to prism. Places where the joy of recognition awaits her. Two boards, a castle on edge, a cliff, two cute shaggy dogs, a boat trip, fishing, a picnic on Massey boulders, a national dish, a company by a strong national beverage washed down with the purest mountain water in the world. Evening intercourse on the skins of Fuller foxes, wood crackling in the fireplace. She drinks Moroccan coffee flavored with the freshest of cranes from cube's northern land. She's grateful to him. She agrees to a trip up north. After acquiring her consent, cube vanishes. After a long day of prism, comfortable and safe car, she moves to a quiet town in space. When she's in the office of a company, which is already very few after her death, the prism takes its place. To her they begin to enter a complex, diverse form and size of geological figures. There are large, well-established branches, protruding fingers. There are smaller ones, though small and small. Most of all, the prism takes its place in a complex, complex, diverse form and size of figures. So begins prism's work there. In a safe, comfortable car, she moves to the noisy urban space. Once in the office of the company, she's been ahead of for eight years since the death of her father, Sylinder. Prism goes into her own office. Her subordinates begin to come in to see her, geometric figures of various sizes and shapes. There are big ones with intricate faces, protuberances and depressions. Then there are smaller ones, then there are very small and simple ones. Most of them are like that. Prism occupies herself with her figures intently, all day, putting them together, coupling them or pulling them apart. The figures interact with one another. Prism makes sure that this interaction is harmonious and brings both her and the company to stable topics. And then we zoom forward a little bit more of a sort of description of prism's life, which is the very recognizable city-state that sort of refracted through this geometric lens. And she eventually is going to meet up with her. She's visited her mother, who's very ill. She goes to a gallery opening, at the gallery opening. She meets Tetrachet Drone. Tetrachet Drone? Yes, there's a lot of registrants. And they strike up a bit of a romance. The whole night she goes to the night club. Tetrachet is happy to meet her. On the other hand, she's already covered with a lot of dust. She gets over with the whole process. She gets in touch with her mother. Tetrachet treats her with a cocktail. Then she invites her to dance. She doesn't dance at all. She doesn't dance. She whispers nice words to her. She has a lot of ideas about her future. She hears her success in business. She says that many of her friends will envy her beauty and beauty. The prism is growing. They are still there. That's what makes her smell the prism. In the past, the prism loved to do things. And now it's time to stop. I'm going to go to the night club. At midnight, she gets driven to a trendy club. Meet her with great joy. His faces are already covered over with a different dusting. He shimmers in the light of the rays. He shines. He says that he can't get enough of her prism. He goes to the bar and sits down at the counter. Tetrachet treats prism to various cocktails. Then asks her to dance with them. They dance. During the dance scene, Tetrachet whispers pleasant words into prism's ear. He can't get enough of her figure. He hears all about her success in business. He informs her that many famous figures are jealous of her brains and beauty. Tetrachet invites her to snort some white powder. Prism used to adore doing this. But she's become more cautious. She takes care of her nervous system, which is why she refuses. This writer offers her to be a stranger. This is agreed upon. They go through some kind of pain. Tetrachet becomes more cautious. She takes care of her nervous system. This bothers her. She offers her to be a stranger. Thank you. Then Tetrachet invites her to smoke some weed. She agrees to this. They pass into the smoking room and roll at joints. Prism's having fun. They dance some more. Tetrachet embraces her delicately palpating under places. Prism is turned on. She invites Tetrachet to come home with her. He tenderly kisses her upper corner in gratitude. Prism's having fun at home. Tetrachet is full of energy. He brings prism to the body. He kisses her upper corner in gratitude. Prism is a pleasure from the legs. He kisses her delicately. Because he is sleeping in his room. He prefers to rest in loneliness. Tetrachet understands that. He leaves her alone. He kisses Prism in the room. Looch. Once they're at Prism's house they make love. Petra Hedron is young and full of energy. He brings Prism to a whole series of orgasms, then comes himself and elics Prism's lower face as a sign of gratitude. Prism is pleasantly exhausted. She kisses Petra Hedron, then asks him to leave telling him to leave because she always sleeps on her own and prefers to wake up. Petra Hedron gets it. He leaves her house. Falling asleep, Prism commands the raid. The bedroom's gloomy space, the thinnest ray of light begins to shine her. It comes to rest upon Prism's bosom. Now refracted, it breaks up into the seven colors of the rainbow and inside of Prism. They fill Prism's interior space shimmeringly. Prism falls asleep, satiated, doing audience questions. I would also like to say though, just a sign that I think there's quite a lot of variety in the 20 years of work that is, well really it's 40 years of work that's going to be coming out in the next five or six years, but even so we're talking about the early work versus the later work. Even with the later work, there's quite a bit of variety and for those of you who've read the book already, you can probably already feel that this story is quite a bit different from Tellurio, which is quite a bit different from the Blizzom, which is quite a bit different from, I don't know, Dr. Gar, a very big one which has been coming from NYR being three years. So read all of them and find out about the very many different writers inside of what you know and all the various different books they've written, which have certain similarities, but not too many. You can take questions and I'll bring a microphone to you. This question is for Max. In the Tellurio, I found a variety of different accents and manners of speaking. Some of them seemed to have always been sort of in the interruption and some of them approximated like working twice, nine, and there's more. So the question is obviously, you know, there's an architecture in the back in Russia. How did you make that transition or where are they coming from in the first place? I actually think I'm very lucky because as Nabokov said, English and Russian are two geniuses, and I think they're very rich literary languages with a lot of parallels between them. So I don't, I mean, I know a few other languages that I'm not quite as well versed in literary tradition, but for example, we're dealing with the working class, dialect, which really we're dealing with this sort of plain spoken narrative, which might be represented in English tradition by something like Faulkner or part of the we have a rich tradition of that. So when Vladimir plays with something like that, and I see that he's riffing on a certain tradition of Russian writers, I can kind of reach into my own reading experience and look for an equivalent and then just play with it. So I think it's pretty much a one-to-one similarity in terms of the benefits if Vladimir would say it. So when there's a sort of medieval sounding word, I'll reach for an equivalent medieval sounding word from, you know, a sort of distorted Chaucer that I screw with on my own or something like that. But I think so the equivalences are pretty direct, I think. And I think we're lucky, I'm lucky that English has so many literary languages to match up with Russian ones. I mean, I kind of wish I'd written it afterward. This is a funny story about Ezra Pound, who showed the contos to Mussolini. Now if you've read the contos, you know that they're very, very, very dense and unreadable. And he showed them to Mussolini, and Mussolini didn't want to meet with him in the first place and was trying to push off the meeting and said, oh, this crazy American poet is doing these radio shows. No one can understand this. He wants to show me his book. I guess I have to do it because he's sort of like the prestige fascist from America or whatever. And Pound showed the contos and Mussolini looked at it for two seconds and he said, my question would be the candidate, which means like, oh, what a cool little thing. And Pound, of course, famously wrote a whole section of the contos saying the great man had understood it before anyone else. And so I kind of was going with that mentality, but not writing it afterward, thinking of speak for itself, not to Mussolini, I would hope, but you know, to normal readers. But I wish I'd written it afterward, but I think it was going to be a reassuring story to explain some of these choices in the next five minutes. So it's a good question. Well, so I'm very honored to be in your presence and really amazing to be here. But I think like all the like giants of Russian literary world, you most precisely predicted like how the Russia is going to happen. Like our attitude, the Russian speakers towards the writers is much more, you know, for the Parisians than we would consider you prophets on some concerns. And I'm sorry, I'm wearing away from the literary two more political things, but like any official job, all the day of official, like, are you like excited? Basically, okay, it's kind of short. You think Russia is going to fall apart, or is it going to become like day of official? I'm sorry, it's a dull problem and I think I need to go. Thank you. One pretty human road is probably a hang of fantasy. Oh man, then that year's passing could he begin to write differently about it, and not just critics. There was the impression that this book was being read in the Kremlin as, let's say, an instruction manual. As a writer, of course, I was happy we could do everything that was not true that I'd written, but as a citizen I was absolutely horrified. Well, it should be said that every writer has a certain internal antenna. It captures the vibrations of society. Every writer has a kind of internal antenna and picks up the vibration in society. Perhaps I picked up certain vibrations and then wrote this book which also I have to say was pretty unexpected for me too. But it wasn't any sort of active prophecy because the first intentional acts of prophecy are not possible. Okay, which was published a while ago, but for our strategy, I think in 2020. That is very much available. I saw it just now in city lights. Day of the impression. Oh, okay. Translate. My main question is how you've been able to write in the last eight months, or the seven years that you mentioned past between the fall of the Soviet Union. So right again, I'm experiencing a similar professional. Was nice to listen. I'm going to hear from you. I see. Is that with me. You know, my wife and I left Russia just a few days before this brutal senseless war in Ukraine began by accident. Naturally, I didn't expect to do this incidentally go quite so far. I didn't expect this. I didn't expect this war. And I have to say that these eight months have passed and I can't write a single verse. I can't write a single line. When the war is coming, when it comes to you and Ukraine, who is better to be silent? When a war is happening, it affects you and your family and your friends and everyone else, you know, and Ukraine is better just to be quiet. And we're being said that it's a general rule war and novels about war are read after the war. So we're going to say that it's a war. So yeah, pros isn't happening right now but in the invitation for the articles. I'm going to say that And then I think that the system was absolutely incredible. And the question is how did the idea of the film come about? How did it come about? And where did it come from? Great translation. You said that the idea of the film was an unexpected book for you and for everyone else. So my question is how did this book happen and how did you end up writing? In fact, I don't know. The fact that something happened to me, in fact, naturally something had accumulated inside me, it often happens with writers, but there was one show, let's say, that did come to pass. There was a dog. Those years I had a dog with it. We can imagine it's a very refined animal. And one day I started wanting to play a trick on the dog. And I bought this enormous bull bone or beef bone at a market in Manukov with a bit of beef on it. So I came back home, and I was lying down on the roof of a snowy snow. I threw this bull bone and the cow came out. I thought, what am I going to do with this bull bone? Almost the same size as mine. And I came back home and I threw the bull into the bright snow in the yard on a sunny day. And I sort of thought, what is this dog going to do? The bull is about the same size as the dog. And at that moment the dog suddenly made a circle around the bull bone. I thought, let it be this big, some kind of ritual dance. It was something beautiful and impressive. And at that moment the dog did a sort of ritual dance around the bull bone. And then there was something enchanting and refined, but also something medicine. And you could have done such a dance before. And I was just totally shocked by this. The option is definitely a silky set. And right after that I sat down to write the distribution. I was just wondering when you first started to write it. The genesis of it, does it come from a character that you imagine, or a line of dialogue, or a situation? It's a very subtle thing. The beginning of the genesis of the genesis of the bull. It's a very delicate business. It's like coming into being in a crystal and oversaturated substance. And it tends to happen at an unexpected moment. It's a very complex business. You can post it as much as possible. But it has to be oversaturated. It has to be oversaturated. The dog wasn't the oversaturated substance, it was just a little thing. You have to straw the broken camel's back. You have the accumulation that the straw creates the camel's back. It's hard to explain. Thanks for the cool things. Creation is a divine process after all. Please forgive me for a non-literary question. You speak in as much detail as you would care to do about your pregnosis of how this senseless, brutal war will end. I think it will end with a victory, Frank. Any questions? You said you didn't mean to prohibit the future of your pregnosis of some pregnosis. I think it's a good thing that if you just try not to do it, do you think that if you are living somewhere else in the world, maybe in the last important time, I feel something familiar? Yeah, I think it's a different person. You would be speaking in a different language. Any of your works directly influenced or inspired by another book you have read? The thing is all of the books I've read, all of the books I've read, is a sort of ocean that does, of course, influence me with its tides in and out. But to pick one thing out of that ocean is quite difficult. I can only say that I've always been attracted to literature, where in re-use the breath of metaphysics. I'm very indifferent to ballet, so pretty first for my reason. I like hard literary drugs. So all those names, which I think you understood all except for Ulysses, which is the definition, that's hard literary drugs. Thank you very much. It's a great program tonight. It's an incredible deep dive, it's the past, present, future, fantasy, political critique, satire, it's so layered and bodacious, so I hope you'll buy a copy. And therefore re-use is also cool. It's also got a lot of illustrations. Very shocking.