Reading as a reflection of life: from Camus to a book club in Vladikavkaz
"At 20, I read Camus's The Stranger, which conveyed with astonishing clarity what I felt at that moment about the world around me, a world of absurdity and meaninglessness. Since then, this feeling has only intensified..."
"Daryal" is a pan-Caucasian literary journal that publishes both original works and translations from Ossetian and other North Caucasian languages, as well as literary criticism and journalism. The journal has been published in Russian since 1991.
For World Book and Copyright Day, NeMoskva spoke with Alan Tskhurbaev, editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Daryal, about who instilled in him a love of reading, how his literary tastes have evolved, and how he founded a book club in Vladikavkaz.
"My parents loved to read."
My reading habit was shaped by my parents, who loved to read and read the best the Soviet Union had to offer. I loved Hemingways and Fitzgeralds as a teenager. Even earlier, I was captivated by H.G. Wells, and before him, by ordinary children's fairy tales, both Ossetian and from distant lands. But my parents' devotion to reading played a decisive role. I remember my father having a small notebook where he would jot down quotes from books with a pencil stub, and then he would love to show off these quotes in company, even if they were out of place.
And because of my mother, I fell in love with reading the magazine "Foreign Literature." She loved it, and so I read everything in it, sometimes without even understanding what it was about. I really liked that "magazine" feeling in my hands, not like a book. I guess it made me feel more serious, more mature.
Although, we still had stacks of Roman-Gazeta, and I couldn't stand it. I tried reading, but I didn't like anything in it. When our family had to hastily leave Georgia for Ossetia due to nationalist sentiment in the early 90s, the last thing I remember in our apartment were the folding beds (called "lezhanki" in Tbilisi) where my parents slept, and a veritable skyscraper of magazines between them. The situation was simply terrible, and yet they kept reading and reading...
School dislike of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky
I absolutely hated the school curriculum, and that's no exaggeration. I always got a C in my literal grades, and a pretty stiff one at that. I couldn't bring myself to read Chekhov, Paustovsky, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, or anyone at all... But when I got home, I'd pull a Louis Boussenard off the shelf, pull a chair over to the warm radiator, put my feet up, and drift off into another world. I remember being shocked by Mérimée's story "Matteo Falcone," literally bringing tears to my eyes. I don't understand why children should be given such things to read. This sense of utter injustice and sympathy for a boy killed by his own father simply shatters a child's psyche forever. The same thing happened when my parents and I watched Milos Forman's film "Amadeus." The scene where Mozart's body is thrown into a mass grave struck me so hard that I couldn't sleep for a long time that day. I think children shouldn't be exposed to such things. Such experiences at such an age are only harmful.
Volga in exchange for world literature
I also remember the collection of world literature in my grandmother's apartment. I really loved looking at those colorful spines. I'd pick something out completely at random, like African poets, and if I didn't like it, I'd put it aside. It was in this series that I read Melville's Moby-Dick and was completely crushed by the enormity of the plot at the end of the book. True, in this case, the choice wasn't random. At the time, I was already really into rock music, and Led Zeppelin's second album had an instrumental track called "Moby Dick," which I really liked, and that's how my interest in the book piqued. I was so captivated by this long novel that I'd put on a Led Zeppelin tape while reading and read along to the music. I'm not that way anymore.
I can. My grandmother told me that they were offered to trade this collection for a new Volga. It's like a Mercedes today. I recently got into a conversation with a Soviet-era collector in Vladikavkaz and asked him if this could be true. He confirmed it 100%. And I just can't believe that such times actually existed.
Twilight of the Gods
When I enrolled at the Vladikavkaz Mining and Metallurgical Institute, I immediately signed up for the library and brought home the cult philosophical collection, "Twilight of the Gods." I think my mother twirled her finger at her temple. She was right; it was partly a matter of outrageous behavior, partly to make me look like a smart guy. But on the other hand, I've always been drawn to the incomprehensible. There were five authors in the collection, and of all of them, Albert Camus's "The Myth of Sisyphus" came the easiest for me. He later became one of my favorite writers, although I can't say I've made much progress in understanding his books since then. After my first exam period, I was expelled from the institute for poor academic performance, but I never returned "Twilight of the Gods" to the library.
At my next university, I found myself in the company of "Westerners," if you could call these slackers that. My peers were deeply fascinated by contemporary American and European literature, and this profoundly changed my tastes. I finally began to understand the difference between the Russian literary tradition (where you mean exactly what's written) and the Western one (where you have to look for meaning between the lines). Although, of course, there are exceptions to both.
When I graduated with honors from the Foreign Languages Institute, my mother suggested I choose my own gift. Not long before, a complete set of Camus's works had suddenly arrived at the bookstore, and I couldn't resist. Incidentally, I remember lending "The Stranger" to a close friend of mine, who wasn't much of a reader, but I convinced him. The next day, he came to the faculty completely overjoyed. "I told you so, I told you so!" he shouted at me, laughing and clutching his stomach. "What did you tell me?" I didn't understand him... "Well, it doesn't make sense, I told you so!" he finally explained through laughter and returned the book to me. That five-volume set of Camus is especially dear because it was a gift from my mother.
About the home library
Part of my small library consists of books inherited from my parents. My three favorites are an old, tattered collection of sports stories, "Paying the Price for Victory," a book, "Tango Spain," by the Georgian writer Teimuraz Mamaladze (they don't write about football in such a lofty style anymore), and an album of photographs by Dmitry Baltermants. My grandfather gave it to me for my 10th birthday, as noted inside in his very ornate handwriting, though he misspelled my name, with two "l"s. God knows how many hours I spent as a child looking at these black-and-white photographs, which resembled paintings.
I really treasure Gaito Gazdanov's book, "An Evening at Claire's," autographed by Bono, the lead singer of U2. It happened by chance: a friend of mine was walking around St. Petersburg with the book in his hands when he suddenly saw Bono leaving his hotel. He didn't hesitate to slip it into his hands for him to sign, and then gave it to me. Gazdanov and Bono have no connection, but I love the work of both, and it's a pleasure to have them in such a strange combination.
I also have a first-edition Soviet edition of Limonov's "Edichka." I borrowed it a long time ago from Ruslan Totrov's (Ossetian writer, founder of the magazine "Daryal") office. I was captivated by the reading, but for some reason one page was torn out. Then I realized what the scene on that page was. You know, the one with the black guy... But I don't think Totrov did it; Ruslan Khazbatrovich wasn't a prude.
Books that shaped taste
I'd single out three, read five years apart. When I was 10, I read "The Old Man and the Sea," and it was probably my first experience of truly adult reading. At 15, my older brother brought me "The Catcher in the Rye," and for the first time I experienced that feeling when it seems the author is writing to you and about you. Since then, Jerome David Salinger has been my favorite writer, with whom I can't compare anyone at all. And at 20, I read Camus's "The Stranger," which, with astonishing clarity, conveyed what I felt at that moment about the world around me, a world of absurdity and meaninglessness. Since then, this feeling has only grown stronger.
"And then the weather turned bad."
Reading disappeared from my life, I can't even say why, but everything changed overnight and became somehow alien. I looked with bored eyes at people on the St. Petersburg metro, holding books with names new to me: Pelevin, Murakami, Coelho...
I didn't trust these names. Perhaps because I had no authority figure to recommend them. There was no mom, no dad, no one around, no one from the foreign language department... Not even that guy who would come to our street on Sundays in a minibus, and when I saw him, I'd bring him stacks of newspapers to exchange for book coupons. I often didn't know the titles of the books written on them, and he'd say to me with a Georgian accent, "Take Monte Cristo, you won't regret it..." None of these people were with me at that moment, and I was lost in this ocean of new literature.
There was no guide to the new world nearby.
Of course, I caught up later, and I overcame all those listed (except Coelho), and many others, too, but that was just "overcame." They never became a part of me.
Perhaps because it was literature that responded to the present day, which becomes less relatable to readers with the passage of time? Who would understand Generation P's joke about "Parliament" cigarettes today?
It can be explained logically, of course, but it won't make anyone laugh. Because anyone who doesn't remember the taste of Parliament cigarettes from the 90s, and what led them to start smoking them, won't experience it. Books by writers like Pelevin should be read the moment they come out, because they're deeply rooted in the realities of their time. And back then, I didn't want to be modern...
Book club
Time went by, once a week, to stay on track, I read the Nezavisimaya Gazeta supplement, Exlibris, and once a year I wrote a story, but I liked these stories less and less. Then suddenly I was called to head Daryal, and it was like returning to where I'd started. To where it had once been bright and pure.
At the time, my wife was following American actress Reese Witherspoon on a now-banned social media site, and it turned out she was running her own book club. So, thanks to this woman (two of them), the idea for our book club, called "Readers on the Storm," was born.
At the first meeting, I was incredibly nervous and overindulged in wine, but when, at the second meeting, where they were discussing Azamat Gabuev's famous trilogy of stories, "Adelina," "Revaz," and "Kristina" (satirical stories about the "golden youth" of Vladikavkaz), the participants got into a fistfight over disagreements, I realized that this was it, that absolutely all the conditions were there to act and live among people who read.
I set two rules: 1. We discuss only Caucasian literature; 2. No video recording. And it worked. People began to come for lively intellectual conversation, devoid of mentoring and lecture pathos.
And no one thought that in Ossetia there is so much literature, especially modern literature, which would tell us about ourselves.
So I realized that I had unwittingly become the guide I had once lacked. And I began reading and buying books again.
