Grigory Ryzhakov's Blog

Hello, my dear friends!

It’s time to wish you a merry Christmas. I hope you’ll have an amazing year ahead of you, may it bring you happiness, success and well-being. You deserve it!

To start out with the festive season, I’ve released a new annual Xmas song for your appreciation called Christmas Lights.… Read the rest

Hi, just a quick post to inform you about a couple of upcoming events. Next week the Russian stand will open at London Book Fair, we also have talks by Russian literary supernovas at the Pushkin House in London, and a Russian literary festival SLOVO will be featuring talks by many celebrated modern authors all week long.

I will look closely at these events and report back to you.

For now let me remind you about my talk at Clementi House in London last year, introducing modern Russian literature. I hope my accent isn’t too tricky to understand.

Also, if you haven’t seen it yet, there’s a brilliant program hosted by Stephen Fry about Writing in the Age of Putin. Enjoy!

I know I’ve been away for a long time, but I haven’t been idle. Several years ago, I made a promise to my friends to write at least one story a year, and so far I’ve kept it. Here’s my latest book.

It’s a sequel to my romantic comedy, Mr Right & Mr Wrong. This time I’ve explored Chloe’s life as a Master’s student. The book is as much about life in the lab, as it is about modern relationships between young Londoners with all the usual comedy gags included.

What you can expect: ‘some fresh blood’ joining the old cast of characters, cutting edge plant science, LGBT themes such as Grindr dating and the drag culture. I’ve spiced it all up with chat shows and theatre of the absurd. And music! I’ve written a song called Petal that is featured in the novel, you may listen to it or download it here.

Chloe is, of course, at the heart of the story.  She’s a workaholic, she’s loyal to her friends, yet her methods aren’t necessarily subtle. Chloe’s got an outstanding ability to summon trouble out of thin air. And yet this is the very thing that shoots her boyfriend to stardom. Okay, I’m not giving away the rest

Mr Right for Kurt & My Other Experiments is now live on Amazon Kindle.

Enjoy!

 

Sometimes, you need to look deep in the past to understand the present. It’s definitely true about art.

Evgeny Vodolazkin (photo by Rodrigo Fernández (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Last week, I attended a curious talk at St Anthony College in Oxford, organised by the translator Oliver Ready. The speaker was a prominent Russian author Evgeny Vodolazkin, whose latest award-winning novel Laurus has just been translated to English by Lisa Hayden and published by Oneworld Publications. I briefly mention this book in my guide to modern Russian literature.

Vodolazkin talked about his professional subject – ancient Russian literature and its parallels with the present. The Bible, he said, influenced the entire medieval literature. Chronicles were written in biblical style: they were a history of Russian people, people’s report to the God and, at the same time, an attempt to explain the history to the future generations.

Vodolazkin talked about how ancient Russian literature is full of citations, fragments and compilations. The old content was used in writing new books. The books were re-written and copied with astonishing accuracy. The (re)writer stayed anonymous.

Dividing and combining of various texts from different sources was normal. There was no character per se in the ancient Russian literature, there was only a mechanical sum of human qualities, and one of them prevailed and dominated the mood of a fragment, for instance, it was praise or criticism.

The exact words were important, but not necessarily who said them and sometimes not even their context. There was no déjà vu in the books of Middle Ages, one could repeat the same thing over and over again and it was acceptable. The texts didn’t go obsolete, as they were constructed according to the same principle, so one could combine texts from different ages. There were no author styles, but there was the style of genre. The Tale of the Life (житие) or the Chronicle (летопись) – distinct genres.

For instance, a fragment of the life tale about one person could be used for a tale about another, if the biographical content was missing. Often, these two people were namesakes.

A similar thing occurs in modern Russian literature. In Shishkin’s Maidenhair there are four pages adapted from Vera Panova’s memoir, which, ironically, is called Mine and Mine Only (Моё и Только Моё).

Back to the medieval Russian literature. It is not fictional; it’s a literature of the fact. However, when there were gaps to fill in, the ancient writer would make things up the way he assumed the events happened, the way they were supposed to have happened. And readers believed those things.

Modern Russian literature aches to be more real, the confessional prose is on the rise. Real events are in fashion like in the old times. Biographies are very popular nowadays. Also, the fragmentary nature of modern Russian literature – mash up fiction, post-modernism, endless citations ­– makes it similar to medieval literature.

What is special about modern literature in Russia? If in the old times literature was heavily based on the Bible, the modern literature is based on the works of Russian masters and the books of the Soviet period.

When the Q&A started, I asked the author about his latest book, Laurus, and why it was written.

moi clutching Laurus

Vodolazkin said that he wrote it from the heart. He felt a compulsion to write about a kind, virtuous man. There is a lot of decadence, ‘shit’, and negativity in the modern literature. Vodolazkin intended to counter all that with a story of a saint, which he could only find in the medieval times.

In his opinion, literature is all about reaction, reflection, and it should raise questions and make readers attempt to answer them. In Laurus, Vodolazkin depicted a path that one could choose to follow or decide not to. The moral questions aside, the author tried to make it an exciting read.

Someone asked the speaker why the saint was a man, and not a woman. Vodolazkin said it was easier for him to write a male protagonist, though the story was not about a man, but a human. In fact, it was inspired by the life of Blessed Xenya of St Petersburg, who, after her husband had deceased, decided to live his life for him and wandered for 45 years, often wearing her husband’s uniform. So, in a way, Laurus is a ‘fool-for-Christ’ type of text (юродивый), so nobody would take it too serious. One shouldn’t not ‘portray’ a serious Wise Man, the seriousness should be inside.

Laurus took Vodolazkin three years to write. He felt exhausted after that, he didn’t think people will be much interested in reading it. Maybe a few. Now he thinks it is worth writing a book even for a few readers. I agree. If a book touches hearts of a few, they will pass it on and on. The book will live.

I’d like to conclude with quoting a fantastic review of Laurus:

LAURUS is, in one breath, a timeless epic, trekking the well-trodden fields of faith, love, and the infinite depth of loss and search for meaning. In another, it is pointed, touching, and at times humorous, unpredictably straying from the path and leading readers along a wild chase through time, language, and medieval Europe. Vodolazkin’s experimental style envelopes the reader, drawing them into a world far from their own, yet indescribably intimate…. Kaleidoscopic in his language and reach, Vodolazkin takes us on a journey of discovery and absolution, threaded together through the various, often mystical lives of Arseny as a healer, husband, holy fool, pilgrim and hermit…. Love is shown through loss; death through agelessness; words through silence; the human in the divine. In life’s extremities, Vodolazkin has found a subtle balance and uses it to impressive effect.

— Asymptote Journal

 

 

Today I’m announcing the outcome of the Prize Draw 2015, several readers posted their reviews on Amazon and I’ve picked a winner.

I’ve documented the process on video – my first attempt at vlogging. Enjoy!

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ07Ms0ecJo

I’ve contacted the winner, here’s an excerpt from her beautiful review:

I laughed out loud on so many occasions and felt the need to read excerpts out to whichever lucky person was sitting in the room with me!  Chloe is an instantly likeable character, living the single life and not necessarily looking for love when, like the number 9 bus, two men come along at once.  She can’t decide between the two so she dates both of them, and whilst I don’t condone this I can understand the confusion on the dating scene.  She’s ultimately looking to settle down with someone, she is 22…er…25…er actually 28 after all.  So professional, respectable Terrence seems like a good choice over fun, flirty Blake.  Will Terrence turn out to be Mr. Right or Mr. Wrong?  That’s what I was asking myself throughout the book, so I had to keep reading into the early hours to find out!

 

Hi folks, just a quick update on my activities. I’m 80% done with my next book,  the arrival of auttumn stimulates my creative juices.

Oxford is still tranquil, but there’ll be a buzzing start of the academic year in a week’s time.  Students are flooding in as foilage turns gold.

And I have exciting news: as some of you have noticed I have been running a prize draw for my dear readers:

a £20 Amazon voucher and the book swag including a mouse pad and fridge magnets. I’ll put your name in the hat if you leave an Amazon review of any of my books (regardless of the star rating).

You can still ENTER before the 30th of September 2015

only ONE WEEK LEFT!

20 Lucky winners got my books as a result of my another, Goodreads Giveaway :)

Just contact me or leave a comment here with your review link or tell me where you’ve posted it, and I will put your name in the hat. If you review more books or share your reviews on Facebook/Twitter I will put your name in the hat once again. With only a few people entering so far,  the chance of winning is very high.

The prize draw outcomes will be announced on the my website and my Facebook page. Good luck!

Summer in fabulous Andalusia

On weekends this summer I have been working on two books at the same time. My WIP, War & Cactus: the story is currently transferred to the plains of Yucatan and deals with unstable marital relationships and globalisation.

Cacti are heavily featured in the story too, and coincidentally I’ve had several cacti blooming on my windowsill this summer. The evidence is below.

Gymnocalycium is my little sun

In my WIP2, Mr Right for Kurt & My other Experiments, the main heroine Chloe starts her master degree project on environmental toxins in the lab and tries herself as a matchmaker in parallel – disasters and hilarity ensue. The progress on the books is slow but steady, if being a scientist taught me anything – it’s patience

Ta dah! The cover for the upcoming book is ‘totes amazog’ (c), dontcha think?

Outside the artistic toil, I have been on a week break to Andalusia this August. Arabic influence gives this area of Spain its distinct charm.

the scary bridge in the beautiful city of Ronda

I shall definitely use recollections of this journey as inspiration for writing.

Me in Granada

Meanwhile, I’ve read a book about the GULAG life, Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Unlike many other works of prison fiction, this novella has hope and joy in it. The main character was imprisoned for a non-existent crime like many of his contemporaries, he’s describing his day in the ‘zona’ ‑ his hunger, fear, lack of freedom and, unexpectedly, the joy because of his little victories over all those shortcomings. Happiness is a relative thing, indeed.

I’ll get back to grumbling about the rainy British weather, but I wonder about your accomplishments and adventures this summer.

Punta de Tarifa – the southern-most point of Europe

Yana Stajno (YS, personal archive)

Today I am thrilled to host an interview with a multitalented artist, Yana Stajno, whose debut novel Rules for Thursday Lovers is about to be launched on the 16th of July by Clink Street Publishing. The book is already available on Amazon (UK, US).

Yana has a curious biography. Born in Zimbabwe in a Polish-French family, she studied at Cape Town University and fought apartheid in South Africa, then moved to London and has become an established artist, whose paintings and others works have been exhibited and sold all over the world.

Having previously written plays and short stories, Yana is not a novice in a literary world. I had acquainted with her two years ago and had a pleasure of reading the manuscript of her novel before it got published.  And now, as it is out in the world, we are here to discuss it.

Welcome, Yana.  My first question is about the premise of your book, Rules for Thursday Lovers. What is it and why have you chosen to write on this topic?

> I love writing dramas, especially comic dramas. Usually my themes are around people taking on things that are too big for them. I thought that the attempt of arranging rules around sharing a lover was very rich territory for both drama and comedy.

When I read your book, I thought that though your characters do things that are generally considered wrong, I mean adultery, their behaviour is actually also good, since they are trying to break free from the unhappy marriages and find their true selves. Do you think modern relationships cannot be viewed in the traditional moral way anymore?

>I’m not sure that relationships have ever conformed to tradition. That’s a myth we like to believe.  Just like new music always seems unbearable to older generations who never seem to remember their new music was just as unbearable to their elders. People always desire new pleasures in a time-old way.

A comedy writer myself, I find it hard to know where the humour comes from. As if it’s been channelled straight from the ether onto the page, I’m just a bystander. How do you come up with funny situations in your book? Are they based on your life experience, other art, observations of other people or you think you channel them from your subconscious intuitively?

>Francis Bacon said that his art was influenced by everything he had seen. I think my funny scenes come from everything I’ve experienced, heard about and mused about. It does seem to work the best when I work very fast and roar with laughter myself. Mind you, this is what I do when I’m finishing a painting and it’s a bit disconcerting for other artist working in studios nearby.  

Art is what you are known for professionally. To me, you paintings seem so vivid, so full of life, which is understandable, since you grew up in the sunny Africa. My question is how does your art influence your writing?

>It influences me in countless ways. But mostly, it gives me the courage to describe things in broad brush strokes and not explain too much.  People can make sense of things with the lightest of guidance I’ve found.

To write a novel is probably very much like to paint a picture. You need to have a composition in mind, different elements serving the main theme, etc. What differences and similarities do you find between the writing and painting processes?

>Yes, it’s similar but also different. My paintings can take anything from twenty minutes to several months but not longer. Writing seems to need an awful lot of rewriting and editing. If you did all that work to a painting it would kill the work in my view. I think much more about composition in writing than I do in painting. In painting I’m putting down marks as a reaction to what I’m seeing, while allowing my unconscious to intervene. With writing I work much more from my imagination. It is a distillation rather than a freshly plucked observation. The one thing that is similar though is that an idea for a piece of prose or painting comes to me in a particular size. I have to recognise that something is a short story rather than a novel, or a small ink study rather than a huge oil painting. It’s silly to stretch the one into the other. Too many novels are really just short stories in my view. 

Reading your novel I found myself sympathizing with Jake and Angie, while Fiona was definitely the most interesting character in it for me. Do you think creative people need to be somewhat mischievous and naughty in order to be interesting? And if you were given a choice between a kind but boring and an interesting but unkind person seating next to you on a transatlantic flight, which one would you choose?

>There’s no contest. I much prefer sitting next to a kind, boring person on a plane or anywhere.  I might love to write about tiresome people but I don’t like spending time with them. Also, if someone is ‘boring’ they are usually shy or quiet and these people usually have hidden depths.  Society very much undervalues introverted people. Kind people make wonderful friends.  ‘Boring’ people are very nice to draw.  I love Fiona, but she would drive me bonkers.

> As Rules for Thursday Lovers is being released this month, I have the launch question: what do you have in store for readers, have you planned any promotional events?

Yes, I am having a book launch at the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green on the 16th July from 7-9pm. You are all welcome. I am also running 2 competitions. Because there is a Scrabble scene in my book, I am inviting people to send photos of their Scrabble on location games to my Twitter account – @YanaStajno and I will send free books to the providers of the quirkiest photos.  The second competition is this – I will be sending a limited edition giclee print to the first 3 readers who tell me the chapters these paintings are describing.  I’m attaching two photos below. The details are also on my website – www.yana-words.com

Yana Stajno’s art (picturing scenes from her novel)

adapted from Masur (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)], via Wikimedia Commons

Lately, as usual, I’ve been enjoying summer while tackling the intimate life of molecules in the lab, making new music, but I’ll take a break and briefly post on science and love, i.e. hashtag TimHunt-gate.

Last week, Nobel Prize-winning scientist Tim Hunt had caused an uproar on social media with his comments on why women should stay away from the lab:

“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls … three things happen when they are in the lab … You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticise them, they cry.”

Some of his statements are clearly not supported by scientific evidence: men do cry more at work. My problem with his statement is that I agree that these things happen, I just don’t think it is wrong to fall in love and cry in the lab. On the contrary.

I have so many friends who met each other while working in the lab and now they are happy families with kids.  Imao, falling in love can only make a good impact on a person’s science work, of course, provided it doesn’t leave that person wrecked in the end.

And as for tears. What’s wrong with crying? It’s a stupid macho mode of behavior to bottle all your frustrations inside or suddenly release them in anger. In my books, a crybaby is better than an explosive jerk. Crying harms nobody, apart from embarrassment it causes, but why should we feel embarrassed for being emotional? Besides, crying has many health benefits. e.g. it helps us to deal with stress via a release of adrenocorticotropic hormone. More on this – here.

So, thank you, Tim Hunt, for bringing this up. Next time my experiment defies my assumptions — I’ll cry in a matching defiance too. Think about all the sympathy chocolate I’m gonna get from my colleagues! That’s the main bonus.

Avengers: Age of Ultron – Sokovia, what’s in the name?

The recent installment in the Avengers franchise has a curious plot. I found it exciting not because of all the action but rather because of the American subconsciousness related to the world of politics emanating from the story.

Ultron, a rebellious artificial intelligence created by Iron Man, is preparing to conquer the world, having chosen a small country of Sokovia as its stronghold.

In the film, you can hear Russian speech in Sokovia. To me, this fictitious country is a symbolic Russia, with its frighteningly mad dictator, Ultron (Sokovia was also a base of the Nazi organisation, Hydra, before him).

If during the Cold War, it was very much the battle – US against USSR as a country, now it’s against the Kremlin but not the Russian people or Sokovians in the film. Yet Ultron is symbolically more related to Taliban and ISIS, that were, according to many politologists, brought to power by the disastrous American intervention in the Middle East. So in a way, Ultron and Sokovia are a combined symbol of Russian and Middle Eastern opponents of the US.

Here’s the interesting thing: Iron Man accepts responsibility for creating Ultron. This guilt of creating a monster is forcing Avengers to protect Sokovia and try to evacuate all the people from there, rather than simply bomb the country to ashes. But can you save Sokovia itself or just open borders and let those out who wishes it? Is this what’s been done in the Middle East, where infrastructures of entire countries like Iraq are in a dire state after the US intervention, not forgetting about hundred thousands of people who were killed during the turmoil? Of course, Avengers as a film didn’t intend to be viewed in this light. It’s a lovely action extravaganza for young people, yet we can’t simply ignore our subconsciousness. Every action has its consequences, even if the intentions are good (like bringing in democracy).

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMP-FLmiIM0

Mad Max: The Fury Road

One may think that it’s yet another remake of a popular movie released decades ago. This remake, at least in terms of artistic design and camera work, is a visual masterpiece. Not much of a talking is happening in this survival story set in a postapocalyptic arid land. Not a cactus is seen anywhere, while a two-headed lizard is beautifully displayed at the start of the film. The paradise is lost, though main characters aren’t aware of it for a while. What do you do when all hope is lost?

The scenes of the road adventures and struggle for survival shaped the characters better than any words. So, I’ll be concise here too. Show, not tell. Mad Max is an apt example of this fundamental rule in writing fiction.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC951npS6Uc

Spy

And finally, this weekend’s long-anticipated release, a James Bond spoof movie, Spy, starring Melissa McCarthy and directed by Paul Feig, well exceeded my expectations. The child-like straightforwardness of McCarthy comic characters is what disarms me the most, in them I find kindred souls.  I like the way McCarthy’s quirky character deals with her insecurities, the way she’s fierce and kind, inflammable yet reliable, resourceful yet fragile. In Spy, we see, for the second time since Bridesmaids, we see the acting tandem, Byrne-McCarthy. Rose Byrne’s villainess is delightfully funny in her arrogance and the air of superiority she emanates. The two have such great screen chemistry that they could have easily held the film on their own.

By the beauty of Spy lies in its nicely realised secondary characters: a classical Bond, a stupid macho Bond, a strict CIA chief lady…

And this film is also a Hollywood debut of my favorite British comedian, Miranda Hart, whose childishness and awkwardness makes McCarthy’s character look ‘as sharp as an Elf’s ear’ (a simile from Martin Scott’s Thraxas) in comparison. Humour is the safest medicine, so with Spy I don’t care about an overdose. Make more movies, Melissa!