Status Updates From Шум времени

I rewatched The Death of Stalin today, and while trying to find locations where it had been filmed I discovered the score had been written deliberately to imitate Dmitri Shostakovich.

It was at that point that I realised Dmitri Dmitriyevitch was in fact THAT Dmitri, and this book has been about a real person the entire time 🙃

„As a child, he had feared the dead — feared that they would rise from their graves and seize hold of him, dragging him back into the cold, black earth, his mouth and eyes filling with soil. This fear had slowly disappeared, because the hands of the living had turned out to be more frightening. […]

But then there was the opposite fear: of slipping from hands that kept you safe.“

I’m liking the satire of Soviet structure (if it can be thought of as that) and the inherent ridiculous of trying to quantify creativity. Sometimes it is getting a bit confusing when they switch between formal and familiar names, and it can be hard to take character with names like Sergey Sergeyovitch seriously, even if that is what they’d be called. I’m also not sure if some of the names are real famous people

Still fun, quite liking it. Contrasting the harsh bureaucracy of Soviet life against Dmitri’s artistic integrity is a nice solid cord to build around. Still jumping all around time-wise, and the non-linear approach works well with mini-cliffhangers before it jumps about again

Quite liking this one so far. Feels like a Soviet equivalent to Kurt Vonnegut, all short paragraphs and jumping back and forth in time (which makes sense given the title). Not as funny, but more nihilistic maybe

W

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