The Russia thread.
Out of context: Reply #956
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- drgs0
https://languagehat.com/sorokins…
"Part 1, the longest in the book, consists of thirty-plus short narratives ranging from several pages to less than a page long. The first opens with a guy named Sveklushin who gets off a packed bus and is immediately accosted by his old friend Trofimenko, who he hasn’t seen in ages; he asks after various mutual acquaintances and invites him to dinner, and shortly after responding to a remark about his wrinkles he says “Wait, though. I’ll gobble my norm now, so I don’t have to drag it home. Good thing I remembered".
Trofimenko is impressed by the cellophane wrapping (in the provinces where he’s been living they just wrap the norm in paper, “and coarse paper at that”) and by its freshness (“ours is all dried up”).
In the second, a kid is trying to get his father’s attention while his father is making dinner for himself, including some “norm.”
The rest are similar scenes of daily life, involving just about every area of Soviet society short of the highest — the novel has been called “an encyclopedia of Soviet life” — and each one includes the consumption of “norm”.
Eventually it is made explicit that it consists of human feces, and all adult citizens are obliged to consume their daily dose."
- I grew up reading his books. They are crazy, but nevertheless brilliantzaq