On my 14th birthday, I went to another city and spent all my savings on books. Among them was the novel “This is Me, Duke” by the German author Tina Uebel.
In this book, she describes the game of 2 teens. The boys sit in the kitchen and imagine brewing tea instead of actually brewing it. They call each other and pretend they’ve gone to a bar or on a date. Or that they’ve taken LSD and gone to study the neon lighting at the gas station.
I remember being impressed by a simple phrase: “He watched the rain during the rain.” It impressed me because it felt like an invitation to become a writer. Usually, in books, it’s written: “It was raining,” or they try to describe the characteristics of the rain. But Tina Uebel describes not the rain, but a boy describing his friend watching the rain. This invites the reader to try to describe reality. In this attempt lies the path to writing.
That would definitely be Marla Singer from “Fight Club.” I never dreamed of talking to a favorite writer, but I’d give a lot to hug Marla. I love the smell of books. But since Marla Singer is a literary character, I’m sure that when I hug her, she will smell like printer’s ink.
I usually spend a lot of time on Wikipedia, reading biographies of various authors. I almost always have a list of things I want to read. Since the selection is usually made outside the bookstore, the only things that catch my attention inside are the notepads on yellow paper.
In any country, my first stop is always a bookstore, followed by a cemetery.
It’s hard for me to pick a favorite bookstore. But Olšany Cemetery in Prague could be the most beautiful cemetery I’ve ever visited.
Anyway, there is a difference between Ukrainian and European bookstores. When I asked for books by Jean Genet in Ukrainian bookstores, I often noticed a weird look from the salesperson, who perhaps knew that Jean Genet was gay. The salesperson’s gaze seemed like an attempt to determine my orientation. In European stores, nobody cares about that.
It’s important for me that, by reading my books, all those people who suffer from mental illness, loneliness, and so on, feel complete. There are many tranquilizers in pharmacies, but the right book will help you survive unhappy love better.
For example, in my first novel THE INTIMATE SMELL OF THE MARINE, I examine the story of suicide. Essentially, this is a melancholy story about how a guy saved others, and when he realized that his attempts weren’t really helping, he took his own life. The danger is that it is difficult not to fall in love with a suicide boy – and this is not an obvious key to salvation. Irrational one, but still. Those who loves will not want to kill. And they won’t want to die. It’s essantial to remember about it during the war.
And in the novel THE MINING BOYS, I want to console all the guys who don’t want to fight. Such guys in Ukraine today are equated with criminals. Do guys deserve to be treated this way? Let the reader decide for themself after reading.
It’d be a lie to say that my novel emerged because of the war. I wrote this book in spite of it.
I believe that war brings only destruction and nothing more. You would be surprised to learn how many kind and gentle people in Ukraine support the brutal war to the last Ukrainian.
How to protect oneself from this? War must be ridiculed and logically dismantled to make its image unattractive to society. And if I can engage in the logical dismantling of war, then I leave humor to others.
By the way, recently my essay was published in Berlin, where I examine heroism from this perspective – “A Closer Look at Heroism.” In it, I explored the roots of the aspiration for heroism and why it is a red flag.
It doesn’t matter to me where my book will be in a bookstore. It’s important that teenagers want to steal it – this speaks to the real success of the book, in my opinion.
I would also like for my book to be banned in the post-Soviet space. I come from there myself, and I know that banned books are read much more carefully there.