Or maybe just Lala…

.

In general, a talented writer I know has:

Why don’t my writings arouse much interest among intelligent readers?

After all, I’m writing for them!

There was a steely gleam in her eyes, which, as I have already noticed, always appeared when she was asked a very stupid question and the questioner was a complete fool.

Do you write novels about whores? “What is it?” she asked harshly.

Noooooo,” I bleated in fright, “but there’s something to write about.7 I don’t know much about them, and what I do know is also uninteresting… It’s well known…

Novels about whores,” the writer replied sententiously, “are invariably in great demand among the intelligent public.

Here, offhand:

Abbé Prevost: “The story of the Chevalier des Grieux and the maiden Manon Lescaut.”

Daniel Defoe, the opportunist, the snitch and the provocateur: “Moll Flanders” 1722, “The Happy Courtesan or Roxanne” 1724. His “Robinson Crusoe” of 1719 did not attract the slightest attention of the reading English public, and ONLY AFTER his two novels about whores (in his old age of 62-64, he suddenly began ecstatically… WRITING ABOUT THIS…), he became “famous”, just like his “Robinson Crusoe”

Honore de Balzac: “The splendor and poverty of courtesans”

Alexanlr Dumas-son: “The Lady with Camellias”

Prosper Merimet: “Carmen”

Emile Zola: “Nana”

F.M. Dostoevsky with his “Crime and Punishment” (Sonechka Marmeladova is a holy sinner who sells herself in order to provide regular drinks for her beloved father… Holy business!!! It is not surprising that she becomes the “beloved” of the cruel and cold-blooded murderer Rodion Raskolnikov!), the “Idiot” (Nastasya Filippovna, who prefers the male cattle Rogozhin, who is POTENT AND EVEN VERY, to so called “Human” Prince Myshkin, a psychopath and completely impotent), the “Brothers Karamazov” (Katenka), etc.

Leo Tolstoy with his “Anna Karenina”, “Resurrection” and other soul-saving moralizations.

A.N.Kuprin — “The Pit”.

V.V.Nabokov – “Lolita”

And many others,” the writer continued. – All these writers, AFTER writing SUCH novels, immediately became famous and extremely popular with the intellectual reading public.

And you, Esprit, what are you writing???

About thoughts, about the problems of intelligence and morality… One laugh!

But I also wrote about something close,” I replied, confused, “here: “The Rightness of Lombroso”, “Vivisection of Madame’s Soul”, “Ladies and Clausewitz”…

In the eyes of my interlocutor, there was no longer a steel, but a titanium gleam.

It was always when she was talking to, well, a complete idiot!

And what did you tell the intelligent public there? Those you wrote about have known ALL THIS about themselves for a long time and you have not made any discovery of America for them. Commonplace commonplace. For them! There’s something going on about Anna Akhmatova. The poetess with her, it seems, three official husbands… And Unofficial ones, in general… Who counted…?

For “decent women” – your writing looked like an insulting generalization, common to all women, and to them in the first place: “This Esprit calls ALL women whores!”

But I never even thought about it, I never said or wrote it!!!

And what kind of chapter do you have in “Conversations with a Joyboy” – “Prostitution as a continuation of the maternal instinct”?

Well, this is anthropological research… Quotes…

What matters, Esprit, is not WHAT you think, say and write, but WHAT is extracted from your writing with your mind, and especially with your feelings, by readers!!!

So who do you think will even read your “research”???

Inessa Armand, Alexandra Kollontai, Lyubov Mendeleeva-Blok, Lilya Brik… That’s who you need to write about and not “analyze” behavior, but describe their wonderful lives on the bed of Eros.

I can’t do it,” I replied sadly.

THEN DON’T COMPLAIN about the lack of readers!

They said a cordial goodbye to her.

She even kissed me on the cheek, pierced and riddled by the arrows of her inexorable logic.

As a consolation…

23 IX 2021