It is customary to judge the maturity of satirical and humorous literature, its aesthetic quality by the level of development of prose. IN prose genres the satirist is given the opportunity to unfold a wide panorama of modern reality, draw a multi-colored picture of morals, reflect the struggle of the new with the old in all its complexity. Not without reason the greatest masters of the satirical art of the word gravitated toward the epic, acted as novelists. To be convinced of this, one has only to name the immortal books "Don Quixote", "Gargantua and Pantagruel", "Gulliver's Travels", " Dead Souls". In Soviet literature, successful attempts were made to create large satirical canvases on modern material.
In the 1920s and early 1930s, A. Tolstoy, I. Ehrenburg, Yu. Olesha, V. Kataev searched in this direction. As a feuilletonist and playwright, V. Kataev, the author of the book “The Lonely Sail Turns White,” imbued with light lyricism, gave a lot of energy and talent to the muse of fiery satire. The collection "Peas Against the Wall" resurrects this glorious page in the biography of V. Kataev. A humorous stream, subtle irony, a sly smile color all the work of this great artist, who, by the way, was " godfather» Ilya Ilf And Evgenia Petrova.
Ilya Ilf (left) and Evgeny Petrov.
Illustration for the novel by I. Ilf and E. Petrov "The Golden Calf".
The authors of the novels The Twelve Chairs (1928) and The Golden Calf (1931) deserve love and recognition a wide range Soviet and foreign readers. Ilf and Petrov, having conceived a great story, turned, it would seem, to a topic as old as the world. The thirst for wealth, an insatiable and irrepressible passion for money overwhelm the characters of these novels, determine the behavior and actions of Ostap Bender and his “comrades-in-arms”. "The Twelve Chairs" and "The Golden Calf" are unique, fundamentally innovative works in world literature, by no means similar to, say, a traditional picaresque novel. During the years of the great socialist reorganization of the world and human souls value is being reassessed. Convincingly and witty, Ilf and Petrov talk about the collapse of the old psychology, about the irreversible processes that lead to the death of the bourgeois world, based on the anti-human laws of individualism. A gallery of brilliantly outlined types - fragments of the system shattered by the revolution - passes before the reader's eyes. Laughing at them, we are convinced: there is no return to the past! The main character of the novel is Ostap Bender, a swindler and swindler. The authors treat him with irony, but their satire is not directed against Ostap alone. Next to this enterprising, broken, resourceful, energetic and witty man, "the great strategist", his insignificant "colleagues" are swarming around. Ostap is several heads taller than yesterday's gentlemen who went into internal emigration, as well as the newly-minted bourgeois - Nepmen and "underground millionaires." The pursuit of the jewels hidden in one of the twelve chairs was the pursuit of a ghost. The future turned out to be a mirage, which Bender painted for himself in rainbow colors, dreaming of getting a million. In the end, he also realizes that there is real life but she passes him by. In our country, working people are happy and respected, but Koreiko, with his millions acquired by fraudulent means, is disgusting, pitiful and ridiculous ...
"The Twelve Chairs" and "The Golden Calf" in their own way reflected real life at a certain stage of the country's development. For a long time there are no "crow settlements", many types and phenomena captured by satirists have disappeared. But far from all the "dark spots" of the past have yet been removed. The novels of Ilf and Petrov teach to unmistakably recognize the old in the new, be it petty-bourgeois narrow-mindedness, philistine stupidity, greed, inertia. The pages that expose bureaucracy, opportunism, careerism, hack-work and simply stupidity in its various manifestations have not lost their sharpness.
New generations of readers grow up, and the novels of Ilf and Petrov become their favorite books. What is the secret of the unfading youth of these works? Cheerfully, witty and at ease, writers talk with the reader about very important things - about the meaning of life, about the goal human existence, clearly reveal the advantages of the new, socialist system, the new morality of the Soviet people.
The fate of the literary community of Ilf and Petrov is unusual. She touches and excites. They worked together for a short time, only ten years, but in history Soviet literature left a deep, indelible mark. The memory of them does not fade, and the love of readers for their books does not weaken.
The novels The Twelve Chairs and The Golden Calf are widely known. In new historical conditions, on the material of our present. Ilf and Petrov not only revived the old, classical genre satirical novel, but also gave it a fundamentally new character.
We name these two novels first of all, because "The Twelve Chairs" and "The Golden Calf" are really the peaks of the work of Ilf and Petrov. But these novels rise above the whole literary massif, which is made up of works of various genres. surveying literary heritage Ilf and Petrova, not only the works written by them together, but also each separately, one cannot but marvel at the breadth of creative possibilities writers, the literary brilliance of feuilletons, essays, comedies.
The talent of the satirists was in full swing. A wide road opened before the authors. They hatched a lot of ideas, plans, themes. Satire in the works of writers became deeper and deeper. Unfortunately, the end of their community was tragic. Ilf's life ended too soon. And after a few years. also in the prime of his talent, Petrov died.
All their short joint literary activity closely, inextricably linked with the first decades of existence Soviet power. They were not only contemporaries of their great era, but also active participants in socialist construction, fighters at the forefront. Laughter was their literary weapon, and they did not lay down this weapon until the end of their days.
The novels of Ilf and Petrov "The Twelve Chairs" and "The Golden Calf" followed the same path. The first novel is a wide-ranging satirical canvas with lively humorous colors. This extensive gallery small and tiny people.
Binds them together story line: twelve chairs that the main character of the novel, Ostap Bender, is looking for. Traveling through various cities gives him the opportunity to meet many people, diverse in character, but belonging to the same environment. These are all philistines in spirit, in character, former officials, merchants, NEPmen, people without specific occupations - small crucian inhabitants who exist for that, so that they are swallowed alive by a swindler of pike breed - Ostap Bender.
On the face of it, they seem to be even good-natured people. Many of them are not formally enemies of socialism and Soviet power. They don't have any political views, and Elle has no convictions at all. She's just a bipedal mammal whose entire mental baggage fits into three or four phrases. However, in reality, she is the very “canary” that Mayakovsky advised to turn his head.
Ella is a cannibal. perhaps one of the most expressive and powerful satirical images in the novel by Ilf and Petrov. It vividly represents the wretched and at the same time predatory nature of philistinism. With others, it is masked by pompous phrases, by the gift of accommodation. Ellochkavsya as in the palm of your hand. This is a very tiny predatory animal, its most dangerous feature is vitality. She lives to this day. We meet it sometimes among the youth of our time, among girls and boys. They are now called dudes. The composition of the novel predetermined its end. The plot was exhausted when Ostap Bender found the last chair - the one in which the jewels were sewn up. With the proceeds from their sale, the railroad built an excellent club. This was also the last failure of the hero of the novel. He had no reason to live any longer, and the authors did away with him in a rather mechanical way. As is known. Ostap Bender was stabbed to death by his accomplice, former Marshal of the Nobility Kisa Vorobyaninov.
The novel "The Twelve Chairs" was an extraordinary success. It was read and reread with unceasing merry laughter. Ilf and Petrov wrote several new satirical works after the novel. In 1928-1930, they actively collaborated in the magazines Ogonyok and Chudak. In addition to numerous feuilletons and stories, the satirical story “The Bright Personality”, a series of short stories about the city of Kolokolamsk and the tales of the New Scheherazade were published there. Inhabitants of the fantastic cities of Kolokolaysk and Pishcheslav. invented by Ilf and Petrov, these are, as it were, residents of the Shchedrin town of Glupov. direct descendants of the famous Poshekhonians. They show the disgusting features of the petty-bourgeois money-grubbers, that Nepman spirit. which Ilf and Petrov ridiculed in the novel "The Twelve Chairs". In their new works, the writers continued in a grotesque form satirical line his first novel. But the form they found did not satisfy the authors. As the writers themselves believed, they could not fully solve in these works those creative tasks, which were set in front of them.
Why did the authors need to resurrect the slaughtered hero? The simplest and easiest explanation suggests itself. The satirical image of Ostap Bender has become extremely popular. It had artistic originality. In his vitality, in his significance, he entered the series of typical characters headed by Khlestakov. Chichikov and other wonderful satirical images of classical Russian literature. Of course, the scales of Chichikov and Ostap Bender are completely different, but the fact is that they are in the same literary row. The name of Ostap Bender also became a household name.
The authors were sorry to part with their hero. This can be understood. In their reserves, many more such materials were preserved that could be successfully used in Bender's further adventures. Moreover, in the first novel, Ostap's death was not motivated either logically or psychologically. In a playful preface to The Golden Calf, Ilf and Petrov say that the death sentence for the hero of the novel was passed by accident. The authors hesitated and even argued about whether to kill Ostap or leave him alive. The dispute was decided by lot. A piece of paper was taken out of the sugar bowl, on which a skull and two chicken bones were depicted. But soon after the sentence was carried out. Ilf and Petrov realized that they had made a mistake. I had to resurrect Ostap Bender, leaving him in memory of untimely death scar on the neck.
It can be assumed that, resuming the history of adventures already famous hero. Ilf and Petrov decided to correct and some weak sides first novel. At one time, benevolent criticism pointed to them. In The Twelve Chairs, an almost exclusively small world of mixed is depicted, the townsfolk, the simpleton, whom the “great strategist” leads by the nose so easily and so amusingly. The big world, the world of revolution and socialist construction is, as it were, absent. It is assumed that the Soviet reader himself always sees this Big world. From his height, all the human pettiness that fills the novel is mercilessly ridiculed.
In addition, all the characters in The Twelve Chairs are too small. There are no large and serious enemies among them. Hence, some touch of good nature in the novel. And Ostap Bender, with his wit, resourcefulness, even inspires some sympathy for himself. He leaves the stage unexposed to the end.
Apparently, Ilf and Petrov themselves felt some dissatisfaction as the creators of an interesting satirical image. Perhaps they themselves said to themselves: we gave birth to you, Ostap Bender, and we will kill you. This is how the second novel ends. Ostap Bender does not physically die. He says about himself that he intends to leave his tricks and retrain as a house manager. But he suffers complete moral bankruptcy. The authors give him a more cruel and “more just” sentence: Ostap Bender is ridiculed to death, killed by his own weapons.
In the second novel, that broad social background appears, which is clearly lacking in the first. The authors, in fact, do not go beyond the framework of a satirical novel. The action develops in a small world of philistine passions. But from time to time we hear the noise of the real big life, pictures of the great socialist construction arise. Symbolic and complete deep meaning those pages where it is told how the passengers of the Antelope, forced to turn off the highway, hide in a ravine and watch how the cars of a real motor race rush one after another. Ostap Bender and his companions feel that a genuine big life, and they are hopelessly behind, ridiculed, thrown out.
In the city of Chernomorsk, a picture of a large and busy port is drawn, as if in passing. It boils there new life, and against this background, the adventures of millionaires Koreiko and Ostap Bender look miserable.
Thus, The Golden Calf shows the true historical scale of that little world in which Ostap Bender is considered in his own way " strong man". At the center of the satirical denunciation are the same small people, philistines, townsfolk. However, among them there are predators of a different caliber than in The Twelve Chairs - larger opponents, more dangerous enemies of the new system. These are crooks, plunderers of public property, who directly or indirectly come into contact with the criminal world.
The very objects of denunciation are also expanding - writers direct the fire of satire in the novel against bureaucrats and opportunists. It is no coincidence that the generalized image of "Hercules" acquired a nominal meaning, became the embodiment of bureaucracy and bureaucratic indifference.
The most important thing is that. that from a triumphant hero Ostap Bender turns into a loser, suffering one defeat after another. Grand schemer eventually acquires his "million", but loses faith in his egoistic principles. His wit fades, his attractiveness disappears. He loses his accomplices and is left alone. The authors gradually debunk it and consistently bring it to a comic-dramatic finale.
Completely superfluous, alien, no matter how cleverly he adapts, Ostap looks like on a train with Soviet and foreign journalists, which is going to build the Eastern Highway (read: Turksib). And when his dream finally comes true and Ostap receives the coveted million, he is finally thrown out of life. This is where the main idea of the novel comes into play. She is in it. that a rich private owner is impossible, absurd, meaningless in a socialist society. This is how the authors morally kill the hero of private property profit that they have engendered.
The Golden Calf is not just a sequel to The Twelve Chairs, but further development Topics. The humorous colors in the second novel are no less vivid than in the first, and the satire reveals a higher level of political sharpness. The "Golden Calf" testifies to the greater ideological and artistic maturity of the authors.
The satirical novels discussed in this paragraph are, as it were, the pinnacles of the work of Ilf and Petrov. They wrote, in addition, a considerable number of stories, short stories, essays, feuilletons, plays, screenplays. It is like the foothills and spurs of the main literary massif. They also sparkle with humor, they have the same inexhaustible merry laughter, rich fiction, accuracy of caricature characteristics. And the same satirical direction. Ilf and Petrov are fighting against their constant enemies - against philistinism, vulgarity, bureaucracy, indifference.
The second chapter of this study is devoted to the analysis of satirical works of the twentieth century in order to determine how the Soviet era is reflected in these works. We took as a basis the works of four writers - M. Bulgakov, M. Zoshchenko, I. Ilf and E. Petrov.
As a result of the analysis, the following conclusions can be drawn:
1) The beginning of the 20th century is full of events of the world and Russian scale that have changed humanity, society, attitude towards the individual. satire like false mirror, faithfully followed reality in the works of new authors, who exposed the new vices of society and man. Russian satirical writers (M. Zoshchenko, I. Ilf and E. Petrov, M. Bulgakov, and others) in the 1920s were distinguished by their particular boldness and frankness in their statements. All of them were the heirs of Russian realism of the XX century.
2) M. Bulgakov created in his semi-fantastic works very accurate and realistic image the reality that arose in Russia after the revolution. Environment shown in a grotesque manner, but this is what makes it possible to expose the absurdities and contradictions of the existing social Soviet system.
3) The works of M. Zoshchenko and his life itself reflected the contemporary Soviet era when in Russia there was a break in times, a break in history. The speech of the heroes of M. Zoshchenko reflected the complex processes that took place in politics, culture, and the economy of the 20-30s of the twentieth century. At this time, old concepts disappeared, and with them whole layers of vocabulary, but many new words, new speech structures appeared. Zoshchenko in his works puts the heroes in circumstances to which it is difficult for them to adapt, which is why they look ridiculous and ridiculous.
4) Satire requires direction. I. Ilf and E. Petrov, going to the forefront of the satirical front of Soviet literature, chose a certain area for themselves. They set their weapons against their worst enemies socialist revolution: against philistinism, inertia, narrow-mindedness.
Writers, poets, playwrights have created many vivid satirical works in which by force artistic word social and moral vices that interfere with the normal development of life are ridiculed. Exposure of evil and injustice by means of art - ancient tradition humanity has accumulated vast experience on this path.To make bad and bad things funny means to devalue, lower it, to induce in people the desire to get rid of negative features. satirical literature, like no other, has a strong educational impact, although, of course, not everyone likes to recognize themselves in heroes satirical comedy or fables. Any satirical work: a fable, a comedy, a fairy tale, a novel - has a number of specific features that are unique to them. Firstly, this is a very large degree of conventionality of the depicted, the proportions real world in a satirical work are displaced and distorted, the satirist consciously focuses only on negative sides reality, which appear in the work in an exaggerated, often fantastic, form. Remember Gogol's confession that in The Inspector General the writer "wanted to collect everything bad in Russia and laugh at everything at once." But this, according to the writer, is “a laughter visible to the world” through “invisible, unknown to him tears”, the satirist mourns the lost ideal of a person in his caricatured, often repulsive heroes. A satirical writer must have a special talent for creating comic, i.e. funny, in literary work. These are a variety of comic plot collisions, illogical, absurd situations, the use of speaking names and surnames, etc. The most important artistic techniques that allow you to create satirical images, are the following (see diagram 6).
Irony(eironeia Greek, mockery, pretense) - a method of ridicule when direct and hidden meaning what has been said contradict each other, when under the mask of imaginary seriousness lies a sharp, caustic mockery.
The mayor Borodavkin "led the campaign against the arrears, and burned thirty-three villages and, with the help of these measures, recovered the arrears of two rubles and a half."
M. Saltykov-Shchedrin. "History of a City"
Character dialogues that use irony are also a common technique in satirical works, comic effect arises because one of the characters does not feel the ironic overtones.
Sarcasm(sakasmos in Greek, I literally tear meat) - a caustic, cruel mockery, expressed directly, without
half hints.
Gloomy-Burcheev - one of the mayors in the "History of a City" by M. Saltykov-Shchedrin - is described exclusively in sarcastic tones:
“Before the eyes of the viewer, the purest type of idiot rises, who has made some kind of gloomy decision and swore an oath to carry it out.”
“I came two weeks later and was received by some girl with eyes slanted to her nose from constant lies.”
M. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita"
Hyperbola- exaggeration, bright and, perhaps, one of the most important satirical devices, since exaggeration, exaggeration of negative features, is the law satirical image In fact, it is no coincidence that V. Mayakovsky called satire "a look at the world through a magnifying glass."
Hyperbole can be verbal (" bad news”), however, more common is extended hyperbole, when the injection of many similar details exaggerates some feature to the point of absurdity.
Entire episodes are often built according to the laws of hyperbolization, for example, the famous “scene of lies” from The Inspector General, when in ten minutes Khlestakov made himself from a petty official into the director of a department, who subordinates “couriers, couriers, couriers ... you can imagine thirty-five thousand one couriers!”
Hyperbole is often combined with the grotesque and fantasy.
Fantastic(phantastike Greek. the ability to imagine) - the image of absolutely impossible, illogical, incredible situations and heroes.
In satirical works, fantasy is very often used together with the grotesque and hyperbole, it is often impossible to separate them, as, for example, in V. Mayakovsky's poem “The Sitting Ones”: “I see: half of the people are sitting. O devilry! Where is the other half?!”
Grotesque(grotesque fr. bizarre, intricate) - the most complex satirical device, which consists in an unexpected, at first glance, impossible combination of high and low, funny and terrible, beautiful and ugly.
The grotesque contains elements of fantasy and exaggeration, therefore it contains a very strong impulse of emotional and psychological impact on the reader, the grotesque strikes, excites the imagination, calling to look at reality from a new, often paradoxical point of view. The grotesque was especially often resorted to in his work by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin and M.A. Bulgakov.
Sometimes the plot of the entire work can be built on a grotesque situation (M. Bulgakov's story "Heart of a Dog").
The mayors of Glupov: Organchik (Brusty), Pimple (Stuffed Head), Borodavkin, Negodyaev, Interception-Zalikhvatsky, Gloomy-Grumbling - personify autocracy and arbitrariness. This novel uses all the artistic techniques of Shchedrin's satire - satirical fantasy, grotesque, merciless irony and cheerful, triumphant humor. This fantasy is in its essence truthful, realistic, only the external features of images and events are unreal. “They talk about caricature and exaggeration, but you just need to look around for this accusation to fall by itself ...
Who is writing this cartoon? Is it not reality itself? Isn't she at every step accusing herself of exaggeration? - wrote Saltykov-Shchedrin. The busty Organchik, despite all the fantasticness of his appearance (instead of a brain he has a primitive mechanism - an organ), performs actions that are no different from the actions of real-life rulers. At the entrance to the province, he flogged the coachmen, then day and night he wrote "more and more urges." According to his orders, "they seize and catch, flog and flog, describe and sell."
Such management has been tested for centuries, and in order to manage in this way, it was enough to have an “empty vessel” instead of a head. It is not for nothing that the superintendent of a public school answered the question of the Foolovites: “Have there been examples in history of people giving orders, waging wars and concluding treaties, having an empty vessel on their shoulders?” - replies that this is quite possible that a certain ruler "Charles the Innocent ... had on his shoulders, although not empty, but still, as it were, an empty vessel, and waged wars and concluded treatises." In addition to "ruin!" and “I won’t stand it!” The organ didn’t need any other words due to the nature of its activity. “There are people,” writes Shchedrin, “whose entire existence is exhausted by these two romances.”
In the image of Organchik, the features of automatism and callousness of the rulers are sharpened to the limit. The mayor Vasilisk Borodavkin, famous for his “wars for enlightenment”, for the introduction of mustard and Persian chamomile into the life of the Foolovites, also appears as an evil, soulless doll and wages his wild wars with the assistance of tin soldiers. But the actions of Wartkin are by no means more fantastic than the actions of any tyrant ruler. Borodavkin "burned down thirty-three villages and with the help of these measures recovered the arrears of two rubles and a half."
In works preceding The History of a City, Shchedrin wrote that vile pimples jump up on the “physiognomy of society”, testifying to its rottenness, internal illness. It is precisely this personification of the disease of the exploitative system that the mayor Pryshch is. The main feature of the mayor Pimple (aka Stuffed Head) is animality.
Pimple invariably stimulates the appetite of the leader of the nobility - his head, stuffed with truffles, spreads a seductive smell. In the episode where the leader of the nobility eats the head of the mayor, Pimple completely loses his human appearance: “The mayor suddenly jumped up and began to wipe with his paws those parts of his body that the leader had poured with vinegar. Then he twirled in one place and suddenly his whole body crashed to the floor. Even the image of Grim-Burcheev - this symbol of oppression and arbitrariness - has absorbed many specific features of the anti-people rulers of Russia. The images of mayors lack psychological depth.
And this is no coincidence. Gloomy-Grumblings are alien to feelings of grief, joy, doubt. They are not people, but mechanical puppets. They are the exact opposite of living people, suffering and thinking. Shchedrin draws mayors in a sharply sarcastic and grotesque manner, but sometimes he uses both irony and even cheerful humor. Shchedrin loved the oppressed people of Russia with all his heart, but this did not prevent him from condemning their ignorance and humility.
When Shchedrin was accused of mocking the people, he replied: “It seems to me that two concepts should be distinguished in the word “people”: a historical people and a people representing the idea of democracy. I really cannot sympathize with the first, who bears the Wartkins, Burcheevs, etc. on his shoulders. I have always sympathized with the latter, and all my writings are full of this sympathy. In The History of a City, Shchedrin predicted the death of the autocracy. Humiliated, driven to despair, the Foolovites eventually begin to understand the impossibility of their existence under the conditions of the despotic regime of Ugryum-Burcheev.
The writer tangibly conveys the growing anger of the people, the atmosphere preceding the explosion. With a picture of this powerful explosion that shook the city, Shchedrin ends his chronicle. Gloomy-Grumbling disappeared, "as if melted in the air," and "history stopped its course," the story of a gloomy city, its downtrodden and obedient inhabitants, insane rulers. A new period begins in the life of the liberated people.
The true history of mankind is endless, it is like a mountain river, the mighty movement of which was powerless to be stopped by Grim-Burcheev. “The river did not let up. As before, she flowed, breathed, murmured and wriggled; as before, one bank of it was steep, and the other represented a meadow lowland, flooded into a distant space with water in springtime. With a premonition of great historical changes in Foolov is connected bright look Shchedrin for the future, vividly embodied in his book. The chronicle is written in a colorful, very complex language.
It widely uses the high syllable of ancient speech - for example, in the appeal of an archivist-chronicler to the reader - and folk sayings and proverbs, and the heavy, unreadable syllable of stationery papers in a parodic arrangement (the so-called "Certifying Documents" attached to the chronicle), and journalistic style of contemporary journalism Shchedrin.
Combination fairy tale manner"chronicler" with the author's transcription of his notes allowed Shchedrin to either give the story a somewhat archaic historical evidence, or again introduce obvious echoes of modernity into it. Shchedrin's satire has always been on the side of those who fought for the triumph of justice and truth. The writer believed in the collapse of the Foolovian system of life on earth, in the victory of the immortal ideas of democracy and progress.
Find time for yourself and a nice book. And it doesn't matter that it's cold and gray outside. We offer you 10 satire books that will make you smile.
1. Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov - "12 chairs"
The novel by Ilf and Petrov "The Twelve Chairs" is rightfully considered the standard of satire and humor. Unanimously loved by all readers, this novel entered the golden fund of Russian and world literature. The search for Madame Petukhova's diamonds, hidden in one of the chairs of the furniture set, is a story that still causes a sincere smile to this day. The names of the characters - charming adventurers - became household names, and the novel itself was sold for quotes, withstanding hundreds of successful reprints and deservedly gaining fame as an unfading bestseller.
2. George Orwell - "Cattle Farm"
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” is probably the most famous phrase from George Orwell's classic parable about the collapse of revolutionary hopes. The tragic meaning of "Animal Farm" emerges through a vivid parody drawing. In this book, Orwell managed to accomplish two tasks set for himself back in 1936: “to expose Soviet myth and "make political prose an art". Orwell's parable, published in 1945, is published in a new translation.
3. Yaroslav Gashek - "The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik"
"The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik" is perhaps one of the most original books in the entire history of prose of the 20th century. A book that can equally be perceived as one big, full of absolutely inimitable folk slyness "soldier's tale" - or as classic literature of the past century.
Funny? Funny homeric! But very often, through the groovy and daring humor of the "garrison anecdote" true essence"Soldier Schweik" is a desperate and powerful call to "lay down your arms and think"...
4. Joseph Heller - Catch-22
Joseph Heller, with his first novel, Catch 22, literally burst into American literature post-war years. "The world has gone mad", and this is especially evident in the example of the life and customs of the military pilots of the American Squadron. Caustically, and sometimes quite harshly, the army described by J. Heller - strange world, full of bureaucratic tricks and nonsense. No one knows exactly what the so-called "Amendment 22" is. But, contrary to all logic, army discipline requires its strict implementation. The bureaucratic machine paralyzes common sense and turns individuals into a faceless, dull mass.
5. Evelyn Waugh - "Vile Flesh"
Journalists and preachers, racing drivers and aristocrats, ministers and young playboys… They rush through life and through the pages of the novel in a whirlwind of balls, masquerades and parties - Victorian, cowboy, Russian, circus. This, at the author's will, appears England in the short interval between the two great wars.
6. Francois Rabelais - "Gargantua and Pantagruel"
The novel of the great French writer Francois Rabelais "Gargantua and Pantagruel" - largest monument era French Renaissance. The book is built on a broad folklore basis, it contains a satire on fantasy and adventurous heroism of old chivalric novels.
7. Christopher T. Buckley - "Smoking Here"
“Smoking Here” is a satirical novel with elements of a thriller. The hero of the novel, a public representative of the tobacco lobby, skillfully and cynically fights the opponents of smoking, convincingly proving the usefulness of the latter. The special piquancy is given to the novel by the episodic appearance on its pages worldwide. famous people, only in rare cases covered with transparent aliases.
8. Charles Bukowski - Waste Paper
"Waste paper" - last novel Bukowski, his swan song is simply contraindicated for readers without a sense of humor! This is really a special kind of banter dedicated to “ bad literature". The plot of the book itself is devoid of dynamics, devoid of intrigue, devoid of everything, but that is why it is infinitely brilliant. The main advantage of "Waste Paper" is the style of narration. The descriptions and dialogues of the novel are filled with an atmosphere of dirt, violence and fear. At the same time, Bukowski literally parodies genuine pulp fiction with every sentence. And although the author's style is utterly simplified - I would like to note an amazing sense of humor, which will definitely appeal to readers who have this sense.
9. Kurt Vonnegut - "God bless you, Mr. Rosewater, or Don't throw pearls before swine"
One of the most amusing, witty and ironic novels of the great Vonnegut.
Everyday phantasmagoria in this eccentric and caustic work is closely intertwined with a satire on the life and customs of America's "golden age" of the late fifties - early sixties of the last century so closely that it is almost impossible to separate them.
So, welcome to the fund of an eccentric millionaire who indulges in philanthropy and a passion for voluntary firefighting clubs.
Is he insane? This is trying to prove brisk lawyers hired by his relatives. He is healthy? Oddly enough, psychiatrists are sure of this ... So what is happening to the venerable Mr. Rosewater after all?
10. O'Henry - "Kings and Cabbage"
O. Henry is an outstanding American novelist of the early 20th century, famous for his brilliant humorous stories, a master of unexpected comparisons and unforeseen, paradoxical outcomes. Artistic expressiveness combined with subtle observation, liveliness and conciseness of the narrative, inexhaustible wit, love for people - this is what brought O. Henry the unchanging recognition and love of readers. This edition presents the story "Kings and Cabbage", consisting of adventurous and humorous short stories, the action of which takes place in Latin America, but instead of kings he has presidents, and instead of cabbages - palm trees.
