Salon

Viktor Pelevin's new book was eagerly awaited, but as usual, an atmosphere of secrecy surrounded its release. Journalists were even taken to the printing press and shown galley proofs (which some of them tried unsuccessfully to steal). The book's title is "P5," or "Parting Poetry of Pindostan's Political Pygmies" (Proshchalniye Pesni Politicheskikh Pigmeyev Pindostana); Pindostan, for convoluted reasons, came to mean the United States in Russian newspeak. The book was not a novel as previously announced, but a collection of five short stories (the publishers know that short stories sell poorly).

Advertising posters claimed that "advertising this book was prohibited by censorship," which, in a nice Kafkaesque turn, angered the authorities almost to the point of forbidding it. Pelevin amply comments on current politics; apparently, some of the novellas were written or modified recently, because they mention recent events like the conflict in South Ossetia. In the pages, many well-known politicians, analysts and "political technologists" make an appearance, usually under thinly veiled nicknames.

Quite a few of Pelevin's observations regarding current affairs are hysterically funny. The plots are, as usual, full of satirical imagination. In the first novella, "Hall of Singing Caryatids," pretty women are selected to serve as decorations in a newly inaugurated entertainment center; they are given injections of a serum to keep them immobile, which leads to unexpected consequences.

The critical consensus after the book's appearance was unfavorable to Pelevin. Some said he was moving toward Sergei Minayev (the author of several very badly written bestsellers). Some said Pelevin had become undistinguishable from his numerous imitators. Galina Yuzefovich wrote in Vedomosti that the creative spirit that had inspired the author throughout the 1990s has obviously left him.

I tend to agree with the critics, but Pelevin never struck me as a very deep writer. His basic trick is simple (though effective) and almost never changes: He takes a situation, describes it at length, and then suddenly twists the reader's perception of it in the opposite direction. Thus, in two of his earlier stories, the principal characters, who the readers assumed were human, turned out to be a cat and a parrot, respectively.

This trick is used in the new stories as well. Still, they are written much better, with more deadpan humor, than most imitators can hope to achieve. And some of the ideas and descriptions are spot-on and very funny. The book does not rise to the level of "Chapayev and Void," "Omon-Ra" or other gems of the Pelevin canon, but it is too early to write him off.