§0 Dearest comrades, I’m writing this with a heavy heart of 250–350 grams while drinking 3 in 1 coffee and experiencing a rather acute lack of sleep and time in an Istanbul hotel, whither a work trip led me. Luckily, I lived in the city for a month five years ago and had a chance to see places and try food and do all the touristic things, because this time it’s airport-taxi-hotel-taxi-work-taxi-restaurant-taxi-hotel type of trip with premium-like guidance by my dear colleagues with every day beginning at 7am and ending at 2am next night, partially due to a 3 hour timezone change.
I was going to send this letter later, closer to the end of the year but a lot of good things have already happened this month and many important ones are happening this week with even more later, thus it’s better to write it today despite the direst imaginable conditions described above.
§1.1 I need something from you. My book, “Deleted Scenes from the Bestselling Utopian Novel” is live on Reedsy Discovery with a fresh review, where you can also leave comments and “upvote” the book. Upvoting will help with the ranking, hence visibility, discoverability, and my overall satisfaction that, despite hardly could be caused by the upvotes themselves, is achieved when I see “Deleted Scenes” doing well in the wild. It’s currently at the top of the leaderboard of books published this week on Reedsy Discovery so it has a chance to be featured in their weekly newsletter on Friday.
More upvotes will increase that chance so I want to ask for your help. Reedsy Discovery themselves encouraged me to invite my friends and readers to help with the upvotes and ranking— it’s an expected practice. Thus, if you’ve read the book and liked it or just want to help me promoting it, please login to the website and hit “upvote”. My appreciation for your support is hooked to infinity and has no visible bounds.
§1.2 Reviews continue. Luckily (or consequentially) they aren’t like I imagined a few years ago.
A Reedsy Discovery reviewer, Jason Arias, described the book as following:
There is darkness and light within these pages. A suspended sphere of the cautionary us, the roaring of an ice storm building momentum, the stillness of a night just before dawn. Bagaev demonstrates the kind of simmering creativity, layered storytelling, and astute attention to detail that comprise some of the best of our current experimental literature landscape. It's well worth the read.
A friend and a fellow STSC member, Trilety Wade also wrote many wonderful things about it, such as:
Bagaev writes with such detail and specificity that the reader is grounded in both the physical and emotional aspects of the story. To the point of almost – very effectively – feeling trapped in the story."
Plus, I’ve got a new review from BookSirens:
To appreciate a dystopian novel, we need to understand some parts of the psychology of mind and manipulation, and this book has put it into words which gives you a better understanding of how a totalitarian system works.
As I also mentioned before, this week, on the Dec 12th “Deleted Scenes” will be featured in the Publisher Weekly, including its print edition, a physical copy of which I ordered for myself and will share pictures with you when it arrives.
§1.3 The book is doing well in the meatspace, too. Two weeks ago my wife and I participated in zine fair organised by Pushkin House (“an arts, cultural and social space that explores, challenges and debates Russian culture and identity today”). They also have a bookshop and the Bookshop Manager was kind to stock a few copies of my book. Thus I’ve reinforced the previous milestone—you can find and purchase my book in one more real, physical book shop! It’s in the heart of London at 5a Bloomsbury Square, if you fancy paying a visit. It is also available for online order.
§2.1 Since the last issue, I wrote about Chekhov’s play “Three Sisters” and his short story “Gooseberries”. It’s not a book review but a philosophical and psychological inquiry that uses those works to talk about time and its inexorable motion, about fulfilled and unfulfilled aspirations, and a paradox of realisation without catharsis.
Paradoxically, with the passage of time, what accumulates is not only experience but also the absence of experience, such as unfulfilled dreams, missed opportunities, actions of an untaken nature, which, though they don't exist and have no physical manifestation, often prove more important and defining for a person than those they actually did.
§2.2 Other things I published include my notes on being licked by various types of tongues in a form of I-know-not-what and my theories of awakening into adulthood in a form of I-know-not-what-either. Both I categorise as “fictions”, for I couldn’t find a fitting word and they defy any other categorisation. They are good impressions of a writing style I’ve been exploring this year, an evolution of “Deleted Scenes”, in a way, and which I will pursue further and finesse in Tulubaikaporia. It is, by the way, blooming with vivid colours as I have developed a complete shape of the book in my head, “complete”, at least, as of now, for, as we know, the completeness is ofttimes subject to change.
§3.1 “Re: style”. I have a new crush book, “Day Equals Night, or, The Equilibrium of Diurnal and Nocturnal Starlight” by Valeria Narbikova. Rarely do I find a piece of literature that would resonate with me so much on a stylistic and some unexplainable spiritual level. It’s “finding a soul-mate” type of revelation, which immediately puts Narbikova on the list of my favourite authors whose work I want to devour in an instant yet paradoxically savour it longer (another such writer is Sasha Sokolov). That is, however, hard thing to do. Narbikova was among the Russian literary stars in the 90s and even was on an evening show on the national TV in 1996, which is rather unbelievable for an avant-garde writer almost anywhere and says something about the country we could’ve had but lost. What’s more surreal is the guy who interviewed her has become a major propaganda mouthpiece now. Later, while remaining well-known and esteemed in small literary circles, being translated to many other languages, her work didn’t “appeal” to publishers, for it was considered “alienating for a mass reader”, which creates an aura of impossibility of collecting all of her work, especially printed copies, especially being abroad, as well as any writing about her work. Sadly, she passed away last month, which I discovered only after reading her book, and which is independent from how I stumbled upon her work.
That, combined with the fact that such a brilliant writer, whose work has a great affinity with mine and will certainly influence it in the future, was so obscure, made me angry and created an urge to share her work with more people. This note is a beginning of that. Now I want, nay need, to write a separate post about Narbikova’s work and translate my favourite fragments myself, for somehow, I feel it’s a part of my “mission”, a random side quest that is somehow necessary to complete should I want to continue with the main storyline.
§3.2 There’s some bitter irony in how I find art and art finds me ofttimes. Whenever I discover an artist, anyone from writers to musicians, next day I find out that either the author has just died or the band ceased to exist, they won’t write no more novels or songs, and their past work is obscure and unreachable. It’s a typical situation when I can’t buy a book of my new-favourite author or a record of my new-favourite band. It feels sad, even devastating, yet somehow makes their work more precious for me.
§4 This is how my phone transcribed a few minutes voice note from Russian:
Online. What yeah. Beside you. Oh, yeah. Dad, you sit beside me, dad. Should reach you. No. The COI is picked up self promotion. This is Sam, Virginia. Text search to bite. Online stood on iOS side. So I could get to soy in whistling. Change the delete, sir. Put on post is reposted As I forward, Besides, The circuit's ticking to Jim. In the Yeah. You like the Akasharj, Obviously, Option medium or maximum sub stack What? No. Instagram. So I it's not a promotion store. Doesn't Screens. Anastrostatins. Yeah. Body is just an e iOS There's Text because I had to In mere character, Total injured. Which start in. iOS And it was the question context here. Should the start experiment time and more The search now watching over. The. Yep. But you iOS self promotion. 19. Is no hotel. Saviyas Prestige.
Hard to say what it means but what I know for sure is that I’ll use “anastrostatins” somewhere.
§5 My UK meme license was revoked in November and I couldn’t post memes for a few days. To my luck, it was resolved and I won’t be deported. The whole situation was surreal and I documented it on Substack Notes (screenshots are clickable):
