The new romantic

Glas 31, 160 pages
ISBN 5-7172-0064-1

"Selin belongs to that rare Chekhovian type of writer who tells a story not straightforwardly but through a series of carefully chosen and cleverly arranged details. Perhaps Selin has even more in common with Gogol — he demonstrates the same kind of healthy humor and rich imagination. At the same time he derives much of his literary merit from the absurdist writing of Daniil Kharms. Having said that it should be emphasized that Selin possesses a voice all his own and the three great writers above are mentioned only as a point of reference." — Literaturnaya Gazeta

"Some of his stories resemble video-clips in form and are just as visual, sparkling with maxims, aphoristic comparisons and witticisms. They are usually based on some fantastic plot involving fantastic metamorphoses happening to his characters and conveying Selin's wonder at life's inscrutable mysteries and inimitable beauty." — Ex Libris

"The Parachutist" takes us into magic realism of a sort. The parachutist Lacis is accompanied in his free fall by "Death", a woman who appears subsequently in a whole wardrobe of disguises, but who operates in an utterly naturalistic world. Selin's "Death" character is often a skittish female who dresses unstylishly, hitch-hikes and takes tea without sugar. She evolves literally into a "femme fatale", while somehow remaining a simpering, tearful Mills and Boon character. Like all of the females represented she is a pre-feminism caricature.

"The Sniper" is about human frailty. The sniper never actually shoots anybody, but the sense of his menace remains with us after the narrative ends. It lefts one chillingly conscious of the ambivalent attitude that has always existed between society and its protectors.

"Lolita" tests us similarly. Is she real, or an idealized counterpoint to her husband's squalid sexual exploits? Does she play echo to Nabokov's eponymous nymphet?

Selin is a very visual writer. We are offered telling images rather than character analysis. The casual abuse which the wives in "Billy Goat" and "Itching" suffer may not be either stereotypical or realistic, but merely represent an indifference to actuality if it should interfere with the author's pre-occupation with visual presentation.

Magic is also present in "Sablin and Sologub". The characters here live in a world of constant duelling, in which even a surgeon's profession takes second place to it, a world where the surgeon's powers include control of the speed and direction of his opponents' bullets.

Most hilarious is "Alpatovka". This is a village where every inhabitant is a liar and a thief, where every described object has been, is being, or will be stolen. Blame for this exuberant criminality is burdened upon the legendary surrounding forest, eternally voracious.

Alexander Selin, born in 1960, grew up in the little town of Volzhsk on the Volga. He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics Engineering. He writes film and TV scripts and humorous short stories. He has two collections of short stories and the novel Videountermenschen to his name.