Yellow arrow short. Viktor Pelevin "Yellow Arrow. Other retellings and reviews for the reader's diary

I read the story quite recently, although in general terms I knew both the plot and the main idea - from criticism and from Aria's song "The Burning Arrow", written by Margarita Pushkina, just to the motives of this story. Actually, for the first time I learned about her from a song, not yet knowing who Pelevin was at all. Then I somehow approached the story in my student years, but put everything off until later - the thing is short, I always have time to read it - and now I got it.

The train as a metaphor for social life is an obvious image. Pushkin, I remember, had a cart for this case - but that was a different time, and in our era of a mass person, a train is needed. What is the "Yellow Arrow"? If you look superficially, Russia, confused by perestroika and political upheavals, has lost its purpose and landmarks and is entering the catastrophic 90s at full speed. If you look more deeply - humanity as such, living in the mass semi-consciously, under the control of animal instincts; driven by a bunch of large and small "fuhrers"; not wanting to see the world around as it is and wonder why we are all here; and even more so, not thinking about the finiteness of his being (Pelevin also has a story on this subject called “Bungee Carrier”).

The meaning of the story is the need for conscious existence, getting rid of illusions and everyday fuss that absorbs the personality. “To ride a train and not be its passenger” - that is, to be aware that what surrounds you is not yourself. Here Pelevin gracefully anticipated Tyler Durden's famous Fight Club sermon. However, Pelevin is more optimistic - in accordance with the Buddhist teaching close to him, he sees the ultimate goal of escaping from the train, that is, enlightenment, liberation from the shackles of space and time, final spiritual freedom.

But the “Yellow Arrow” is not limited to Buddhist moralizing. The satirical component is also strong in the story. The atmosphere of doom and strange throwing on the train, so familiar to survivors of the 90s, recalls the Nautilus Pompilius song "Titanic" - the same feeling of moving towards an unknown and terrible goal, the same senseless and vicious fuss in the face of mortal danger. Dealers and swindlers appear pathetic with their cunning plans to sell aluminum spoons and doorknobs. The obscene etymology of the word “business” is also pleasing (to me in childhood, perhaps due to Soviet upbringing, this word seemed disgusting to the ear and resembled another word, consonant, but obscene, which the people call the act and process of theft). The author is also ironic about “protest art” along with the propaganda of “spirituality” - a person who decorates beer cans-souvenirs with bold “anti-systemic” slogans admits that he does it only because of the popularity of such sentiments in order to earn money. Relevant in the early 90s, when it became possible to say anything and immediately there were a lot of "anti-Soviet" and other "bold" figures who used to be surprisingly loyal. And even now, when the protest has again become a fashion brand and some make good money on it. The theme will be developed by Pelevin in "Generation P", in discussions about alternative music.

The scene of a conversation between a girl and her mother is very indicative. The girl wants to leave the monotonous dull everyday life of the train, but the mother can no longer imagine other than death, getting rid of routine and lack of freedom. For a matured and mired person, nothing else is inconceivable, except for the daily boring little world surrounding him, even if endless expanses flicker in all the windows - he has already learned not to see them, for his own convenience.

Bottom line: one of Pelevin's best philosophical stories. Deservedly a cult item.

Score: 10

It's hard to get off this train, even for a while it's hard. Sucks in the routine of days. I used to try to deal with this - I got off at random stops, walked in a random direction. So, it seemed to me, it is possible to deceive such an oppressive predestination. To meet someone I shouldn't have met, to see something I wouldn't have seen under normal circumstances.

With age, it becomes much more difficult. You no longer belong to yourself, you owe everything, you owe everything, you have many social roles and there is absolutely no time to stop, think, hear the sound of wheels ...

Score: 9

The idea is good, of course. Separate paragraphs - as usual for Pelevin, are delightful. However, pure surrealism with a serious face did not personally inspire me. The transfer of the surrounding reality into the image of the train, as it seems, requires a more thorough approach. In other words, either increasing the volume of the work or compressing it to a few brilliant pages. In the form in which the story exists, it resembles a kind of draft, a collection of unfinished passages. However, I am not an expert in this genre. Perhaps this is the genius, who knows. But she did not bring much tenderness.

Score: 7

write something intelligible and very complex... I read that Pelevin wrote this story based on the works of Castañeda, whom he once tried to master in his student years... an unreal thing... and therefore not amenable to any intelligible reasoning. .. so I can only say that it is exciting and interesting to read... but the ending somehow disappointed...

all the way, the situation was drawn that people on the train - the world, and outside - the train - people get only after death ... and there is no way there alive ... I thought ... what a fine fellow Pelevin came up with and drew parallels with our world ... with the help of the closed world of the train, he tries to describe our interpretation of life after death ...

but after certain actions, it turns out that there is life outside the train (cities ... villages, bridges and tunnels) ... that the main character got off the train ... that corpses are scattered along the train, which, presumably, are visible from the train, but from outside - no ... I very much doubted the correctness of my guesses .... and continue to doubt .... :glasses:

in general, an interesting beginning and confusing everything later .... as always .... I don’t want to say that Pelevin is bad ... I won’t puff up my cheeks that he is a genius ... most likely ... I’ll just stop reading it .. because I don’t understand his global ideas ...

Score: 7

In my opinion, quite good, although not very "deep". The characters are rather superficial, sketchy and simple. The world of the "Yellow Arrow" strongly reminds me of the social and communal past, "sung" by many authors... The finale of the work is quite logical and predictable.

And as for the associations, I can also add the Strugatsky brothers with the Doomed City, and Andrei Makkarevich with the Carriage Disputes! :smile:

Score: 6

I learned about the work at a conference. The girl made a report, as I now understand, not quite about this and that, but with her soul, so much so that she herself wanted to read it. And I read it, on the train at the compartment of the conductors, since the lights were turned off in the entire carriage at 12 o'clock at night (symbolically, isn't it?). A very strong impression. I do not know if the work will live for centuries, but probably for a long time. Although... Everything is possible! But its relevance does not depend on time. Present, future, past, it doesn't matter. In all ages there are guides, honest and not so, spoons and doorknobs that you want to steal: they will suddenly enrich you! A very successful, in my opinion, allegory of the movement of the train as the movement of life. And God forbid that the author restricts people, driving them into a single space! The train called "Yellow Arrow", here is only a habitat for society - normal passengers, with their everyday problems, they are completely voluntary within its walls. There is a field outside the windows, it is for the "crazy". There, the society throws off all the dirt, itself, cleaning itself little of it ... Of course, it would be possible to do without the train, and everyone out the window without coasters. But the train is in motion, but the field is not. But life does not stand still!

P.S. How to be a passenger, or not to be one at all - is a matter of conscience! To my deep shame, I have no idea about Heinlein. Please send without translation.

Score: 10

The review applies not only to this story, but also to many other works of the author.

The first thing worth mentioning is that Viktor Pelevin belongs to the category of authors whose works are read for the sake of subtext. His peculiarity among this category of writers is frequent witty puns, including foreign ones, and of course the well-known eccentricity, which someone will call arrogance, and someone originality, to your taste, in choosing the titles of their works. That is, the main thing to say is that the plot of his books is not valuable in itself, but only as a shell in which the author keeps his thoughts and feelings, and therefore a superficial synopsis does not make sense, you need to outline the feelings, they will say more.

Reading the books of Viktor Pelevin has always driven me into deep sadness and despondency. His grey, unattractive panoramas frightened me much more than the exaggerated gloominess, and even more so the mystery of the books of the so-called "masters of horror." Even Hitchcock (and he had not only the word but also the power of the screen on his side) could not make me feel the way Pelevin did. It can be seen that fear is weaker than the emptiness of hopelessness, which you invariably experience after becoming acquainted with the work of the author.

In addition, the emotion described above is accompanied by some confusion, puzzlement of a person who suddenly realized that he was lost. Perhaps in an empty room. In my opinion, the worst thing is to get lost in an empty room, because there is no one to find you and there is nothing for you to get out of. It sounds pompous, but this is the case when the pomp is true. And perhaps the worst of all is that, no matter where you are, everything will turn into an empty room under the influence of Pelevin?

It is important that there are very few light colors in the author's palette, but on the other hand, from this, those that are acquire a fabulous value. Proceeding from this preciousness and deficit (apparently internal), willy-nilly, the writer has to place bright strokes thoughtfully, with the filigree precision of a strategist, who has an extremely limited contingent of troops at his disposal. Continuing the metaphor, I can say that Pelevin wins his battles for expressing himself and the attention of the reader, although with varying degrees of success.

In this story, the author did not change his credo “A real writer writes one book all his life” and continued the themes he started earlier and continued in later periods, which can be succinctly called “general philosophical”, but such a formulation not only humiliates for its hackneyed and formless author's attitudes, but also does not contribute to the disclosure of either questions or boundary answers offered by the author. However, regarding answers, I always thought that the task of philosophy is to remind the world of those questions that the world has not solved and to make the latter doubt the answers that he has given. This is what Viktor Pelevin continues to do in the Yellow Arrow, not the strongest, but worthy of his work.

Score: 8

Perfect as an introduction to Pelevin's prose. When I was only nine years old, I came across this story. Of course, then I understood little of what I read, but the idea of ​​the train seemed original and remembered. Seven years later, I seriously took up the work of the author, but now the main idea of ​​\u200b\u200bThe Yellow Arrow seemed to me rather primitive and unpretentious - especially in comparison with other works by Pelevin. Nevertheless, for philosophical thoughtfulness, and the possibility of re-reading many times with new thoughts, I put nine.

Score: 9

The train "Yellow Arrow" (country) rushes from Nowhere (socialism) to Nowhere (capitalism), and at the end of the path there is a destroyed bridge ... The inhabitants of the train have long forgotten that they are passengers (citizens), or maybe they never knew this. There is a staff car and a locomotive, but no one has seen it. The sound of wheels, like air, no one notices. The train goes on as usual. Small businessmen sell pre-broken spoons for a cordon, steal larger coasters, and the largest business privatizes compartment doors. For export, artists paint, under Khokhlama, beer cans. On the roofs of the cars, musicians are wandering somewhere to the west. The protagonist reads a book about traveling on Indian railways and dreams of getting off the train alive. But the train never stops. The whole story is saturated with some kind of hopeless poetry, this is especially felt in the audiobook read by Vlad Kopp. A poem about that time.

"The PAST IS A LOCOMOTIVE,

WHICH DRAWS THE FUTURE.

THIS IS THE PAST

IN ADDITION, ALIEN.»

Score: 9

Oh, it's not sickly to be spiritual - there are only crosses in my head. And the train rushes around the world, and you ride in the car ...

Reflection of higher harmony can be represented in different ways. And through the prism of spiritual rebirth; and through outpourings of latent gray - and in some places black - of our habitual reality. To look with a true gaze at the tired space of universal life and death... -Perhaps, Pelevin has become adept at describing the latter.

The story "Yellow Arrow" is, on the one hand, a warm and rollicking hello from the 90s. Squatting thimblers with their invariable marching arsenal. A march of Turkish tracksuits interspersed with a promenade of beer in hand. Rough “brothers” with the eternal division of their cramped world, in which, as usual, everything is deficiently lacking for everyone ...

On the other hand, if you go deeper from the surface of the text...

The "Yellow Arrow" is a train rushing non-stop towards a long-destroyed bridge. The train in which all the characters of the author ride.

Passengers who do not know anything about their route - and most importantly: do not really want to know anything. So it is more convenient and easier - for a while, as it were, to push back the inevitable and rely on a spacious Russian “maybe”.

Although in fact - and here I have a perfect match with the author's original idea about the signs, symbols and complex ciphers of life: "There are a lot of letters around - it would be someone to read."

But only after all, this is an eternal song... Songs, that voices never share... The meta-language of gradually lost truths is still very few people can adapt to the familiar "Cyrillic"...

Everything disappears into dust. Each next second inaudibly and swiftly replaces the previous one. Every moment we move away from ourselves yesterday to ourselves not yet happened. And there is no certainty that this brief moment will not be the last...

The ability to capture the present moment, which is happening and lasting in the here and now, is, after all, a subtle skill / virtuoso art that one has to learn all one's life.

Pelevin does not just disperse some dry concepts of Sots Art, avant-garde or postmodern here. Everywhere his soul oozes - flexible, wise, alive.

The most beautiful, subtle and very plastic philosophy of Pelevin in the deep key of Buddhist doctrines and knowledge masterfully sets the main tone of the story under the clatter of the wheels of a rapidly rushing train...

SV, coupe, reserved seat, prison cars ... Who had enough money, opportunities and luck for what. Everything is as usual in our life - the usual surroundings from vip luxury to oppressive desolation.

In each car, according to the author's idea, intricate mise-en-scenes unfold and miniatures of the usual life of an inhabitant are played out. Here and gloomy, aching soul funeral. And senseless - but odious - exclamations in the tone of Chatsky “And who are the thieves!? ..” And the deep introspection of the main character (mystic and contemplator in one person) in search of himself, alive and real.

All words enclosed in letters are meaningless. All the sensations of being alive are the only way to survive in this crush of already devalued concepts and rules. To be able to catch the real oneself is the most important gift and talent given from birth to everyone.

Feeling the origins of truth with the edge of consciousness - the spark of which is extremely difficult to catch - is a rare skill available to many, but comprehensible to a few.

After all, we are usually focused on anything - and an endless stream of constant "I - desires" literally overwhelms our entire existence.

The story is a great metaphor that represents human existence in the form of a train called the Yellow Arrow, which rushes to its eschatological finale - a cliff or an exploding bridge. Here is an allegory for the apocalypse, as well as the railway - an allegorical image that has been used more than once in Russian literature to represent human existence.

The main character is a simple guy Andrei, who appears as a collective image of the Russian intelligentsia. The story begins with Andrey waking up, getting up and doing his usual things: he goes to the vestibule and toilet of the car, washes, smokes, goes to the restaurant car in order to eat. Thus, through the life of the hero, a generalized picture of the everyday life of a mass of people is transmitted.

In the dining car, Andrey sees a ray of sun that ended up on his table and reflects on how such a great ray is destined for the finale on the dirty table of the dining car. Then he meets with his friend, who is a collective image of new Russians and entrepreneurs of the post-perestroika era. A friend talks about how he transports aluminum spoons to other luxury cars - an allusion to Russia, which actively exports resources to developed countries.

Then Andrei goes to Khan - a spiritually enlightened person, someone like a guru for Andrei. He asks him if no one hears the sound of wheels and does not understand anything, because they are just riding on a train - an allusion to the wheel of Samsara and most people who do not understand being involved in this vicious cycle.

It describes how Andrei climbs onto the roof of the car at night (it was there that he met Khan, and only then found his compartment on the train) - an original allusion to lucid dreams and astral travel.

The next day, Andrei discovers only a note from Khan and decides to get off the train himself, he steals the keys from the conductor and jumps out on the run. The story ends with a description of how Andrei walks free along a path in nature - an allusion to a person who escaped from the wheel of Samsara, the conventions of society and gained freedom.

A picture or drawing of a yellow arrow

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As in other most textbook stories by Viktor Pelevin, the main trigger that sets the plot in motion, causing it to unfold rapidly, is reflections, in this case the protagonist, about life and its meaning. "Hot sunlight fell on a tablecloth covered with sticky spots and crumbs, and Andrey suddenly thought that for millions of rays this is a real tragedy - to start their journey on the surface of the sun, rush through the endless emptiness of space, pierce the many kilometers of sky - and all just to to die out on the disgusting remains of yesterday's soup.But it could well be that these yellow arrows falling obliquely from the window possessed consciousness, hope for the best and an understanding of the groundlessness of this hope - that is, like a person, they had at their disposal all the ingredients necessary for suffering .

“Perhaps I myself seem to someone to be exactly the same yellow arrow that fell on the tablecloth. And life is just dirty glass through which I fly. And now I’m falling, falling, for God knows how many years I’ve been falling on the table in front of a plate, and someone is looking at the menu and waiting for breakfast ... ""

The story "The Hermit and Six-Fingers" literally from the very first lines begins with a dialogue of heroes, in which a very similar motive slips through: "We live, we live - but why? The mystery of centuries." And in the story "Prince of the State Planning Commission", in turn, there is also a similar saying of the protagonist: "What the hell, I wonder if we live?" Thus, it is quite obvious that the questions of the meaning of life and spiritual search are the dominant theme not only in the story "The Yellow Arrow", but throughout the writer's work. pelevin arrow yellow

It is from the above line that the reader begins to understand that the hero is not just a passenger of a certain long-distance train, but his whole trip is extremely specific, fantastic and even, in some way, phantasmagoric. Thus, one of the features of the expression of fantastic elements in the story is very similar to the works of Franz Kafka, in which the fantasy and absurdity of the surrounding world and events are perceived by the characters as something self-evident and not causing much surprise. Moreover, these elements, as a rule, are a combination of everyday life and familiar surroundings, so it does not immediately become clear that fantastic elements are present in the work. This technique is also characteristic of Pelevin's story "The Hermit and Six-Fingers", the main characters of which are two broiler chickens, but this becomes obvious far from immediately. From the usual everyday sketches, like a trip on a long-distance train with quite realistic details like a smoke break in the vestibule or breakfast in the restaurant car, Viktor Pelevin builds a very unusual exposition: the Yellow Arrow train is in constant motion, passengers not only cannot get off him, but also have no idea where he is going. There is only a vague assumption that the train is moving towards the destroyed bridge. In such a fantastic setting, the action of the story takes place.

Of interest is the compositional division of the story, which the author gives: the numbering of chapters goes in the reverse order from twelve to zero. And while the train "Yellow Arrow" is rapidly approaching (as some heroes see it) to the destroyed bridge, and the plot of the story unfolds into the future, the numbering of the chapters seems to be counting backwards, which allows us to perceive this as a movement backwards. A very curious effect of simultaneous movement in two directions at once is created: forward and backward.

The heroes of the story vividly react to the fantastic circumstances in which the author placed them: the passengers of the Yellow Arrow are engaged in myth-making, building various assumptions about the final destination of the train and about the world around them. Some believe that outside the composition there is only a terrible world where there is no place for living people. Religions even arise on the basis of this question, the most popular of which is Utrism. Adherents of this belief are convinced that the steam locomotive "U-3" is at the head of the train, carrying everyone to the Bright Morning. Moreover, in this religion there is an element of soul salvation, in the manner of the archaic Christian Heaven and Hell: "those who believe in U-3 will pass over the last bridge, while the rest will not." Also in the "Yellow Arrow" trade, news broadcasting and other elements of civilization are established. There is even some semblance of social stratification: some of the carriages of the train are intended for passengers of medium and high incomes, and some are for the poor and even gypsies. In the life of passengers, certain traditions with rituals have also been established: for example, the dead are thrown out of the window, after wrapping the body in bed linen.

The passengers of the train are very diverse: someone is engaged in trade, someone earns a living by painting cans, and someone even trades in fraud, stealing spoons and coasters and processing them for metal. However, none of the characters who meet on the train reflect on their absurd situation. Moreover, they (like the hero of Franz Kafka's "The Trial") they took their position for granted and even stopped hearing the sound of wheels and realizing that they were only passengers, and therefore were temporarily in the train. They do not try to change anything in these circumstances, even passing by a busy city with cheerful inhabitants. Everyday worries completely ousted from them the desire to somehow realize their position and the meaninglessness of being in the Yellow Arrow. Against their background, the main character is especially distinguished precisely by the fact that such questions are of great concern to him, and he wants to leave the composition alive. In his desire to get to the bottom of the essence and meaning of what is happening, he is looking for like-minded people and finds one in the face of a passenger named Khan. Eventually, with his help, he manages to get off the train. The story ends on an optimistic note, when the hero gains the desired freedom, he goes towards the horizon, and a bright streak appears in the sky. Such an open ending about a lone hero who has achieved his goal refers to the traditions of romantic writers.

In the work of Viktor Pelevin, there is often a poisonous satire on the USSR and the communist system. In his stories "Zombilization", "Zombification", "GKChP as Tetragrammaton" and many others, he compares the Soviet regime and its actions with Voodoo rituals, the inhabitants of the country are zombies, and in general is clearly negatively disposed towards the Soviet Union and the Communist Party, his satirical stories are frankly mocking. Knowing this, it is very easy to read the story "The Yellow Arrow" as a kind of parable about the history of Russia, which, like the composition of the "Yellow Arrow", voluntarily isolated itself from the rest of the world and rushes towards the future on rails, ignoring other possible paths and paths. The train in this interpretation acts as a symbol of Russian society in the times of the USSR. Knowing also the author's passion for Eastern spiritual practices, the story can be read as a kind of Zen interpretation, as a mystical vision of the life path, its uncertainty. However, the author categorically denies any particular interpretation of the story. Like the traditions of postmodernism, its text lends itself to any interpretation, it can be approached from completely different angles and read in any way, including as an adventure story with elements of mysticism, if the reader wishes. “I don’t know what it means,” the author says in his interview, and therefore it seems impossible to analyze the story for the specifics of modern problems, given the countless number of interpretations. In literary criticism, such works are usually called "parabola". From the point of view of the internal structure, the parabola is an allegorical image, gravitating towards a symbol, a multi-valued allegory (in contrast to the unambiguity of an allegory and the unidirectional second plan of a parable); sometimes a parabola is called a "symbolic parable". However, approaching the symbolic, allegorical, the plane of the parabola does not suppress the objective, situational, but remains isomorphic to it, correlated with it. It is characterized by unfinished versatility and content capacity.

"Yellow Arrow" - a train on which all of humanity rushes into the distance to a collapsing bridge. This vehicle - it's not hard to guess - is a metaphor for our existence. We are born in a certain environment where the standard of living, culture, prosperity, as well as national, religious and social prejudices adjust our destiny to the established pattern, and that's it. Passengers simply do not realize that there is something outside the compartments and vestibules, Khrushchev and vocational schools or a cottage in Kurkino and Bugatti. Many are born, grow up, live and die in the same "wagon".

Yes, we still have the same "depressive" and "bilious" Pelevin, who cuts the truth-womb about the decadent state of the spirit of civilization. There is no hope in him, say the red hats, there is no way out: “Well, let's say everything is bad, and then what? What a surprise, wit, you don’t see that we are sick of the absurdity, we want a light show of rainbow colors or at least a lighter light in a dark, dark room. And one can understand this righteous anger: Pelevin's prose is in fashion, but it does not give hope for a brighter future. But in the case of "Arrow" is it? Is the pessimism of the new literature so impenetrable? No… “Yellow Arrow” just ends traditionally for the Republic of Latvia: the hero leaves not only the car, but also the train under the influence of Sonechka Marmeladova or Dmitry Lopukhov in the image of Hassan, who is as illusory and unreal as Horace is always an interlocutor for Hamlet, but never active person.

The tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it: everyone can get out of their case, moving into Tartar. Although Andrei is born within the framework of stereotypes, he is imbued with a world that trembles like a spoon in a faceted glass, but he does not stop thinking, improving himself and finds his release in a jump to the wild, uncharted land outside the prison on wheels. Time after time, making attempts to escape, the hero did not give up and succeeded. Spiritual evolution, the dialectics of the soul, an open, but Dostoevsky positive ending. Rodion repented, Marya Bolkonskaya got married.

It is difficult to say something new about the good, and the ending of the Yellow Arrow will not amaze anyone. But inspire. But it motivates. Yes, speaking of hope, you run the risk of being considered banal, but what’s wrong with banality if it is part of the author’s artistic truth, part of the world order, where you can really find an outlet in the search for light and meaning within yourself, and not outside. "Outside" - this is the main negative character of the story, the antagonist of the "I", which does not want to go backwards, does not want to live according to the laws of the reverse perspective of medieval canvases. But the rebellious, primordial, individual "I" gets into the external environment, inevitably there is a reaction of suppression on the one hand, and adaptations on the other, and here we have a weak-willed passenger who is pulled back by something that is stronger and more ancient than him. He seems to be walking around on his own, deciding whether to sugar the tea, guarding the spoons and coasters so beloved by the local mafia, but, in fact, this whole bourgeois idyll moves after the locomotive, regardless of the will and aspirations of the people on board. That is why, according to Hasan, there is no one to show the ticket to: what carries us further is not a person, and not even a thieving clique of scammers on the train, this is the power and power of the past, created spontaneously, like a tornado or a tsunami. Raging waves, no one presents a ticket and a passport so that he, a visitor, is released, he, they say, has the right to leave the city, doomed to death. So we, clutching a lucky ticket in our hands, are all looking for someone to ask permission from, to get approval, from whom to pass control. In this internal slavery under the yoke of conventions is a tragedy. Most will never get over it. Even Andrei's path cannot be repeated, so the happy ending was issued in a single copy, the travel ticket has already been used. After all, the essence of liberation is that the search for a way out is carried out independently, singly, individually. "Yellow Arrow" is not a recipe, but an incentive to look for it.

Viktor Pelevin's collection "The Yellow Arrow", published in 1998, presents the already published novels "The Yellow Arrow", "The Recluse and the Six-fingered", "The Prince of the State Planning Commission" and short stories that even earlier were included in the first collection of the writer "Blue Lantern". ”, awarded the Little Booker Literary Prize.
In each of these works, which are equally exciting and I like, the author experiments in different ways with the appearance of his characters. In this regard, I was particularly impressed by the "human wolf" in the story "The Problem of the Werewolf in the Middle Lane" and the chickens at the broiler plant from the story "The Recluse and the Six-Fingers". These images are perceived not as completely fictional, but as quite real!
From my point of view, the book "Yellow Arrow" is an attempt by the writer to "push the boundaries" of reality. In each of the works of the collection, the author in one way or another "shatters" our traditional ideas about the world, based on common sense and sober calculation. Very often this idea is framed as an aphorism.
So, in the story "The Problem of the Werewolf in the Middle Lane", the idea is expressed that "only werewolves are real people." For Andrei from the Yellow Arrow, as a revelation, secret knowledge, a “very old and barely noticeable” inscription appears, scrawled on the wall of the farthest train car: “This whole world is a yellow arrow that hit you.”
It is interesting that Pelevin's heroes themselves believe in the conventionality of objects and phenomena of the surrounding world.
For example, the boy from the Ontology of Childhood, the Prince of the State Planning Commission Sasha, the Recluse and Six-fingered from the story of the same name - all of them do not fully feel or do not understand at all the illusory nature of the world in which they live: a prison, a computer game space, a Lunacharsky industrial complex.
Even Andrey, who is pondering where the Yellow Arrow train is going after all, is not surprised at all by the strange customs of its passengers.
It is noteworthy that the author tries to exaggerate such strange traditions even more, to bring them to the level of the grotesque. One of the most illustrative and memorable examples, in my opinion, can be considered the dialogue between Andrei and Anton, which provides a brief summary of the ideas of Utrism. This is a “very beautiful”, according to Andrey, religion, the adherents of which “believe that we are being pulled forward by a steam locomotive of the U-3 type ... and we all go on a bright morning. Those who believe in "U-3" will pass over the last bridge, while the rest will not."
The story "Yellow Arrow" creates not just a fantastic image of an ever-running train, but a whole system of worldview, including even its own folklore and art. The background to the main content of the story is, for example, the information that the passengers of the train attend the performance of the Theater on the Top Shelf called Armored Train 116-511. And Andrei, to the exclamation of a neighbor in the compartment about theft, answers with the following saying: “Come on, you weren’t born in a cup holder.”
Most of Pelevin's characters think little about the essence of the world around them, the presence of causal relationships and logical patterns in it. In this regard, the dialogue of the guys in the bedroom of the pioneer camp from the story “The Blue Lantern” seemed to me especially interesting in its simplicity and accuracy:
“- Do you know how the dead become? asked Tolstoy.
“We know,” answered Kostyl, “they take and die.”
Another original and intriguing device, which seems to me one of the most successful in V. Pelevin's stories, is the lack of designation of the depicted object. In the process of reading such works, we ourselves have to gradually guess about the true hero of the story.
In my opinion, the most striking example of the use of such a technique is the story "The Hermit and the Six-fingered". The stories “Nick” (the story of a cat, which at first you mistake for the narrator’s girlfriend) and “Sigmund in a Cafe” (a scene with a parrot suspiciously reminiscent of the famous psychoanalyst Z. Freud) are built in the same way.
A special place in the collection is occupied by stories that can be defined as literary hoaxes. In them, fictional characters are described by the narrator as absolutely real, and fictional facts and events are described as actually happening. Here, in my opinion, V. Pelevin develops the tradition of one of his early stories “Omon Ra”, which described a flight to the moon that actually did not take place, but seemed to actually take place.
So, in the story "Mardongi" it is absolutely seriously reported on the books of the supposedly existing (and in the future tense) Nikolai Antonov and his theory of the "living dead" is stated.
The story "Ivan Kublakhanov" describes quite real physical sensations and emotional experiences of a mythical character, which as a result turn out to be a dream that no one knows.
The story "The Weapon of Retribution" is an attempt at a fantastic rethinking of the events of the Second World War. In it, obviously fictitious facts acquire the status of those that really happened due to the abundance of real details (from hairstyles of that time to the device of weapons) and the mention of real historical figures (Goebbels, Himmler, Stalin, Truman).
Another variant of literary hoax that interested me is the author's attempt to invent historical events that have already taken place (“The Origin of Species”) or to supplement a real-life literary work (“Vera Pavlovna's Ninth Dream”). So, in the first story, supposedly real facts from the life of Charles Darwin are described; in the second, the corresponding fragment of the novel by N. G. is presented in a peculiar way.

As an interested reader, I am, of course, attracted by the very construction of Pelevin's plots. Brilliantly constructed, whimsical, complex, they are like puzzles that you solve as you read each story. At the same time, the ending is always ambiguous: you never know whether you correctly understood the writer's intention, whether you managed to solve the riddle of his characters. It is this feature that I like most in Pelevin's work.
In this regard, I remember, first of all, the story "Prince of the State Planning Commission" with its effect of complete immersion in a computer game and the story "Ontology of Childhood", in which the reader is faced with the difficult task of combining fragmentary childhood impressions like mosaic fragments.
Another feature of Pelevin's plots is their peculiar cinematography, resemblance to the director's script. This reflects the fragmentary, fragmentary consciousness of modern man, brought up on the aesthetics of video clips and computer sites.
Particularly interesting here seemed to me the story "Crystal World", which describes in detail the gradual change in the perception of the heroes - the junkers Yuri and Nikolai - under the influence of cocaine and the rapid change of scenery on the streets of revolutionary Petrograd.
So, the collection of V. Pelevin "Yellow Arrow" made an indelible impression on me, prompted serious reflection, made me look at the world around me more philosophically. I hope that my acquaintance with the work of this unusual and original writer will be continued by reading his novels.