- Alexander Nikolaevich, maybe you just do not consider your personal history so significant on the scale of the country?
- Who knows. Save in our time almost anonymity - it costs expensive. It just has the feeling that people do the most expensive in order to attend secondary. I don't want to do this. Sometimes I pull something, some absolutely intimate things. For example, I have a book "1962", addressed to the son, and there I describe partly invented, partly true, rather intimate facts of biography: about my mom, family stories. But I do it very carefully. In times, when everyone in the public and for sale - a person must remain his own.
- Nevertheless, your opinion is considered authoritative, you are often addressed for comments and political, and historical issues. Therefore, it is interesting to know more about you. I made the conclusion from your brief biography that you somehow once decided with your future fate. After school, the Faculty of Russian and Literature was chosen, and after that, your career began to gradually develop in this direction. Probably, this is a special talent - to find yourself like this right away?
- The province has a wonderful expression: it is necessary to find the claw on the neck. I was lucky: I found him almost immediately. At school, I brilliantly studied in all subjects associated with literature. And very quickly threw a mathematics, which at first I had a good enough. Not because I did not have abilities, but because I can't do what I was not interested. With the word I am interested in working. And no matter what I do, everything, one way or another, is connected with it. Both television and literature. The sphere where I could realize myself - this is perhaps the business. But I am not interested in me. Not because I do not like money. (I am not against money, but they must be in their place in life.) And because I know for sure that then I will not be a happy person or at least I will not be satisfied with my destiny. Ozolot me, but discard what I wonder - I don't need it.
- Such love for literature - she should somehow be brought up? You probably grew in the reading family?
- Not. I was at Mom alone, she was not married, worked as a typist on the radio. Mamina Parents died very early, and she brought up me with my great-grandmother, his grandmother, who lived to deep old age. She worked as a teacher of primary classes. That is, we had an ordinary Soviet family. I grew up on the outskirts of Moscow, "life on the sideline". But at some point in life, I was fabulously lucky. I went to the Piano Palace to be recorded in the drawing circle. And on the way, by chance, for the company, he was recorded in the literary circle. As it should be a teenager, I wrote absolutely grafoman poems, but I did not read books. And there was a woman in the Palace of Piano, who actually made a literary person from me. Zinaida Nikolaevna Novlyanskaya - thank God, she is alive and healthy. She was a young psychologist and actually served us a number of examples. What is worth one fact that work in the Poland of Pioneers is a salary of 17 rubles per group. That is, she did it for sure not for money, but for something more hard. And here she led us, and without making out of us, thank God, writers, it was not a selection of future creators. But it was aesthetic education when a person enters the world of literature and there are some inner worlds that have been closed so far. And there I realized that I got into absolutely my environment. In school, I did not have a relationship with classmates, we did not have mental and mental intimacy. And with those guys with whom I met in a circle in 1976, we still communicate. I remember our friendly processions after a mug from the Leninsky Mountains along the embankment, and from the Petrovsky monastery to the Park of Culture, when our poor parents pumped their hair, because no one came to mind to take a "two-room" and call them. As the average daughter told me: "Of course, you did not have mobile phones, but there were the messengers." No, we also had no messengers. (Laughs.)
I am not an intellectual family: the usual Soviet life on the outskirts. But at some point I was fabulously lucky: I got into a literary circle. .
- What works did you grow?
- As a poet, I died on Pasternak. It is said that the greatness of the writer is measured at how much he slowed down the development of literature and how many writers he ruined. So I ruined me Pasternak. I went to him with my head. Another luck was my meeting with a great reader (then there was such a profession, and people went to concerts, where the actors read poems and prose) Dmitry Nikolayevich Zhuravlev. He had manuscripts presented to him by Pasternak. Imagine what it is? See how he wrote, this flying handwriting, which he picked up options. Pasternak did not cross the words, but stuck them with pieces so that you could bend and see what the previous one was. So I grew up on Pasternak, then at the institute, Pushkin opened for me, and all world literature went behind him. I'm in this sense omnivorous.
- Today you constantly make reviews of leaving books. How do you choose the works that you need to read from the mass of printed?
- There are two questions in one. I am as a reader, and I - as a browser. As a browser, I am obliged to take new items that either are about to come out or just appeared. They must be very different. And as the reader I do quite differently. If we talk about a paper book, then I buy them, as a rule, twice a year. I take a big bag, I go to the Moscow book fair, I am gaining, then I spread the stacks, I take from above, which fell, and I read. I went - I continue, I did not go, I postpone. Since I stopped engaged in literary criticism, my relationship with literature has become much better: I am not required to read. This is a big advantage: there is quite a labud - and it's a pity to spend time at her. And so it can be any literature - plot, not plot, intellectual, detective, translation, native, postmodern, realistic.
- Do books still prefer paper?
- Differently. I have several readers. I drive a lot, and in fact you can actually download a whole library and carry with him. It's comfortable. And the paper book is an aesthetic feeling. But it is not a condition for the existence of literature, it is only one of its random forms. And since I'm already accustomed to her, why should I refuse from this pleasure?
- How big do you have a library?
- Thousands of three books - the whole world classic from the ancient and antique to a momentum. It is right in chronology, by last name. At some point, I limited myself by the rule: one introduced one. Leave only those books that I will reread. Therefore, I refused to build a second row of shelves so that it was impossible to be seduced and endlessly laying them on each other. Books that stand in two rows already dead. But, apparently, you have to retreat from my principle, because now Toma is already beginning to nest on the floor.
- There was a house of pioneers, a literary circle ... and then after the first century, you decided not to go to the teacher, but to do literature?
- Honestly, why did I go to the pedagogical? Mom did not have the opportunity to pay for my preparation for the university. In the exams, I would be guaranteed to failed at least a language, but most likely not only it. And I absolutely did not want to me in the army: it was 1979, when few months remained before Afghanistan. Therefore, I went to the pedagogical, as the least risky: first, boys are needed there, and secondly - a smaller contest. But I have never been going to the teacher. I do not like school at all, I do not like to obey. And in the first year, I went to work to the Palace of Pioneers, that is, the workbook was opened from 18 years old, like the head of the literature mug. Note that in our time after the institute there was also a distribution. But since I did not want to go to school, I simply faked the medical conclusion that I could not teach asthma. I attributed something in need there, and behind me. Although they could land, of course. (Laughs.)
- And then began logs?
- First radio. After the Palace of Pioneers, where I, I repeat, worked for 17 rubles a month (for comparison, the student scholarship was 40 rubles), I was in the first and last time in my life I got a job on the radio. Mom, who worked in the children's editorial board, went to pray for me, and I got a job. But in vain I went there. It was the silent of Soviet power, and I managed to catch the beauty of that time. Therefore, when I tell me that with the Soviet power there was a high culture - I know for sure that this is a nonsense mare. On the radio sat aunts of the retirement age, and my main editor worked there since 1953, that is, from the death of Stalin. And let out the transfer for children until Gorbachev came. After nine months, I escaped from there, and then I was taken to the journal "Friendship of Peoples", the restructuring began. In 24, I became an older editor and I remember well, as I came home to my wife (I was already married by that time) and told her: "You can congratulate me, I reached the peak of your career." Because it was clear that if I did not enter the party (and this was not in my plans), then this is the ceiling. Further, I remained a few ways, none of which satisfied me. The first is in the dissidents. But I did not want to be a dissident, I deeply respect them, but not mine. The second is to leave. I do not want. What is war? And the third is to sleep. Better. Fortunately, carried away, because then everything was breaking. And then it was fun in the magazine. We just printed the "Children of Arbat", all these peripetics began with the republics. It was the "friendship of peoples". Half of the term I spent on business trips - Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan. In Kazakhstan in 1986 he saw the first speech of young people with national slogans. I felt everythingally changing, from which the story was arranged. It was an incredible chance, and fortunately, I took advantage of them.
A recent business trip to Yakutsk surprised at all Spring frosts and raised the mood of dog sledding. .
- You are very careful about political processes, as it should be a caring large-scale father. Intelligence reported that you have four children ...
- Yes. I will not call anyone by name, I do not know whether they will be satisfied. These are children from two marriages, and they grew practically a day. Senior - 25, he graduated from Mehmat, but defended on linguistics, now he already teaches at the Higher School of Economics. The average studied at the Economic Faculty of Moscow State University, and now he finishes the magistracy at the Higher School of Economics in political history. Works at the news agency. The middle daughter is still studying at school, she is 14 from day to day, and the youngest this year - 11. Who they will and where they want to live - this is their business. Which clamp will fit, he will wear. My mother did not give me in the choice of profession, and I will not put pressure on them.
- By the way, about the place of residence. You are very much time to spend time in France. Your favorite foreign country?
- My gently beloved country is Switzerland, where I worked in the 90s. It was a happy month, I had summer trimesters. I received the three months of the Swiss salary, and the remaining year lived on it here. And this, by the way, I was still able to teach me - I was a professor of the Moscow Conservatory on the Humanitarian Department. It was my best contract in life, where it was written that I had the right to miss one third of the academic year in connection with extensive concert activities. (Laughs.) And now - yes, I spend some time in France. It happened. I am on my mother - Southerner and for some medical indicators sometimes should sometimes reinstall short climatic periods. Here in France, I spend them. And since the housing is cheaper there than in Moscow, then any person getting a white salary can afford to take a loan and buy there is not a very expensive apartment. I do not mean Paris.
- But in foreign languages you do not speak?
- Not. Unfortunately, I have no tongue to languages. But my children say everything very well and you need to laugh at me. But it is very nice, because you understand - the children surpassed you.
- Then, maybe tell me about their moms?
- My first wife was Julia. It is engaged in activities close to church. The second - Maria, works by a journalist. We live in the Arbat area. Again, we were fabulously lucky: at one time we risked to take a loan and bought an apartment in the center at a price, in which it is difficult to believe today.
- Walk around Arbat, probably when free.
- Nor walk, I have no sport in my last year and a half. What is very bad. I hope that when I scatter my plans, at least I will come back to sport. And so I plan to fly away for ten times in two months, disconnect and work on yourself. Moscow is too tight city. It goes well here well, but it is absolutely impossible to write and invent something. Therefore, it is better to compact for a while, recycle, but then get into yourself.
- Last year, you were 50 years old. Significant date. Do you think your basic work is already written or still ahead?
- This is a matter of improper formulation. He is asked many to themselves, but he has no answer. I hope that every my next book will be better than the previous one that every documentary shot will be better than the previous one. The Lord gave me the opportunity to try myself in one direction, but in different forms. And live with my heroes, be it cinema or literary, some other number of lives. I just do my job, and I don't care whether it will pay for her, whether it will fall out on sale, how much time will occupy. The process is important. Someone asks: Are you satisfied or happy? That's when the book comes out - I am satisfied. And when I write her - rather happy.