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Play It Again Edgar L. Doctorow. Ragtime. Translated into Russian by V. Aksyonov. Publication date: 18 December 2001  obtain by E-mail printer friendly version
At the beginning of this century, Mother's Younger Brother didn't take on pyrotechnic trifles. He would lock himself in his room, living off nothing but hamburgers and Coca-Cola and hacking government sites for something to do. He quickly got weary of working as a programmer in Father's company. He met his love on the Internet, and in vain did she try to change her e-mail addresses - he always found her. He would masturbate, mounting her photographic head on the bodies of beauties from pornographic sites. Otherwise he was quite harmless and never saw his beloved in the flesh. Later he became a webmaster of an Arabic terrorist organization. After a particularly bloody explosion, his bosses turned him in to the FBI and he found himself in prison. Therefrom he gave terse interviews to computer magazines. He was indifferent to numerous hacker groups that organized campaigns and demonstrations in his support. At the beginning of this century, Dr. Freud didn't become the founder of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis, he said, was founded by Freud a century ago, and we're still paying for that. Sexuality was long ago withdrawn from the subconscious sphere. Psychoanalysts, who have been breeding like rabbits, pester their clients with questions about their mothers and fathers. They don't notice that some other thing has long been governing the modern man's psychology. Under the cover of sex it has crept into the subconscious, and the task of psychoanalysis at the beginning of the century is to find out what this thing is. Freud called this new entity "uns", then went to America and stayed there forever. At the beginning of this century, American Jews don't by Fords. They do remember that Ford was a rabid anti-Semite. They don't like that. At the beginning of this century, the illusionist David Copperfield (real name, Dodik Kotkin) was sitting alone in a luxurious room of another luxurious hotel. He was biting the nails of his beautiful long fingers. He didn't care what the manicurist would say. He thought about Harry Houdini (real name, Ehrich Weiss), who, a hundred years ago, performed the tricks that make one remember him even now. But no one would remember him, Dodik Copperfield, in a hundred years. At the beginning of this century, the African-American musician Coalhouse Walker saw his black Ford Scorpio being scraped by a speeding fire engine. He didn't go to the police demanding justice. He talked to his journalist friend, who then wrote a series of articles on racist firefighters. When a rival newspaper found out that the fire engine driver was a Negro, that made no difference, as the fire crew chief was white. He was forced to apologize in a nationwide talk show. He lost his job, divorced his wife and moved to Arizona. There he died of cirrhosis two years later. For almost a year after this incident Coalhouse Walker was considering advantageous offers from musical managers. For two weeks his single We Ain't No Black Niggers held 6th position in the charts. At the beginning of this century, Emma Goldman had lost the ideals of the Sixties. Free love and contraceptives, she said from the rostrum of a large East Coast university, is just another trick of the men's world. Unbeautiful female students applauded wildly. For six years Emma Goldman had been working on the book Sex: The Last Delusion. Three New York publishing houses were struggling for the right to publish the manuscript. At the beginning of this century, Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrived in Sarajevo. With interest he viewed the impressive UNO building (a former student dormitory) and held a press conference at Holiday Inn. The peaceful process is a success, he said, the world community will not allow the Balkans to be turned into the fuse of the new world war. Liberal Bosnian press complained that government money was again being spent on the reception of a third-rate duke from a second-class Western country. At the beginning of this century, the widowed Jew immigrant failed to interest Hollywood in his scripts - they were written in Russian and he didn't have the money to pay a translator. He died in poverty remembering how good it was to live in the Soviet Latvia. By that time his grown-up daughter could no longer talk to him, since he never learned English and she forgot her mother tongue. They communicated by drawing pictures in a notebook. Don't play ragtime so quickly. That makes it feel bad, don't you see? Play it again, Sam. But don't hurry, for God's sake don't hurry. Translated from Russian by Olga Yurchenko Web Presence
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Today in the RJ Politics The Chinese Temptation Europe's East and West: European Fate of Russia. Conclusion Modernization versus Modernization Europe's East and West: European Fate of Russia Essays & Views The Side We Choose In Memoriam Karlsson She Is Not Worthy of It On Reading The Risk of Creation "Today Our Magazine is More Important to the Younger Generation" Tatyana Tolstaya and the Power of the Intelligentsia "I Translated All Works with Pleasure" Entertainment Making World-Class Films Direct and Indirect Censorship on Television Web Stylistics E-media Will Be Standardized Keep Silent, Don’t Snitch Duping the Net  April 2002
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At the beginning of this century, Peary didn't set out to conquer the South Pole. No places are now left in the world that remain worth conquering. An American Antarctic station is operating at the South Pole. A stars and stripes flag is flapping over the station, or rather hanging stiff and ice-glazed in the 60-degree frost. Peary would be pleased.
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