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Strange as it may seem the Disco 2000 anthology was not published in Russia until 2004 when underground publishers Tough press added it to a cult catalogue that includes Hunter S Thomson and William Burroughs. |
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"As far as we know, no Apocalypse happened in 2000. But let us imagine that an apocalypse will happen in 2020. Would you change your strategy of writing in this case? What kind of prose would you write? How would an impending apocalypse change the world's literature in general? What tendencies would appear and disappear?"
"I would not change my way of writing if I knew the apocalypse was coming. It wouldn't really be an option for me. I've always tried to follow my obsessions and write what I needed to write, and knowledge of an oncoming Doomsday wouldn't change that. I've recently taken what everyone tells me is a huge risk by moving away from the type of edgy, angst-y, dark fiction I was previously known for to write novels and short stories about a pair of chefs opening a restaurant in New Orleans where all the dishes on the menu contain liquor. That's what I want to do now, and that's what I'd want to do if I knew I'd be coming to a fiery end in 16 years.
As for how literature in general would change, my first thought is that a lot of people would start writing disjointed, mystical screeds, and that the works of William S. Burroughs and Robert Anton Wilson would enjoy major revivals."
"Alas, I don't have a lot to say about all this. I think the apocalypse is a joke, and that any arbitrary assignment of a date, or a 0-year to a major cataclysm is superstitious. That's why I made my story about a crazy cult leader who is using the year 2000 as a way to get his followers to commit suicide.
The problem is that people are becoming too literal. In the US, they are watching Mel Gibson's movie and declaring it to be the historical truth. It is the conflation of history and myth - a real year 2000 or 2020 with the mythological idea of apocalypse - that is the problem. So I resisted the idea of the anthology by satirizing the whole notion of a connection between dates (man-made ideas) and any reality."
The world apocalypse has not happened so obviously but everything has changed post-9/11. There's less optimism now that we know how bad things can be. We wrote our stories (well, I wrote mine) as Science Fiction, maybe I would consider more prosaic world-ending scenarios now... The prose would not change but my world view definitely has.
"An Apocalypse did happen. The failures of the Israeli and Palestinians to strike a deal at Camp David left a vacuum that was filled by the men of violence. In 2000, Ariel Sharon stormed the precincts of the Dome of the Rock with a private army of a thousand armed men and lit the fuse for the new Intifada . The world changed.
A thread of comedy runs through my own story about the Dome of the Rock. Comedy always implies a kind of optimism, and I no longer have this optimism. In 2020, Palestinians will be living, as they live now in the Gaza Strip, inside large walled prison camps. They will be starving, fed by the UN but only when the Israelis allow the UN in and out of the gates. And far from recognising their crimes, Israel will offer the imprisonment of an entire nation to the world as a solution that can be replicated elsewhere: in Chechnya, Kurdistan, Mosul, Kabul and everywhere else.
How can a writer successfully oppose this darkness? The pen has never been mightier than the sword, but I hope that by pursuing a combination of writing and politics, and linking up with other writers and political campaigners across the world, we can keep a civilising ideal of justice and peace alive."
Kremlin Renegades - Moscow's Literary Underground, Black Book, April 2000
