Listen to the Song of the Wind. Pinball 1973

A sad tale for older school age. The story began on August 8, 1970, and ended 18 days later — that is, on August 26 of the same year. The entire story lasts nineteen full days, the protagonist assures us, but not the author. If you count carefully, you will see that this story does not fit into nineteen days, no matter how hard you try. Will you believe or check? “Over the summer, we drank a 25-meter pool of beer and covered the floor of Jay's bar with a five-centimeter layer of peanut shells. If we hadn’t done that, we simply wouldn’t have survived; it was such a boring summer.” Everything that is close and dear to the main character comes to an end. It is lost, dies, and passes into another world. The main question is how to relate to all this? “Pinball” starts in September 1973. This is the entrance. But the main thing is to understand where the exit is. There must be an exit. There has to be. “Listen to the Song of the Wind” 1979 and “Pinball 1973” 1983 — the first two novels of the “Rat Trilogy,” a famous cycle by the writer, concluding with “A Wild Sheep Chase” 1988 and continued with the novel “Dance, Dance, Dance” 1991.