Swim

In the stories of the collection “Swim”, written in the late 1970s - early 1980s, one can see the formation of Sorokin's optics. The frozen Soviet way of life, tired, accustomed to doublethink people, and worn-out concepts come to life from the slightest authorial provocation. “National economy”, “flying meeting”, “swim” turn out to be a fragile shell of suffering, burlesque, and absurdity.
The texts of the collection are very different — in some, the first-person reflection is unusual (“Vatnik”), in others — the brevity of the genre (“Poems and Songs”, included in the novel “Norm”); others are experiments in exploring human nature in the expanses of a totalitarian state in the spirit of mature Sorokin (“Pink Tubers”, “Dacha”, “Mortality”). The book was first published in 2008, when references to Soviet metalanguage could be read even with a nostalgic feeling. Today, the theme of the rupture between word and meaning is again remarkably relevant.