"Viktor Pelevin. Generation P (fragment, англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

Mercedes brought them to the nearest metro station.
After returning home, it took Tatarsky several hours to write the script.
For the first time in a long while have such an inspiration dawn on him.
There wasn't any particular story in the script - it consisted of the
series of historical references and metaphors. The Babylon Tower rose and
fell, the Nile flooded, Rome was blazing, furious Huns were galloping
across the steppe somewhere, while the hand of a huge half transparent
clock moved on the background.
"Generation comes and generation goes, - pronounced the low and demonic
voice (just as Tatarsky noted in the script), - While the World remains
forever."
But even the world with ruins of empires and civilizations was finally
swallowed by a lead gray ocean; the lonely rock stayed above its roaring
surface, as if rhyming in form with the Babylon Tower from which the
script started. The camera approached the rock and one could see a pie and
letters LKK carved in the stone, with the slogan under it that Tatarsky
have found in the book entitled "Famous Latin Proverbs":
MEDIIS TEMPUSTATIBUS PLACIDUS.
CALM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STORM.
LEFORTOVO CONFECTIONERY FACTORY.

In "Draft Podium" Tatarsky's creation caused horror.
- Technically it's not that hard to do, - said Sergey. - We can grab some
video from old movies, paint and touch it a bit. But this is an absolute
insanity! It's even funny.
- Insanity it is, - agreed Tatarsky, - and funny. But tell me please what
do you want, to get a prize in the Cannes or a contract?
In a couple of days Lena went to the customer to show him several scripts
written by other people. The characters there were a young cook of vague
sexual orientation, black Mercedeses, a suitcase packed with dollars and
other folk stereotypes. All this was rejected by the customer without
explanations. Desperate, Lena showed him Tatarsky's script.
She returned to the studio with a $35000 contract from which 20 were to
be paid in advance. This was a record. According to Lena's words, after
reading the script, the client acted like that rat from a tale that heard
the whole damned woodwind instruments orchestra.
- I could really get the whole forty, - she said, - It was too late when
I understood it, stupid me.
The money had arrived in 5 days and Tatarsky got his honestly earned two
grands. Sergey was already up to go to Yalta (Crimea, Black Sea) to film a
nice rock on which the stony pie was supposed to appear in the last
frames, when the customer was found dead in his office. Somebody had
strangled him with a telephone wire. Traditional traces of electric iron
were found on his body, and a "Nocturne" cake in his mouth, sqeezed inside
by a merciless hand (liquor treated sponge-cake, sadly-bitter chocolate,
slightly speckled with a tragic rime of grated coconut).
"Generation comes and generation goes, - thought Tatarsky
philosophically, - while your own shirt is always the closest." "spoofed
Russian saying that originally sounds like: whatever happens, mind only
your own business."