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

That's how Tatarsky had become a copyrighter. He didn't explain anything
to any of his former employers, just left the kiosk keys by the door of
Gussain's wagon. There were rumors that the Chechens demand high fees for
leaving the business. Not much time had passed before he got lots of new
ties and began to work for several studious at once. Unfortunately, such
breakthroughs as with Lefortovo confectionery, the one calm in the midst
of the storm, didn't happen often. Soon Tatarsky understood that it's a
big luck already if even one project out of ten was successful. He didn't
earn too much money but anyway it was more than before. He remembered his
first work on a commercial with displeasure, finding in it some kind of
shamefully quick readiness to sell everything high in his soul for cheap.
And when the contracts started coming one by one, he understood that one
should never be hasty in business, otherwise you lower the price
considerably which is stupid: one must sell the most high and holy as
expensive as possible because afterwards there won't be anything left to
sell. Though Tatarsky knew that this rule is not true for everyone. The
really virtuoso artists of the genre whom he could see on TV from time to
time, managed to sell the most holy every day but in such a way that there
were no formal reasons to say that they sold something. So the next day
they could start anew. It was far beyond Tatarsky's comprehension how
could they do that.
Another unpleasant tendency became noticeable: after the customer was
getting the project worked out by Tatarsky, he politely explained to him
that it wasn't exactly what he expected, and in a month or two Tatarsky
would suddenly see a clip that was obviously made using his idea. It was
useless to try to find the truth in these cases. Using an advice from his
new friends, Tatarsky tried to jump one step higher in the commercial
hierarchy and began to develop advertising concepts. This work wasn't much
different from the previous one. There was one magic book after reading
which one could forget about being squirmish and doubtful. It was entitled
"Positioning: a Battle for Your Mind", written by two advanced American
wizards. In its essence it was absolutely inapplicable in Russia. As far
as Tatarsky could judge, there wasn't any battle between the brands for
niches in messed up domestic brains; the situation mostly resembled the
smoking landscape after a nuke. But the book was useful nevertheless: it
had plenty of luxurious expressions like "line extension" that could be
inserted in concepts and idle talks. Tatarsky understood how does the era
of rotting imperialism differ from the epoch of initial capital gain. In
the West, the commercial's customer are trying to brainwash the consumer
together with the copyrighter while in Russia the copyrighter's goal was
to 'caulk up' the commercial's customer's brains only. Also Tatarsky
realized that Morkovin was right and this situation won't ever change.
Once after he smoked some really good grass he accidentally discovered the
main law of post-socialist formation: initial capital gain in it is also
the final one. Sometimes Tatarsky was re-reading the book about
positioning before going to sleep, he considered it his own little Bible;
this comparison was more correct since some repercussions of religious
views could be encountered there which influenced his virgin soul
especially strongly: "Romantic copyrighters of the 50s, already