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Salon
The hero of "Dukhless" has just one discernible emotion: a sense of contempt, directed at everyone and everything.
By Victor Sonkin
Published: August 11, 2006
Samuel Johnson famously said that when a dog walks on his hind legs, "it is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all." Recent Russian fiction has seen a number of unlikely types become successful characters: first, the Rublyovka wife, as embodied by Oksana Robski's heroines; and now, a top manager at a big company, the apparently autobiographical hero of Sergei Minayev's best-selling "Dukhless" (the title is an invented half-Russian, half-English word meaning "spiritless" or "soulless").
The book has no plot. It describes the hero's aimless wanderings, drunken bouts and drug-loaded parties; his expensive suits and watches; and his ephemeral, greedy bedfellows. It also touches on his platonic yearning for the "regular girl" (that is, neither rich nor a whore) Yulia, his botched attempt to invest in a nightclub, and a business trip to St. Petersburg where he divides his time between abusing a beta-male subordinate, talking to a "spiritual" acquaintance while smoking pot and pursuing his usual agenda of booze, drugs and easy women. That's it. There is virtually no other content in the book.
Its emotional side is another matter. The hero has just one discernible emotion, but it is overwhelming: a sense of contempt, directed at everyone and everything. His coworkers are stupid mannequins anxious to flatter their bosses and steal the company's money. Western supervisors are losers who couldn't adapt at home and came to fool gullible Russians instead. Women, apart from the ethereal Yulia, are a bunch of fortune-hunting drug addicts. Anyone can trigger his contempt: his fellow traveler in a train, because he's in his fifties; the countercultural gang at a cafe, because they want to be rich but can't pull it off; and anyone driving a Ford, wearing a suit not purchased in Milan or listening to Russian rock music. The hero says he reads Michel Houellebecq and Bret Easton Ellis, and watches old Marlene Dietrich movies. Frankly, I don't see how he could make time for that, since the book follows several days in his life and he is hung over the entire time, either from drinking or drug use.
The hero also makes a point of his homophobia (apparently meant to reflect his high moral standards), peppers his speeches with ignorant remarks and discusses social and political issues in a way that resists rational criticism. Moreover, "Dukhless" is written in a very clumsy kind of Russian. I guess you could call it satire and ascribe the book's staggering popularity to its readers' unflattering view of the business elite. But I have my doubts. I think that a dog usually hugely overestimates its walking abilities.
Copyright © 2006 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.
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June 27 - July 3, 2008 
