You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read?

Hi, this is Michael Silverblad, and I'm here this week, for the second week, with my guest,

Viktor Arefayev, the great post-Gloshnosed Russian novelist, author of Russian beauty,

his first book to be translated in America, writer of short stories as well, one of which was turned

into a wonderful avant-garde opera, recently released on two CDs by Sony, conducted by Rostropovich,

with a score by Schnitke.

And he's very funny.

He's a very avant-garde writer.

And I wanted to begin by asking you about Russian modernism.

Yes, please.

What would you say about Russian modernism?

Well, you know, Russian modernism, it's a very important thing for us because, you know,

we had a very big tradition of Russian classic literature, and there was a lot of messages in this tradition.

They said all the time that the human being is rather good,

but the society around human beings is very bad.

And so if you change society,

then happiness will come next morning.

And it was, you know, in some way, it prepared our Bolshevik revolution, I must tell you,

because Lenin was a big reader.

...