The documentary nature of A. Gelasimov’s novel “Pure High”

Abstract

The article is devoted to the work of the notable contemporary writer A. Gelasimov. Over the past two decades, domestic literature has reflected a steady interest in the category of documentaries, resorting to various genre forms of nonfiction, style dominants, narrative strategies, etc. A. Gelasimov’s novel “Pure High” is largely organized based on the documentary principle, which manifests itself in the text at different levels of the whole: in the genre form of a biography, narrative, method of collecting information, adventurousness of the plot, stylized documents, language manner, etc. The document is used in the design of the publication, the section “Acknowledgements” correlates the names of the people from the environment of rapper Basta with the details of the novel, direct quotes from his songs are given, the biography is based on real facts. This use of documentary elements allows the author to actualize the tragic nineties of Russian history in the reader’s mind, to raise the issue of “the lost generations”, the forms and the causes of their destructive behavior and to show a possible experience of overcoming “the historical trauma”. Touching upon important social problems of our time, A. Gelasimov rediscovers the value of such categories as home, family, love, loyalty and friendship in the present.