What is graphomania? Who is a graphomaniac? What is graphomania and how does the obsessive desire to write manifest itself?

18.04.2019

μανία - madness, frenzy) - a painful attraction and addiction to intense and fruitless writing, to verbose and empty, useless writing. Graphomaniacs strive to publish their works. So, having no literary abilities, they try to publish their works of art, and graphomaniacs who do not have scientific knowledge, seek to publish their pseudoscientific treatises. Graphomaniac tendencies are quite common among litigious psychopaths.

Literature

“Grafoman” is a newspaper that for a long time was the press organ of the Velsk Literary Association “Vel”. Published since October 2003 by Nikolai Pavlovich Vasiliev. From the very beginning, it was only a regional literary newspaper in which Welsh authors could publish, it was free and was published on the initiative of Nikolai Vasiliev at his personal expense. Since 2007, the newspaper has increased in volume to eight pages, and at the moment (2009) it is published on sixteen pages, as the geography of distribution of the newspaper has increased - first the entire Arkhangelsk region and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, and then other regions of the country: Moscow, St. -Petersburg, Voronezh, Belgorod region, Altai region etc. In 2008, an editorial board of the newspaper was created, whose members, living in different cities, send all interesting materials to the editor-in-chief, from which each next issue of the newspaper is formed.

Examples of deviations

The explanatory dictionary explains graphomania as a morbid addiction to writing. Realizing who is a graphomaniac, we can identify examples of graphomania.

A person who writes for the sake of the process itself, and not the final result. He does not think about the need for his work for society. He cannot see his life without writing and considers it the meaning of life.
Rejecting criticism. Any criticism, even constructive, is aggressively perceived by a graphomaniac. Such a person cuts off all ties with the person who “insulted” his brainchild.
Waiting is not for them. There are graphomaniacs who do not pay due attention to the work. They literally churn out works, guided by the principle “the more, the better.” They don't like to agonize over the long process of creating a quality book.
Lack of structure. Thoughts flow in an endless stream, so the would-be author does not bother himself with creating the structure of the text, giving thoughts meaning and coherence.
They don't want to develop. Such types do not read the works of other authors and do not study the craft of writing. They believe that they know everything and can do it much better than the world classics.

What is graphomania

Causes

The causes of graphomania have personal and psychological origins. Among the most common reasons it is worth highlighting:

loneliness: lonely people are unhappy, they have no one to spend time with, no one to devote their love to, so in order to forget themselves, they resort to writing texts - these texts can be like personal diary about internal experiences, and an attempt to write a masterpiece;
lack of communication: by writing texts, the graphomaniac compensates for the need for communication - as a result of such “communication”, real conversation causes fear and panic;
egoism, narcissism: such people are selfish and self-confident, they believe that their text is a masterpiece that requires universal recognition, in the absence of due recognition, graphomaniacs decide that society is too stupid to appreciate unsurpassed masterpiece.

Loneliness can push a person to graphomania

Differences between a writer and a graphomaniac

It is important to distinguish a writer from a graphomaniac, so as not to inadvertently offend an experienced, talented writer or to recognize a disease and help cope with it.

The graphomaniac will talk about his creativity at every turn. He will declare his poems day and night. Writers do not like to boast about their work or to attract increased attention to it.
A writer always sees opportunities for growth and development. The graphomaniac denies the presence of errors or blunders in their creations.
Masters of words avoid loud, pathetic words, while the work of a graphomaniac is filled with them.
The work of real talent has formed their own thoughts and beliefs, which they try to convey to people. People with graphomania have no uniqueness; they voice the thoughts of famous people.
Writers don't want to collaborate with cheap mass media outlets or promote someone else's ideas. They treat art with respect and honor, which cannot be said about graphomaniacs.
Writers tend to help newbies. Graphomaniacs consider everyone their competitors, and do not consider it necessary to help anyone.
Experienced writers will read their work many times until they are convinced that there are no various types of errors. Graphomaniacs will not bother checking the text for errors.
Editorial staff know graphomaniacs by sight, and not at all because they create unsurpassed works. They overwhelm the editors with endless writings and become furious when they don’t want to publish them. Real writers are known in quality editorial offices and are invited to cooperate.
True connoisseurs of art are always dressed tastefully and neatly. Graphomaniacs are distinguished by their lack of taste; they dress as brightly as possible in order to attract everyone's attention.

Treatment

Many people believe that this disease does not require treatment. The person just writes and doesn’t bother anyone. This is wrong! Advanced graphomania can lead to depression, manic-depressive psychosis and other mental disorders.

Treatment of the problem depends directly on the stage of the disease. For people who develop a writing obsession in the early stages, it is recommended that they find a new hobby that will keep them fully involved in the process. That is, if graphomania was discovered on initial stages, it is necessary to smoothly shift the person’s center of attention.

A person with advanced graphomania requires psychiatric and drug treatment. Drug treatment includes taking psychotropic substances and antipsychotics.

Psychiatric treatment consists of sessions with a family psychologist, hypnosis, cognitive behavioral therapy:

Communication with family is very important. At a subconscious level, a person has the most trust in his family, so the coordinated work of a psychologist and family members will help the patient realize the presence of a problem and overcome it.
Hypnotherapy is an immersion in deep hypnotic sleep, during which the necessary thoughts and goals are planted in a person’s subconscious.
Cognitive behavioral therapy is based on working together patient and specialist. The therapist determines what prevents a person from thinking adequately and redirects his thoughts in the right direction.

Despite the fact that many consider graphomania to be a non-serious disorder, it requires the attention of a specialist. Any mania or obsession that is groundless must be eliminated at its first manifestations.

To begin with, let’s talk about the meaning of the question. There is a strong opinion that graphomania is a disease, and a disease in the bad sense of the word. Don’t – root for Zenit. Namely, as a result of something, to get something from which to get rid of (to be cured) is not just a sneeze.
Just like with the flu, you can’t have a runny nose, put it in the closet and go for a walk, and with graphomania, you need to get sick. There's no escape.
And the second strong opinion is that graphomania is not a disease, but an impulse of the soul, self-realization.
Both of these opinions naturally have the right to life. Let's try to figure it out - perhaps there is another, third definition of this concept.

Let's take a few explanatory dictionaries, and we will start from the essence of the term, moving towards the concept and phenomenon - graphomania. Having understood the essence of the phenomenon, we will find out who is a graphomaniac.
So. Graphomania - Addiction to writing, to verbose, useless writing. And writing is low quality literary creativity.
Ozhegov.

This means that it is creativity after all, and not just a disease. Painful creativity. All great writers can be classified as one. None of them wrote - painlessly and indifferently.
Creativity - Creation of cultural or material values that are new in design. Ozhegov again.
Again, it is not clear what “cultural” means. Is obscene language in poetry a cultural value or not? And Malevich’s “Black Square”?
Let's try it ourselves: - Cultural...
This…
Well here he is cultured person. There is also a TV channel - Culture. There is a theater, exhibitions, artists, works. Art is Culture.
Yes and no. Let's ask Ozhegov. Culture is the cultivation of the soul. Cultural – improving, caring for the soul. The TV channel cares about the soul - it is cultural, and so does art.

What happened? Graphomania is an addiction to writing, to the verbose, useless creation of low-quality, new-in-concept, literary values that cultivate the soul. Three words fall out a little from the overall harmonious picture. "Addiction", "Useless" and "Values". And so in general it already seems to make sense.

Addiction cannot be healthy, it is all from the same mania - a kind of mental disorder, an obsessive desire to reveal oneself to the world. In this context. “Growing from loneliness, lack of demand, the impossibility of realizing some existing “potential” in a different way. and so on." Something from psychosis and mental illness. But talent and genius are also not the norm of human behavior. Therefore, let’s leave this word as acceptable in the existing definition.

Useless - for whom, or what? For yourself – or for others? A complex and rather ambiguous concept. In line with the definition of “Graphomania,” the usefulness or uselessness of low-quality values can be determined by their usefulness for the creator and uselessness for all others (the quality is low). Therefore, uselessness becomes useful only when the creator of value creates it for himself. Self-satisfaction. Now it is clear.

Value is always determined based on some criteria. And this is the most difficult moment in answering our question. There are only two types of values: cultural, which are for the soul, and non-cultural, which are for everything else. But…
Is a golden tiara with diamonds of exceptional beauty and no less exceptional value valuable for the soul or for everything else? So we have reached a dead end. Therefore, you will have to take a roundabout route.
Although you can go thin ice, and try to say that the value of a work is determined by the reader.
In reality, the reader does not determine anything. He expresses emotions - and only the totality of which, in principle, can form an assessment - emotional. Only when critics, philologists and other specialists, as well as workers in the field of education, intervene in the process public opinion, may appear, along with an emotional assessment and real value. But no one knows whether it will be cultural or not. That's why ice is fragile...

So.
The true value of a work is determined by the author, even before he sits down to write it. He takes responsibility that what he created will influence the souls of readers, cultivating them. And if he is mistaken, then a terrible punishment awaits him, in the form of graphomania, or something even worse - vanity, acquisitiveness and the thirst for enrichment. Having sent to the reader his creation, which has no value for the reader’s soul, he receives an equivalent impoverishment of his own soul.
Like that.

This means that graphomania is not a disease, but a punishment for the immaturity of one’s own soul or for the “dullness” of aspirations.
Ah, a graphomaniac is a person serving a sentence. Zek.

In relation - “the soul has beautiful impulses.” All souls strive to create, but...
Showcase your creation to your own reflection in the mirror. If it confirms the cultural value of the existing masterpiece, then feel free to go all out.
You will not face punishment.
Although, who knows?

Georgy Stenkin
December 2006

Graphomania as a personality quality is a tendency to show a painful attraction and hypertrophied addiction to mediocre, fruitless writing, to verbose, empty and useless writing.

A family of graphomaniacs in the store: - Honey, take a pack of writing paper for me, the weekend is coming and I’m going to write a couple of chapters of my next masterpiece. Of course, dear. Now I'm just going to select a folder for my portfolio. - Do I need papers? - Almost jumps out of his pants little son. - I came up with such an adventure - you'll rock it!... Dad, can I become a cartoonist? Then I will immediately write my own books and draw cartoons based on them. It's also more interesting! They come home: “Darling, have you seen the spare keys to my office?” Well... the graphomaniac mother thought, “Probably not.” And what? “I just gave my bundle to our son to play with, and now he has locked himself in his office, seizing all the strategic supplies of paper!”

The graphomaniac sees the kiss of God in every blot. That's why he never edits his texts. If God whispered them, then they are perfect. Why polish them? Let mediocrities like Vladimir Mayakovsky do this. After all, it was he who wrote: “Poetry is the same as radium mining. Production in grams, labor in years. You waste a single word for the sake of a thousand tons of verbal ore.” Or here’s another: “The poems stand leaden-heavy, ready for both death and immortal glory. The poems froze, pressing the muzzle of targeted, gaping titles to the muzzle. Weapons of the most beloved kind, ready to rush into the boom, the cavalry of witticisms froze, raising their sharpened peaks in rhymes.”

The graphomaniac is convinced that his every phrase is already perfected. Anyone who doesn’t like it is a vile envier, an intriguer and a critic. A graphomaniac reacts extremely painfully to criticism. Not demanding or strict with himself, he perceives criticism as undisguised aggression from enemies and ill-wishers. You have to be spiritually blind, the graphomaniac thinks, not to see perfection in my works.

Mikhail Weller, touching on the topic of graphomania, writes: “A graphomaniac is a passionate, disinterested writer who lacks the ability for self-criticism, for an outside assessment of what he does, and does not have the gift of comparing his product with the products of others. Such a small intellectual pathology.”

A sign of graphomania is often the rapidity and prolificity of what is written. But not always. The history of world literature knows examples when the quantity and quality of what was written did not come into conflict. Lope de Vega (1562-1635) - Spanish writer, poet and playwright wrote more than 2,000 plays (425 have survived to this day). Researchers of the work of Alexandre Dumas have calculated that his prolificacy was expressed in six hundred volumes. There is so much that an ordinary person cannot read in a lifetime. And taking into account the fact that many representatives of the current generation can barely read, Dumas’ result may shock them and cause irreparable harm to the nervous system.

Graphomania is a trace of ignorance in the writing field. A great writer, before putting pen to paper, will painstakingly and persistently collect and analyze the necessary information. If his heroes are doctors, he will not be lazy and deeply study the lives of doctors, try to comprehend at least the basics of their specialty. In short, a thorough knowledge of the subject of the image is the calling card of a real writer.

The famous master of the pen, Arthur Haley, while working on “The Money Changers,” managed to obtain permission from two large banks to study almost the entire mechanism of the work of financial institutions - he was even allowed to attend meetings of boards of directors. While working on the draft of the Evening News, Haley, who was already 66 years old, took a special counter-terrorism course in England: he acted as a hostage, ate snakes in survival lessons, and took part in training to disarm the enemy and fight in closed spaces. After that, he spent almost a year drawing up an outline for the book, developing the characters and structuring the collected material. And it took him another year to work on the text.

While working on the novel “Detective,” Haley, out of habit, thoroughly studied the materials: he spent several weeks in raids with Florida police officers and gained access to archives. The result is a classic action-packed work with an exciting beginning and dynamically developing events.

The graphomaniac is smug, arrogant and unusually vain. The thirst for glory, fame and honor becomes almost the main motivation for his existence. Where complacency reigns, the creative component of the mind dies. The graphomaniac shows a persistent reluctance personal growth, shies away from self-development. In life you cannot remain at the same level of consciousness. A person either progresses or degenerates. The graphomaniac, in his clearly manifested self-satisfaction, having once taken up the pen, then rides out on the old baggage of knowledge. A consequence of the lack of knowledge of a graphomaniac is an unreliable, primitive text with an endless number of blunders and absurdities. Having a vague idea of the depicted object, the graphomaniac continually “sits into a puddle.”

When a person's level of consciousness grows, his tastes change. What previously gave pleasure now does not cause any emotions. A great writer constantly improves himself. His level of consciousness is steadily rising. However, he is self-critical. Reading his old works, he may remain dissatisfied with what he has written. Nothing can be corrected, and this circumstance greatly upsets him.

A graphomaniac is an anti-perfectionist in literature. After reading his youthful poems, he will remain completely delighted with his own genius. He doesn’t know why the laureate Nobel Prize in literature, continues to work hard on the level of his writing skills. A graphomaniac is a soap bubble in the literary field. Inflated self-esteem is a clearly demonstrated quality of his personality. The graphomaniac is constantly worried that someone will assign authorship to his opuses. The fear of plagiarism deprives him of sleep and peace.

Among graphomaniacs there are mega stars. Such a star was Count Dmitry Ivanovich Khvostov, the hero of countless epigrams and anecdotes, recognized during his lifetime as the real “king of graphomaniacs”:

D. I. Khvostov “To Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev”:
“I’ll break the iambic, then I’ll hook the rhyme,
I won’t split the verse exactly in half,
Then, chasing after choice words,
I will cover my thoughts with thick clouds;
However, I love to magnify the muses on the lyre;
I love writing poetry and submitting it to print!”

Sometimes you have to be a wealthy person to be a graphomaniac. You need to have good income to buy your own books. Khvostov published a seven-volume collection of his works. Moreover, they went through three editions during the author’s lifetime!

Khvostov was modern concepts a good marketer. Mandatory recipients of the mailing were bishops and metropolitans, such statesmen as Arakcheev and Paskevich, and even the Prussian king himself. However, the most tasty morsel for the graphomaniac were institutions - here he could truly turn around. Thus, the Academy of Sciences received from him “as a gift” 900 copies of the tragedy “Andromache”. Not only that: the count, convinced of his “calling,” sent out not only poems, but also his... busts! The fact that he was, moreover, an obsessive reader of his creations is not worth mentioning.

There was one characteristic anecdote in literary circles. Once in St. Petersburg, Count Khvostov tormented his nephew F.F. for a long time at his home. Kokoshkin (a famous writer) by reading aloud to him countless numbers of his verses. Finally, Kokoshkin could not stand it and said to him: “Sorry, uncle, I gave my word to have lunch, I have to go!” I'm afraid I'll be late, and I'm on foot! - Why haven’t you told me for a long time, my dear! - answered Count Khvostov. “I always have a carriage ready, I’ll give you a ride!” But as soon as they got into the carriage, Count Khvostov looked out the window and shouted to the coachman: “Go ahead!”, and he raised the window of the carriage, took a notebook out of his pocket and began again to choke the unfortunate locked Kokoshkin with reading.

From Yu. Tynyanov’s book “Pushkin”: “Count Khvostov was a wonderful person in literary war. Among Karamzin’s friends, especially the young ones, there were people who seemed to be with Khvostov, they lived only for him, and from morning to evening they went from morning to evening in living rooms telling news about Khvostov... In his poems, the count was not only mediocre, but also infinitely bold. He was convinced that he was the only Russian poet with talent, and all the others were mistaken... He had one passion - ambition, and he unselfishly, going broke, served it. They said that at post stations, while waiting for horses, he read stationmasters their poems, and they immediately gave him horses. Many, leaving guests where Count Khvostov had been, found in their pockets the Count’s works, slipped by him or his lackey. He generously paid for articles laudatory about himself. He littered all the magazines and almanacs with his poems, and the writers developed special language with him, not Aesopian, but downright Kostovsky - polite to the point of mockery. Karamzin, to whom Khvostov sent poems every month for the magazine, did not publish them, but politely answered him: “Your Excellency, dear sir! I received your letter with the enclosure,” etc. He called the count’s poems “enclosure.” There was a bust of the count in the naval assembly in St. Petersburg. The bust was somewhat embellished: the count had long face with a fleshy nose, but the bust had downright antique features. His fame spread to the provinces. A popular print caricature depicting a poet reading poetry to the devil, with the devil trying to run away and the poet holding him by the tail, hung in many postal stations.”

Peter Kovalev

Victor Erofeev: Our guests: literary critic Natalya Ivanova, writer Arsen Revazov and poet, publisher, TV presenter Alexander Shatalov. The topic of our program is who is a graphomaniac. There is a lot of talk about graphomaniacs, and at the same time, a graphomaniac, like a Freemason, is very difficult to isolate from literature, from society, why such disputes arise. In general, it’s good: the person writes, he doesn’t commit murders, he doesn’t drink, he rarely smokes. Or if he drinks, at the same time his energy goes into writing, and not into any violent actions. It doesn’t bother anyone except those who work with magazines, because they publish their works there. Therefore, Natasha, I’m starting with you, since you are an experienced person in the sense of magazine publishing. Tell me, what percentage of manuscripts that go to magazines are called graphomaniac manuscripts?

Natalya Ivanova: Of course, we don’t call them graphomaniacs. But in reality there is a colossal flow. I thought that people would get busy, start some small or medium-sized business, work for different jobs, there will be absolutely no time left not only to write, but also for any rhymes to come to mind. And I thought that this flow would subside. I will say that in the 80s before perestroika there were terrible things. Poetic graphomaniacs prevailed. I remember the poems, I remembered them for the rest of my life, I brought the poem, the poem was called “Lenin”, and there were these lines: “Ilyich stood up, threw up his hands (meaning in the mausoleum), what to do with the assholes?” I remember these lines forever. Such people, they came to the editorial office, they still come, they strive to read all this out loud without fail. You say: “No, I only perceive with my eyes.” “No, let me read it to you.” A person thinks that this will convince.

Victor Erofeev: They are so aggressive.

Natalya Ivanova: And there are still much more aggressive ones. One day, such a graphomaniac simply locked me in the editorial office. It was already late, he came, walked around me for a long time, tormented me. And there are many ways to get rid of a graphomaniac, I swear, I’ve used them all. Then he told me: “Well, then goodbye, and the key will be in the flowers.” He left. I discovered that the editorial office was locked, that I couldn’t get out, there were no keys, and now I was walled up. She called and called. And then, when I was finally rescued, I realized what the “key in the flowers” was: he threw the key into a flower pot. Such a graphomaniac. And there are even more evil ones. One sued, for example, because the editors responded that your manuscript was not suitable for us for this reason or that reason. I went to the Presnensky court, explained myself and felt like an absolute idiot, because to explain that a person writes some letters, retypes, you have every right not to accept this, in Soviet times it was very difficult, it actually went to trial. Nowadays no one really owes anything to anyone, but the psyche of some graphomaniacs cannot stand it. In general, I think, despite the fact that 97% of requests are from the so-called gravity, by the way, this happens not only in the editorial offices of magazines, the same is true in publishing houses. EKSMO Publishing House, others, they are simply attacked by this kind of people. It can be very difficult to convince a person that it is better to take it and leave us quietly and calmly. Return the manuscript and treat the author kindly so that there are no consequences.

Victor Erofeev: Let's move on to the word that sounds scary - definition, definition. Sasha, who is a graphomaniac, the exact name of our program - who is a graphomaniac?

Alexander Shatalov: In general, the word is negative character, but for ten years I got used to speaking from television screens, since my program was called “Graphomaniac,” I said that graphomaniac is not a curse, but just a definition. This is the name given to people obsessed with a morbid mania for writing. This is an almost tautological canonical definition of the word graphomaniac. And actually, why I say this is because I don't want to offend people who perceived this word negatively. Leo Tolstoy considered himself and, in my opinion, even called himself in writing a graphomaniac.

Victor Erofeev: Maybe ironically?

Alexander Shatalov: Not ironically. If you write, this is specifically a letter, a person who loves to write. This is the negative connotation we attach to this word. A normal writer cannot help but be a graphomaniac. Before we went on air, we talked about the famous popular leading prose writer Dmitry Bykov. Indeed, this is a typical example of a graphomaniac, good or bad - I don’t know. But he writes, as Arsen noted, about three thousand pages a year. Great amount articles, reviews, poems, prose.

Victor Erofeev: If we build a definition, firstly, this is a person who writes a lot. Now regarding the quality of the text. I like the poems that Natasha read.

Natalya Ivanova: During the period of postmodernism, Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov grew out of this. It’s just that to do this you need to come up with a certain character, which was done by Kharms, Olennikov, and the Oberuts, and what is now being done by conceptualists. And this is simply a sincere expression of the soul.

Victor Erofeev: Are these sick people?

Natalya Ivanova: I think that this is actually a disease that everyone has to go through, like they go through childhood, all people who write, like they go through childhood, like they go through adolescence. Because if we remember Pasternak, in fact, this period quickly ended for him, and he moved on to real poetry, but I consider his early prose a little like graphomaniac. Or he had a period when he wrote poetry like a regular man, lying in a gazebo made of woven birch branches, and he also wrote truly voraciously, as he said.

Alexander Shatalov: That is, the Boldino autumn and everything else is a sign of graphomania?

Natalya Ivanova: No, this is a sign of graphomania in in a good way words.

Victor Erofeev: So there's a good point?

Natalya Ivanova: Eat.

Victor Erofeev: Arsen put forward a good definition before the broadcast, but I did not receive a detailed answer - a graphomaniac in law. And what is it?

Arsen Revazov: I don’t know what it is, it just came to mind. But I would compare graphomania with some related conditions, for example, with a painful love of singing when you don’t know how to sing. Especially karaoke. We were all present in the company of people who start singing karaoke, don’t know how to sing, want to sing, love to sing. I think it's very similar. The only thing is that it usually doesn’t reach the point of passion.

Natalya Ivanova: They don’t want to perform on pop stages, but these writers want to get published.

Arsen Revazov: Maybe they want to, they are rehearsing. In my opinion, a graphomaniac is a person who really wants to write, but doesn’t really know how to write.

Natalya Ivanova: Knowing how to do it is different.

Victor Erofeev: To be able or not to have talent?

Arsen Revazov: It's very similar. Can you play the piano or do you have a talent for playing the piano? The devil knows. Borderline state of mind.

Victor Erofeev: You know, as for karaoke, I’ll tell you this story. I'm not a big fan of going to such clubs. But once a few years ago we were in such a club, there was karaoke and it was fashionable, everyone was in in a great mood. Andrei Makarevich was among us. And there’s like a menu, a book. Chose: Andrey, go and sing karaoke. OK. Good mood, everyone is already slightly shabby. He got up and sang and got 60% - this was the lowest score. He sang his song from the heart. Go find out now. And if it was 90, I’m not a graphomaniac, but if it’s 60, I’m caught. Sang well.

Arsen Revazov: The karaoke rating system, as far as I know, is related to whether you match the rhythm of the song or not. He sang from the heart, he sped up, he had syncopations for sure.

Victor Erofeev: And this is not forgiven?

Arsen Revazov: Stupid machine gives stupid points.

Natalya Ivanova: It happens that when a manuscript with an unknown name, almost numbered, comes to the editorial office, the editor evaluates it, the first one who reads it evaluates the text. When a person with a name brings it, but in fact, if we judge honestly, a person cannot write smoothly or on takeoff, there are also failures, it happens that a person writes worse than before, suffers terribly from the fact that he cannot help but write , but in fact the thing may fail. And here problems arise, what to do with this manuscript and what happens to the person.

Alexander Shatalov: This is a quality assessment.

Natalya Ivanova: But he can’t help but write. In his case, the same disease in the process takes on a professional character. That is, an occupational disease. And perhaps it is necessary to distinguish between two types of graphomania: pre-professional graphomania and the kind of graphomania that Sasha spoke about, which is an integral part of the writing profession, professional graphomania.

Victor Erofeev: Can you name the names? Graphomaniac is a positive type.

Natalya Ivanova: It can also be very negative.

Alexander Shatalov: For several years they came to me famous writers, since the program was called “Graphomaniac” on television, it had a negative connotation, it is clear that a note of irony was heard in it. But writers had to think about how they applied the word to themselves. Of course, I asked them. Therefore, of course, oddly enough, most writers, including Vasily Aksenov, including Vladimir Voinovich, including all writers, they all assessed themselves positively from this point of view, they believe that they are graphomaniacs, because they write, they cannot help but write , they write a lot. On the other hand, I invited...

Victor Erofeev: Among these writers and poets, could you name anyone who sometimes wrote graphomaniac texts?

Alexander Shatalov: You know, I would say that there are some bad lyrics.

Victor Erofeev: Are the unsuccessful ones not graphomaniacs?

Alexander Shatalov: Unsuccessful ones are not graphomaniacs.

Victor Erofeev: That means we are plowing through virgin soil, there is no definition of graphomania.

Perhaps “Poltava” is not Pushkin’s most successful poem, but it is not graphomaniacal in any way.

Natalya Ivanova: If “Poltava” was written by one of those present here, it would be nice.

Alexander Shatalov: But I always wanted to feature Yegor Isaev in the program, because he lives right next to you in Peredelkino and he raises chickens.

Natalya Ivanova: Not only does he raise chickens, he also “ Literary newspaper» is printed.

Alexander Shatalov: In fact, he is the only poet to date who has won the Lenin Prize.

Victor Erofeev: Do you mean poet?

Alexander Shatalov: He was offended. He said: “Why is this broadcast on “Graphomaniac?” It was a painful feeling for him. Therefore, in our country this word has a negative context, and in fact, speaking about this context, we are forced, willy-nilly, to move on to assessment.

Victor Erofeev: By the way, all our words are colored with a certain emotional aura. Say “graphomaniac” to the Frenchman, everyone laughed and moved on. And here all the words are a little tense.

Alexander Shatalov: Our interlocutor today is Arsen, his book “Loneliness 12”, I really love this book, I think that it is one of the most successful of the past calendar year.

Arsen Revazov: I blush.

Victor Erofeev: I can tell all listeners that Arsene is really blushing.

Alexander Shatalov: Let me remind you that the book is called “Loneliness 12”, the novel was published by the publishing house “Ad Marginum”, it has already gone through three reprints. That is, successful good book.

Natalya Ivanova: Is it true? But I couldn’t finish reading it.

Alexander Shatalov: The fate of this book lies in the fact that the author brought the manuscript, the author at first acted as a self-taught, non-professional writer. Can he be called a graphomaniac or not? The result of the work is the work of the author together with the editor, with the publishing house, the result is a book that has become a bestseller today.

Natalya Ivanova: Sasha, what time are we living in? What becomes our bestseller?

Victor Erofeev: So, fight back. Natalya said that she didn’t finish reading it and, besides, somehow she doesn’t look at you with much sympathy.

Arsen Revazov: Okay, that's how it should be. A completely normal story, I'm used to it. God bless them, with three or five reissues - this is nonsense in the end. And seven or eight translations, for which contracts were concluded with almost all leading European languages and exotic languages, such as Lithuanian - this actually pleases me more than the relative success of the book in Russia. In Russia, we actually have such success - 50 thousand were sold. A lot was passed from hand to hand, the readership was larger, because not everyone ran, bought in stores, many borrowed from friends. I don’t care about it, I don’t brag or be proud of it at all. Why am I not a graphomaniac? I don't like to write and I hate writing. I wrote this book for three years and tormented and tormented and tormented for the last six months.

Victor Erofeev: Does a graphomaniac write easily?

Arsen Revazov: I think that a graphomaniac cannot help but write. Now a year has passed, they demand from me either a continuation or a new book, I don’t know what. Again, it’s not that I tortured myself, I wrote three and a half chapters in a year and, as you understand, I’m sure that I’m not a graphomaniac.

Natalya Ivanova: And therefore it happens that the author of one book. If a person must.

Victor Erofeev: The most a large number of suicides happen to writers who write one successful book and then nothing. In Germany there is an entire suicide department.

Natalya Ivanova: Then this is what happens when several years pass between books. You will remember that Mikhail Shishkin wrote between the novel “The Capture of Ishmael” and last novel- five years. The graphomaniac finished one piece, immediately sat down to another, one verse came to mind...

Victor Erofeev: He definitely needs to show it. That is, he is a literary exhibitionist, he must show.

Natalya Ivanova: It’s even better to read it and show it, and somehow try to distribute it.

Victor Erofeev: I remember that in “Questions of Literature” there were people who wrote, I won’t name their names, in general they are probably unimportant to the general public, but there were people who wrote in a box. I was terribly afraid that they would ever show me, because they were very respected people. My whole life passed and the box was never opened.

Natalya Ivanova: Victor, I’ll tell you one more thing, as part of my colleague. Very many literary critics and literary scholars write in this way on the table, or no longer write on the table, but, on the contrary, try to publish. And as a rule, it turns out very badly.

Victor Erofeev: Are these different hemispheres?

Natalya Ivanova: I think they are different. Because one hemisphere is analytical, and the other is imagination, which must be present when creating literary text.

Victor Erofeev: It is better to start in literature from prostitutes and bandits than from literary critics and journalists?

Natalya Ivanova: And I’m not talking about journalists at all - this is a completely different type of writing. By the way, we succeeded, let's talk about television journalists, for example, we have television journalists, it seemed to us that the figure of the writer had fallen, that the functions of literature had disappeared, that there had been a deliterarization of Russia. That Russians are no longer crazy about literature. For us, the most important thing for our viewers and not only viewers is television, Dorenko is writing a book, Solovyov has published one book after another. Whoever we remember, everyone writes books.

Alexander Shatalov: Andryusha Malakhov is writing a book about his affair with a businesswoman.

Natalya Ivanova: Sick people. They need to prove it.

Victor Erofeev: Main man in the country, according to spirituality, he is a writer and poet.

Natalya Ivanova: In fact, despite how the circumstances oppress him, in fact it turns out that the shabby Vasya, who wrote three poems, which, nevertheless, are remembered in lines or even in separate quatrains, died long ago, but is nevertheless present in the blood of Russian literature, is more important to them than this very important position. Sasha is different, at first he was a poet, he has a different path.

Alexander Shatalov: I talked about this topic.

Victor Erofeev: Is it possible to combine TV journalism and poetry? Rubinstein told me at Apocrypha that it was very difficult for him.

Alexander Shatalov: Very interesting topic, which you touched on, I talked with Solovyov, with Barshchevsky, a famous lawyer, lawyer, and I talked with Grishkovets. And we were just talking about this topic: why successful businessman and including our guest today, suddenly at some point they begin to write prose.

Victor Erofeev: Arsen, why did you, a businessman, start writing prose?

Arsen Revazov: A completely idiotic story, absolutely. It's very simple and very funny. I woke up on May 1, 2002 with a severe hangover from the fact that the cops were in my own apartment They woke me up by poking me in the stomach with a machine gun. That was the story. The backstory was also funny: there was some kind of drinking, partying, one of the acquaintances who stayed overnight, betrayed himself, decided that he had been taken hostage, and called the police. The police arrived and found out that there were no hostages. I walked around the apartment, checked my documents, and they woke me up. But in principle, the very fact when you wake up in your own apartment, and the fact that the cops will assault you with a machine gun, and in bulletproof vests, naturally made an impression on me. Moreover, I emphasize, the deepest, most severe hangover.

Victor Erofeev: Wasn't it a dream, wasn't it a vision?

Arsen Revazov: Everything was really like that. I thought it would be nice to write down this story simply, because it really was all about her. I wrote it down. Then I thought that I needed to write down a couple or three more stories from life that happened. I realized that there is nothing absolutely interesting in these stories, there is no degree in them, they are not interesting to my friends, and even less interesting to anyone. And then I added a degree to them. The cops didn’t just come, and I was lying drunk, but they found a body there with a cut off head and also stories about oligarchs that I know, added an additional degree, some kind of harshness, and so on. And it already turned out to be something similar to prose; it turned out to be four or five drafts, five pages each. Funny, amusing, with a serious artistic degree. And then what happened over the course of two years.

Victor Erofeev: Your prose begins at a certain degree. If 11 degrees is like dry wine, then this is journalism, and already such wine at 18 degrees 0 starts prose.

Arsen Revazov: Somehow I put it together, somehow I glued it together, it turned out to be six chapters, all of this was written down in three weeks.

Victor Erofeev: Natasha, don’t you appreciate such a writer whose degree starts at forty?

Natalya Ivanova: I actually understand that mass literature should exist.

Victor Erofeev: Is this mass literature?

Natalya Ivanova: Certainly.

Victor Erofeev: What is the difference between mass mania and graphomania?

Natalya Ivanova: A person receives money for mass literature. But a person does not receive money for graphomania. There is a very fine line. There is a publisher who understands that he is dealing with a graphomaniac in the good sense of the word, who writes endlessly. Here Daria Dontsova is a typical graphomaniac, she gets money. There is a graphomaniac who actually produces mass literature of disposable consumption, which has no aftertaste, no history. But they're still paper napkins or something. People love it because it's easy.

Alexander Shatalov: Easy to write or easy to read?

Natalya Ivanova: One graphomaniac told me: my poetry flows as easily as drool.

Arsen Revazov: Whatever your quote is, it’s lovely.

Victor Erofeev: Do you remember how Nabokov said in one of his novels: “I’m surprised why the working class spits so often.” This was an interesting observation.

Natalya Ivanova: Now there is a reader, and there is a reader. There is a reader and consumer for whom the most important thing is to forget. On the train there are the majority of such readers, if you travel at a time when it ends at seven o’clock in the evening, each of them rests on a book, as a rule, it’s Dontsova, there was the time of Marinina, now Dontsova. Why? Because this makes it possible to switch off from a certain situation, when there are a lot of people around, to conclude a contract with this text, which you paid for, in order to get a small but comfort.

Alexander Shatalov: I have a small note. You know, Dasha Dontsova constantly talks, in fact, one cannot but agree with this, that she writes texts aimed at those people who are sick. This is Dontsova’s opinion. And she is convinced, and indeed this is so: in the hospital these texts are easy to read and in the hospital these texts distract from the painful state. If people read such books, then society is in a sick state.

Natalya Ivanova: Society is in a state where it needs to switch off from others at a certain moment.

Victor Erofeev: Not a single Russian conversation will ignore the topic that society is in a sick state. And before that I was even worse.

Natalya Ivanova: I believe that in fact, high literature can be written by people in a strange state and read by people also may not be entirely normal, from the point of view of an ordinary person. But we have now come to the point that with such an ever-increasing number of writers, it must be designed for a specific audience, which must also increase all the time. But if we take the latest figures about reading in Russia, it turns out that we have two times fewer young people under 18 reading books than in the UK. Or we have more than half the population who never buy or read books at all. And it's shrinking all the time. One line is all time is running down is the line of the reader, and the other all the time up is the number of increasing writers. Soon they will cross paths, and after that it will be bad. They have actually already crossed paths. By the way, graphomania in blogs. They asked me - why?

Alexander Shatalov: Natasha does not use the Internet.

Natalya Ivanova: No, I use the Internet all the time, I don’t write blogs. How can I not use the Internet? My magazine is on the Internet. I write two columns on the Internet.

Victor Erofeev: I must tell the listeners that you are the first deputy editor-in-chief of the Znamya magazine.

Natalya Ivanova: In addition, I write a column for Polit.ru.

Victor Erofeev: How are you doing with “Banner”? Is it normal?

Natalya Ivanova: We're fine with Znamya. We have several tens of thousands of visits per month on the Internet.

Victor Erofeev: Have you ever printed graphomaniac texts?

Natalya Ivanova: Certainly. To be honest, of course. I think that in every issue, in one way or another, some kind of graphomaniac text penetrates. Now what interesting time, you tell the person: listen, your head is completely graphomaniac. He says: “Yes? Did you notice? And that’s what I thought.” You saw, you flattered me. How did you understand this?

Victor Erofeev: Sasha, do we need to fight graphomania?

Alexander Shatalov: I think it's not necessary. I believe that Natasha is wrong in these two intersecting lines, one going up, the other down. In fact, far fewer people write than before. All the time, like many, I was an internal reviewer; I had to write one and a half thousand internal reviews in publishing houses on texts by amateur authors. Among these amateur authors were Parshchikov, Kedrov, and many others, who later became famous writers.

Victor Erofeev: Were there any graphomaniacs among them?

Natalya Ivanova: By the way, the image of the graphomaniac was created by Nikolai Glazkov, he created it, of the last people who created the mask of the graphomaniac, he was an absolutely amazing poet.

Victor Erofeev: How did he create?

Natalya Ivanova: Firstly, he wrote short strange ones, he was a primitivist poet, he created primitive poems that reflected the sky from under the table, that kind of thing. An almost naive perception of life, which, of course, to an inexperienced person, or to an ordinary person with pseudo-taste, could seem like graphomania. But in fact, he was a poet who showed what the official poetry that surrounded him was worth.

Victor Erofeev: And Asadov?

Natalya Ivanova: Asadov is a typical graphomaniac.

Alexander Shatalov: Asadov is now perceived as an absolute postmodernist. His text is perceived today as completely detached.

Natalya Ivanova: He just had no concept, no concept.

Arsen Revazov: Graphomaniac poems should be secondary. If you are talking about some author, and even whom people remember 50 years later, it is obvious that there is some kind of grain in them.

Victor Erofeev: In Russia in the 19th century during Pushkin’s time there was Count Khvostov, who published himself, we remember him, he was a marvelous graphomaniac.

Natalya Ivanova: But he published it himself at his own expense, and did not torture anyone.

Arsen Revazov: But there are exceptions that confirm the rules. If Herostratus is remembered, then he is remembered. It seems to me that the element of quality is, of course, subjective, but some objective feeling from the quality of the text also exists.

Natalya Ivanova: There are criteria, but they are very vague.

Arsen Revazov: The sum of these criteria gives some sense of the quality of the text. It seems to me that a graphomaniac is a person who, according to some generally accepted consensus, has a quality below average, or rather below the lowest, or rather they are secondary and uninteresting. There is folk art, and we know a lot of jokes and a lot of things.

Natalya Ivanova: Folk art- this is an absolutely amazing thing.

Victor Erofeev: And these ditties.

Natalya Ivanova: I went on folklore expeditions for several years in a row and recorded them - it’s fantastic.

Arsen Revazov: I want to say that even a graphomaniac can come up with two or three lines. Like a cat walking on a typewriter and there it comes out with a part of “Eugene Onegin.”

Victor Erofeev: Young people blur the line. You, Sasha, are already an old man, because you protect.

Natalya Ivanova: I'll tell you the main thing. The main thing is that each group has its own criteria and there are many literatures. And today everyone chooses literature for themselves. And Dmitry Prigov said absolutely wonderful about literary prizes: He said that everyone should have their own nomination. Roughly speaking, a graphomaniac should have his own nomination. That is, it is impossible for them to compete different types sports, and disabled people competed with healthy people.

Alexander Shatalov: What category should Dmitry Alexandrovich fall into - the category of graphomaniacs or the category of artists or the category of poets or the category of prose writers? Of course he is an artist. Therefore, from a literary point of view, of course, he is a 100% graphomaniac.

Natalya Ivanova: He has wonderfully created an incredible number of characters and works with them. We published his story this year and now we will print short stories.

Victor Erofeev: Doesn't it bother you?

Natalya Ivanova: It's so interesting to me because the stories are completely different.

Alexander Shatalov: Evaluation of a graphomaniac or not a graphomaniac is interesting. If you're interested, that means you're not a graphomaniac; if you're not interested, that means you're a graphomaniac?

Victor Erofeev: He writes novels.

Natalya Ivanova: Have you read?

Victor Erofeev: I read it and I want to ask, given my great love for Prigov, don’t you think this is weaker than his poems?

Natalya Ivanova: It seems to me that in fact he extends a certain concept to this prose and then it is interesting, but when he does not extend it, then this is not the case.

Victor Erofeev: It turns out that if we are under the hood of concepts, then something is happening.

Natalya Ivanova: Everything falls apart there, there is no character, there is no game. The very thing that makes literature is missing.

Arsen Revazov: There must be a painful passion.

Natalya Ivanova: I have a bad attitude towards graphomania.

Victor Erofeev: Because you are a publisher and editor.

Natalya Ivanova: Let a man write, it’s better than drinking vodka.

Alexander Shatalov: Let him write poorly rather than sing loudly and poorly.

Victor Erofeev: Or he becomes a rapist, a maniac.

Natalya Ivanova: Do you know how many artists are pseudo-artists? They walk or draw on their own or go to clubs.

Arsen Revazov: Does graphomania exist among artists?

Natalya Ivanova: Not graphomania, but artomania. Of course it exists. They don’t torment anyone by saying that let’s hold an exhibition in the Manege.

Victor Erofeev: By the way, this was the only time Venechka Erofeev and I sat together, together on a bench and looked at the poets who were coming out, it was the Dukat plant, I remember all the banned poets there, it was the beginning of 97. And the same ones who sat together, they patted us on the shoulder, we were all like-minded people, we all didn’t like a certain government, and they all wrote about Stalin, and some wrote such cool pornography. That is, they were divided into these and these. They came out, and it was a terrible sight: they read poetry and were driven off the stage with applause. These are people who wrote furious poems about Stalin for 20-25 years. It was real graphomania. The fact is that they didn’t read these poems back then; they said it was dangerous. And the manuscript of pornography was also considered dangerous, and was also rarely shown. And suddenly they came out and exploded like this. I think I was going to the show today and thought: this is a terrible fate, for 20 years they thought that they were poets, that they were fighting the authorities with these methods. And suddenly a little freedom came, no one knows where it will turn, they burst, and I have never met them anywhere. I have never seen a single text written. I know that some guys were somehow closer to Zhenya Popovich than to me, from these provincial guys, he’s such a people person, they were drawn to it. I know that someone drank himself to death, someone died. It's a terrible thing.

Natalya Ivanova: In general, I travel around the provinces and see that people gather at some Writers' Unions and they bring texts, you start looking at them and realize that you cannot tell the whole truth, because there is something in a person that he clings to. It's very scary.

Victor Erofeev: I have already said many times that you are my mother’s favorite critic. And I think so, someone is sitting in the provinces and thinking - we need to show Ivanova.

Natalya Ivanova: And I always try to find, I understand that I won’t print, but when I talk to a person.

Victor Erofeev: Besides, not only will you not print, but if you say that it’s good, you’ve sold yourself too.

Natalya Ivanova: A very dangerous thing is raising young ones.

Alexander Shatalov: Natasha is an authority, you are an authority, there are fewer and fewer authorities, so these young people, they create their own evaluation criteria. Therefore, we observe how brilliant poets, brilliant prose writers appear in some circles, they write themselves, they evaluate themselves.

Natalya Ivanova: Sasha, do you know what my criterion is?

Alexander Shatalov: I think it's good.

Natalya Ivanova: I’m not used to writing where they don’t pay me money, I live from this, I’m a professional. Now, if a person, does such a criterion exist or not?

Alexander Shatalov: The editor-in-chief writes in LiveJournal, Chief Editor doesn't get paid for every word he says.

Natalya Ivanova: But Sergei Chuprinin released a dictionary new literature, in which I counted the number, it has two huge volumes, counted the number of people who published books over the 90 years. These are approximately the authors whose books were published in free time, in the 90s and early 2000s - 30 thousand. Do you remember the directory of the Writers' Union, there were only 11 thousand. And everyone was guessing, we had this game: open - he knows this person as a writer, he lost.

Alexander Shatalov: When the material base disappeared. Previously, graphomaniacs tried to prove that they were not graphomaniacs, but writers, by joining the Writers' Union and getting the opportunity to receive some benefits, publish some books, and royalties. That is, for them the goal was professionalization. Now there is no such goal.

Natalya Ivanova: He is now ready to pay. 15 years ago a young man came to me and said: you know, I can pay for a review. And how many? - I said in a cat's voice, - can you pay me?

Victor Erofeev: You said: you write when you get paid.

Natalya Ivanova: No, I am paid by a publishing house, a magazine, the Internet, I must be absolutely clean.

Victor Erofeev: I just recently found myself in a difficult situation. I was invited to London, and writers and poets who write in Russian and do not live in Russia gathered in London, from different countries, starting from Canada and ending with Israel. Everyone has arrived. Imagine - a concert. But at the same time, this is an action that the French would support in any case. Of course, it was painful to hand out awards there - it was not easy, Bunimovich and I were worried about our internal reputation. They ask: how do you like it? They wink at me too. If the French want to spread their language... At the end of 80, when they started releasing them, emigrants were all complaining: children were embarrassed to speak Russian on the street in New York, London, and so on. And what to sacrifice? Or say that everyone is a graphomaniac and fool, or say that you are raising the status of the Russian language. I, of course, began to sing about how the Russian language is a shamanic language and that in general, thank God, it is spoken, it is becoming a first-class language, and so on. He spoke less about poetry. But nevertheless, it seemed to me that energy could be used for peaceful purposes.

Natalya Ivanova: The New Journal is published in New York; it will be 65 years old this December. There is both this and that. But most often there is graphomania.

Victor Erofeev: “A graphomaniac in law” - decipher it.

Arsen Revazov: Everyone understands what a graphomaniac is in literature, a consensus has emerged between us and the listeners, plus or minus. Graphomaniacs in painting, just now I started thinking about it, I am sure that we will hardly find graphomaniac architects or graphomaniac composers.

Natalya Ivanova: We'll find composers. As for architects, of course, there are no architects, but there is paper architecture.

Arsen Revazov: We can’t even find a graphomaniac sculptor.

Natalya Ivanova: I know the name of this graphomaniac sculptor, but I won’t tell you. Everyone knows, I think.

Arsen Revazov: Okay, there is an exception. But still, the number of graphomaniac poets and writers is infinitely large and measured in tens of thousands.

Natalya Ivanova: Because you need a pencil and paper, but you can do without it.

Arsen Revazov: Quite fair. So let’s try to name graphomaniacs in law those whose texts we don’t like for some reason, but are recognized by society, in demand in society, and so on.

Victor Erofeev: The detective is a legal graphomaniac.

Natalya Ivanova: First of all, I won’t give the detective story to anyone, because I’m like... This is a controversial position. Because if someone doesn’t like something, this may indicate the depravity of the individual himself, who doesn’t like it, and the incorrectness of his criteria. Here we will not agree on who likes pork cartilage and who likes butt. I just want to say that a graphomaniac is that elusive substance about which even people who have completely different criteria, but professionals present in literature, always understand that a graphomaniac has arrived. Despite the fact that we are completely different.

Victor Erofeev: Indeed, when I was sitting in London, I was thinking how I would define this. Indeed, it was possible according to conceptualism. There was a poem there: a man went abroad a long time ago and lives in Canada and suddenly meets a Vietnamese and he says to him: thank you for being in the Soviet Union once... And it was written so touchingly. And someone stood up and said: this is real civic poetry.

Natalya Ivanova: I am generally against the ghetto. It turns out that they performed as poor people in the ghetto. No ghetto.

Arsen Revazov: I know what all graphomaniac texts have in common - they are naive, they are all naive. I can't imagine a clever graphomaniac text.

Victor Erofeev: Graphomaniacs are always pretentious.

Natalya Ivanova: I would say that there is not necessarily pathos in the text, but definitely in the person.

Victor Erofeev: In fact, we do not prohibit anyone from being a graphomaniac. I can admit to radio listeners that I really love talking to literary people, somehow there’s a different atmosphere and a different degree of the program.