I read the first book about “The Adventures of the Master” and the second, and therefore many of the author’s surprises were no longer surprises for me. I mean the scandalous helplessness of Fandorin, already praised by me earlier.But I had enough attention to keep track of other bursts in my own reader’s brain. The most significant of them is the discovery of the unknowability of history, with which I, perhaps, will begin.Throughout the story, we see several professional and well-motivated historians following the trail. The track is not too hot, but our fellows are wildly lucky and they discover more and more new facts. They are on the verge of the greatest discovery, which they well deserved, but… by the will of fate, they do not reach it by only half a step.
This is a story of success, but it is also a story of defeat. Defeat, not because the treasure was not found, but because, in fact, they know NOTHING. They are blind wise men feeling the elephant’s leg.Do you think they don’t know this?And why, then, Fandorin and Co. continue a useless exercise, you ask. Yes, because the search process (and indeed any process) is no less fun than the result. Must deliver.If your situation is different, then you urgently need to change the field of activity.This principle (the pleasure of the process), by the way, helps to understand the age-old question about “the end justifies the means.” For example, a maniac pharmacist from “Altyn-tolobas” is ready to plunge the world into chaos for the sake of liberating humanity from religion, and to accept martyrdom himself. I dare to suggest that he is a hidden sado-masochist with a complex of the arbiter of fate. Then, a visit to the BDSM salon would make him no less happy than dying at the stake of world anarchy, and for much less “money”. To make the whole world happy, start with yourself and all that.
Let’s digress from the universal problems. Let’s talk about my own :)In the adventures of modern Fandorin, I like everything except the Russian mafia. Apparently, under the influence of numerous cheap TV shows, cheap pocketbooks and completely free jokes, a strong prejudice against the new Russian-mafia theme in art has developed in my gullible head.Nothing – it will pass. Look, the prejudice against the “soviet” Strugatskys was blown away by the wind, as soon as I tried to read them. And in general, it seems to me that almost any hostility is based on a misunderstanding on the basis of lack of information or a banal unwillingness to know (as in Avatar, for example).And I’m also damn careless. Already familiar to me from Out-of-class reading, Mr. Gabunia, I categorically refused to learn for several chapters. Well, figs with him, read on.P.S. If you want a normal analysis of Akunin’s detectives, read Andrey Ranchin’s article “B. Akunin’s novels and classical tradition“
