Alexander Karasev: biography and creativity

To date, quite a large number of readers know who Alexander Karasev is. His unusual creativity attracts a lot of attention and finds a response in the hearts of many. What is so distinguished about this author? Today we will talk about this.

Alexander Karasev: biography

A. Karasev came to the literature relatively late. His first story he published when he was already over 30 years. At that time, he had two higher educations, historical and legal, his experience in the regions, with literature unrelated (worked as a mechanic, machinist, security guard), and several years of military service.

Karasev knows about the war firsthand. He was a participant in the fighting in the Chechen conflict. Someone's war cripples, if not physically, then morally, emotionally, and someone gives a new understanding of life, a creative impulse to throw out all the accumulated impressions, express views on life. Alexander Karasev belongs to the second category.

In one of the interviews, Karasev admitted that not only did he not dream of writing a career as a child, but he also does not believe others when they talk about their childish passion for writing. After all, a child, especially a boy, is bored with typing letters on paper, he wants activities. That's to become a driver of a big car, a policeman catching criminals, or a sportsman who sets records - it's interesting, it's like a childhood dream. And in order to want to become a writer, you need to accumulate a vital, everyday experience.

The first literary experiments

Although Karasev Alexander always liked to read and fairly fluent in the word (especially well he managed to explain, in his own ironic confession), but the desire to write something artistic did not arise up to 25-26 years. At this age, he was captured by the idea of writing a novel. This is the error of all novice authors. Attempts to write a large-scale work, without having worked out their style and style on small genres, are almost always doomed to failure. Karasev did not do anything either. There was an idea, there was an intrigue, a love line, detective elements, but the novel died out after a few unconvincing pages.

A few years later, almost forgetting about his first literary experiments, Karasev felt an urgent need to describe what was happening around him. This happened when he got to Chechnya. In his hands was the diary of a deceased colleague, where he began to record service records interspersed with abstract thoughts and descriptions of characteristic scenes of military life. So the material for his future military stories began to be collected.

Literary debut

Having accumulated a rather impressive array of stories and everyday sketches, Karasev Alexander Vladimirovich himself began to send them through thick literary magazines. In 2003, the magazine "October" published the story "Natasha" about the girl-provincial, ready for any humiliation for the sake of "love." An unpretentious plot, realistic characters and a complex cocktail of emotions as a aftertaste of reading - all this drew attention to the budding author. Followed by publications in the magazines "Friendship of Peoples", "Ural", "New World", "Neva" and others.

At present, many people know the name of Alexander Karasev. The writer has more than two dozen publications in well-known literary journals and 2 printed books. This is not only and not so much military prose. These are stories about the lives of ordinary people in our difficult times.

Alexander Karasev is the author of short stories

Each author finds for himself the optimal way of self-expression. Someone works better poems, someone feels confident, unfolding before the reader huge canvases with a lot of actors, events, narrative plans, and someone is short enough, a capacious text to express a very deep thought.

Karasev himself explains his adherence to the genre of the story by a special type of energy. It is easier for him to take the height in one jerk, in one breath, than to build the narrative fabric for a long time and systematically, weaving together the disparate threads of the plot. His style is the maximum concentration of meaning, the rejection of an infinite number of details and lyrical digressions for one purpose - to be honest and simple with the reader.

Karasev's stories are distinguished by brightness, dynamics, they feel a clear author's position, based on life experience and an unshakable value system, the main of which is life. In terms of technology, Alexander Karasev is close to Impressionism. He is driven by the desire to capture life in its smallest manifestations. But behind apparent simplicity and emphasized realism lies a large semantic load.

Heroes of Karasev's works

Each story of Alexander Karasev has his own hero. As a rule, these are military men, but there are also ordinary guys not connected with military affairs. The hero for Karasev is not an idealized image without a single flaw, but a living person with his victories and defeats, weaknesses and strengths, he can have his own "cockroaches" in his head, he can sometimes make mistakes, but he is a person and acts in such a way, As life tells him.

Remember, for example, the hero of the story "Starfall". Victor does not immediately deserve the reader's approval. He is too gloomy, sarcastic, unsociable. Despite his small height, at all he tries to look down upon. But his appearance, as it often happens, turns out to be deceptive. When someone needs help, he does not hesitate to defend him.

The hero of the story "Queen" - Captain Fryazin - is shown to the reader in completely different circumstances. But among the whistles of bullets and chaos of an unexpected attack, we see Fryazin the same as Viktor's, the distinctive features: courage, honesty and loyalty to his duty. This is exactly what the real hero Alexander Karasev sees.

Chechen stories

Alexander Karasev has a series of "Chechen stories" and there is a book with the same title, which, in addition to the eponymous cycle, includes a collection of short essays "The First Snow." The title of the collection, which provokes an involuntary association with Tolstoy's famous Sevastopol tales, and the memories of military operations in the Chechen Republic, still alive in each of us, compel the reader to refer these works to the genre of military prose.

However, with more detailed examination it turns out that this book goes beyond the boundaries of the battle genre. There are few bloody shootings, abstract discussions about patriotism and war. In the center of author's attention is not war, but a man put in cruel, at times inhuman conditions. This book is more like a documentary chronicle, which, however, does not deprive it of artistic expressiveness.

Creativity of Alexander Karasev in the evaluation of critics

All critics, describing the work of Karasev, distinguish one and the same distinguishing features, call it "concentrated", "impressionistic" and at the same time very simple and even ordinary, devoid of any artistic details. However, in assessing these features, critics can not come to one opinion.

Some see in this laconicism and restraint a special author's style, which has its roots from Chekhov, Babel, Zoshchenko. They notice for simplicity the depth, for the ordinary - "something very important." So, for Jan Shenkman, Karasev's laconicity is a special talent. According to the apt critique, he suffices a few phrases to express what others would need a novel. Oleg Ermakov attributed Karasev's stories to the genre of "minimalist" and at the same time "psychological" prose. Helen Kryukov was captivated by a "living thought" and a "living heart", hiding behind simplicity.

Other critics lack artistic expressiveness, generalizing thoughts. Valeria Pustovaya is inclined to attribute Karasev's works to the genre of journalism, not prose. She notes that there are "little secrets" in them, but only a dry event series. Andrei Nemzer, too, Karasev's prose seems too simple, understandable without any effort on the part of the reader, which significantly reduces its value.

Awards

While critics are arguing about genres and styles, Alexander Karasev himself has already found his reader. Numerous publications in thick literary journals and collections, author's books, and prestigious literary awards speak of this. He is a laureate of the Buninsky Prize (2008), the O'Henry Award (2010), and a number of other awards and awards.