"Victor Pelevin. Babylon (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

mentality'.
Tatarsky didn't really understand completely what this Soviet mentality
was, although he used the expression frequently enough and enjoyed using it;
but as far as his new employer, Dmitry Pugin, was concerned, he wasn't
supposed to understand anything anyway. He was merely required to possess
this mentality. That was the whole point of what he did: adapt Western
advertising concepts to the mentality of the Russian consumer. The work was
'freelance' - Tatarsky used the term as though it still had its original
sense, having in mind first of all the level of his pay.
Pugin, a man with a black moustache and gleaming black eyes very like a
pair of buttons, had turned up by chance among the guests at a mutual
acquaintance's house. Hearing that Tatarsky was in advertising, he'd shown a
moderate interest. Tatarsky, on the other hand, had immediately been fired
with an irrational respect for Pugin - he was simply amazed to see him
sitting there drinking tea still in his long black coat.
That was when the conversation had turned to the Soviet mentality.
Pugin confessed that in the old days he had possessed it himself, but he'd
lost it completely while working for a few years as a taxi-driver in New
York. The salty winds of Brighton Beach had blown all those ramshackle
Soviet constructs right out of his head and infected him with a compulsive
yearning for success.
'In New York you realise especially clearly/ Pugin said over a glass of
the vodka they moved on to after the tea, 'that you can spend your entire
life in some foul-smelling little kitchen, staring out into some shit-dirty
little yard and chewing on a lousy burger. You'll just stand there by the
window, staring at all that shit, and life will pass you by.'
'That's interesting,' Tatarsky responded thoughtfully, 'but why go to
New York for that? Surely-'
'Because in New York you understand it, and in Moscow you don't,' Pugin
interrupted. 'You're right, there are far more of those stinking kitchens
and shitty little yards over here. Only here there's no way you're going to
understand that's where you're going to spend the rest of your life until
it's already over. And that, by the way, is one of the main features of the
Soviet mentality.'
Pugin's opinions were disputable in certain respects, but what he
actually had to offer was simple, clear and logical. As far as Tatarsky was
able to judge from the murky depths of his own Soviet mentality, the project
was an absolutely textbook example of the American entrepreneurial approach.
'Look,' said Pugin, squinting intensely into the space above Tatarsky's
head, 'the country hardly produces anything at all;
but people have to have something to eat and wear, right? That means
soon goods will start pouring in here from the West, and massive amounts of
advertising will come flooding in with them. But it won't be possible simply
to translate this advertising from English into Russian, because the . . .
what d'you call them .. . the cultural references here are different... That
means, the advertising will have to be adapted in short order for the
Russian consumer. So now what do you and I do? You and I get straight on the
job well in advance - get my point? Now, before it all starts, we prepare
outline concepts for all the serious brand-names. Then, just as soon as the
right moment comes, we turn up at their offices with a folder under our arms