Has modernism disappeared as a genre by 2023? Or has it become an infovirus, a vanishing swing on hissing waves, an ethereal neomodernism. "Find the Lumberjack" introduces readers to Andrei Gelianoff and his collection of experimental stories, "The Garden Where Centaurs Live." These stories, mercilessly hijacked by the author from the principle of reality, preserve for us that ancient state, which by the dawn of the 21st century has been almost universally sacrificed to necessity. The disorderly garden of centaurs, ignoring any reading experience, leads us along irregular forest paths to very simple things and people: Bruno Schulz, Rilke, Paul Celan, a white, thin-walled seashell, the red heartbeat of insomnia. And it leads smoothly to the grand finale—the collection's rainforest ecosystem—the avant-garde prologue "Quartet 'Immortality,'" based on the precepts of Philip Glass's String Quartet No. 5.
From pre-war Drohobych and virtual antiquity to the cyberpunk we deserve, a metaphysical German prison, and the glowing jungle bordering the Super-Sargasso Sea.
From a Baghdad thief to Henrietta Lacks (better known as the goddess HeLa) and a nameless Brazilian Indian, the last of a tribe that never made contact with the demons of civilization. We will all be late for the sunset.
And no dreams.