I see you've got a few Pelevin books on your shelf. How do you like him?
At some point I decided to read something of his, since everyone around me had already read him. Mass-market stuff, in a way.
Mass-market?
The first book was Empire V. And basically I changed my mind right away. Pelevin is really cool — in fiction form he smuggles in the problematic nature of consumerism.
You think that's why people read him?
No. His language is light and clear; deconstruction, demolition — it's all like being a teenager, when an adolescent tears down the worldview built by his parents so he can later build his own on the ruins. That's why young people love this kind of thing.
Young rebels.
Yes, but Pelevin can be dangerous. The trouble with postmodernism is that it only demolishes, while the building is left to the reader, and that's hard; a person turns into a misanthrope, a cynic, loses faith. But it's not Pelevin's fault — he's a genius.
And how do you rebuild yourself?
For that you at least need to know that rebuilding is necessary. Besides Pelevin there are plenty of relatively simple philosophers raising similar themes — Baudrillard, for instance. And if you've got the stamina, then Deleuze, Foucault.
Come on, are young people really going to read that?
The ones who read Pelevin will; the ones who don't, don't need to.