Master classes by a Moscow-based independent publisher and editor invariably attract attention creative people wherever he takes them. Pskov was no exception. He came to us at the International Book Forum "Russian West" and shared with the audience the secret of his publishing success, as well as his thoughts about reading and, in fact, about books. And they are secrets for that and secrets, so that the correspondent " Pressaparte”was interested in them, so that later he could tell our readers a secret.

Ilya Bernstein put the main secret of a successful publisher in his "Editor's Book or 4 in 1". Typesetter, literary, art and scientific editor: these are the four specialties that a book publisher combines and which need to be mastered by anyone who wants to rush into this exciting and stormy publishing sea. Despite the fact that the publisher accepts these four specialties as independent of each other, he sees his success in the combination of all four. To be able to feel the text in order to arrange it on the pages and make it readable, to be a competent literary editor, to know what the design of a book is, to explain to the reader certain concepts in the book, this is the complex that Ilya Bernstein uses in his work.

His second secret is that ... "You don't need to invent anything," the publisher convinces. The text, in his opinion, only needs to be carefully studied and understood in order to select the appropriate design and illustrations.

Ilya expressed an interesting idea that runs counter to the dominant one in society now. He believes that there is no need to put restrictions on books by age, one should not take away from the reader the freedom to read what he wants. “Every age finds its own in a book,” said a publisher in Pskov. And as a businessman, he explains that books must satisfy consumer needs, the book must meet the reader's expectations, in this case it will be successful and reprinted several times.

In his Moscow publishing house, Ilya Bernstein began work on a series of books on military topics, "How It Was." To the 70th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War he plans to reprint the books on the war, if possible, with the original text restored and with scientific commentary added. He already knows that the series will include works by Viktor Dragunsky, Vadim Shefner, Vitaly Semin and other writers who witnessed the events at the front. In the future, the publisher will continue to work on the publication of books on military subjects. “Somehow it turns out that books about the war are always relevant,” the publisher is sure.

« Pressaparte»

‒ Ilya, in your interviews you often talk about your activities as a “publisher-editor”. Is this your special personal position in the publishing world, or can you learn it somewhere, make it your profession?

I'll try to answer. There have been several civilizational trends in history. For example, industrial. This is the era of standard products that are mass-produced. This is the era of the assembly line. The design of the product should be carried out accordingly, the way the product should be promoted after release should be the same. And such an industrial way - it was a very important thing in its time. This is a whole civilizational stage. But he's not the only one.

There is also non-industrial production. Someone brews craft beer, someone sews trousers, someone makes furniture. Today it is an increasingly common activity, at least in the world of metropolitan areas. And I am a representative of just such a world of non-industrial activity. And since this business is underdeveloped and new, then everything has to be built from the very beginning: from the system for training specialists to the system for distributing finished books. Our publications are not even sold in the same way as other books: they do not fall into the usual consumer niches. The merchandiser of the store, having received them, finds himself in a difficult situation. He does not know where to define such a book: for a child it is too adult, for an adult it is too childish. This means that it must be some other way of presenting, selling and promoting. And so it is with every aspect of this business.

But, of course, this is not a combination of some unique individual qualities of one person. This is normal activity. She just needs to learn differently, to deal with it differently.

- So what is it - back to the Middle Ages, to workshops working to order? To the system of masters and apprentices?

We really called it at some point a "shop" structure. And I really teach, I have a workshop. And in it we really use for simplicity such terms as apprentice, apprentice.

It is assumed that someday an apprentice should become a master, defending some of his master's ambition before other masters, and get the right, the opportunity to open his own workshop. And other masters will help him in this.

This is how it should have been - the way it used to be: a shop, with a shop banner. I'm not sure if I have followers in this. But I try to build it in this form. And I don't see any problem with that.

Problems elsewhere. We have everything sharpened from school so that (slightly exaggerating) a person either draws or writes. And if he draws, then he usually writes with errors. And if he writes, then he does not know how to hold a pencil in his hand. This is just one of the examples. Although relatively recently it was completely natural for a guards officer to easily write poetry in the album of a county young lady or draw quite decent graphics in the margins. Only a hundred - one hundred and fifty years ago!

‒ There is also an economic component to the question of your profession. You said in one of your interviews that industrial civilization creates a mass of cheap goods that are available to people. And what you are doing is some rather expensive, “niche”, as they say now, product. Right?

If I were Henry Ford, I would compete with the entire automotive world for millions of consumers. If I do something completely atypical, not mass-produced, in my workshop, naturally, I don’t have many consumers. Although not so little. I believe that any most exotic product can be sold today. For me, it is still quite understandable ... But then I don’t have competition and all its costs. There is no fear that my product will be stolen from me. No one will make a book like me anyway! In general, by and large, nothing can be taken away from me. You can’t even take away the business from me, because it’s all in my head. Yes, let's say they arrest my circulation, in the worst case. So I will do the following. But, in any case, 90% of the cost of the goods is always with me. And I can't be kicked out of my firm. No one will be able to make the Ruslit-2 series, for example. That is, he can publish something, but it will be a completely different product. It's like the mark of a master. People go to a particular master, and they are not at all interested in another workshop. This is not their interest.

‒ Do they want a different relationship model?

Of course!

And the relationship with the students in the workshop other than with employees in the company. I am not afraid that my employees will be lured away for a higher salary, or that an employee will leave and take some “customer base” with him. Fortunately, we have also been spared all these business ulcers.

‒ With the organization of work, everything is more or less clear. Is the very idea of ​​commented publications your own idea or the result of some kind of polls, contacts with readers?

Here again: the industrial method involves some special technologies and professions: marketing, market research, conducting surveys, identifying target groups. Individual production initially assumes that you are doing, in general, for yourself, in the way that interests and pleases you; you do for people like you. Therefore, many issues that are traditional, mandatory for ordinary business, simply do not arise. Who is your the target audience? Don't know! I do what I see fit; things that I like; what I can do, not what they buy. Well, maybe not quite so radically... Of course, I think about who might need it. But to a large extent, in such a business, demand is formed by supply, and not vice versa. That is, people did not know that such books exist. It never occurred to them that they needed "Captain Vrungel" with a two-hundred-page commentary.

‒ What happened next seems clear: they saw such a book, looked at it, were surprised at first, then they liked it...

And when such an offer has arisen, they will already look for it, they will look for just such publications. Moreover, it is already incomprehensible and strange that this was not the case before.

‒ You think comments in the book are necessary. Why? And what do you think, can comments harm the perception of the text as artistic?

I don't think they are necessary. And yes, I think they can hurt. So I breed them - there are no page-by-page comments in my books. I believe that a page-by-page comment, even seemingly as innocent as an explanation of an incomprehensible word, can really destroy the artistic fabric of the narrative.

I don't think comments are necessary at all. I even had such an agreement at home with my children: if we watch a movie together, don’t give dad a remote control. This meant that I did not have the right to stop the action at some important, from my point of view, moments in order to explain what the children (again from my point of view) did not understand. Because I have - and I'm not the only one, unfortunately - such a stupid habit.

But for those who are interested, it should be “explainable”: separate, differently designed, clearly separated.

‒ Both from your comments and from the selection of works for publication, it is clear that the topic of war is, on the one hand, relevant to you, and on the other hand, you have a special attitude towards it. For example, in one of your interviews you said that you cannot win a war at all. This does not quite correspond to the current state trends. Do you think it is possible to find a balance between respect for the ancestors and turning the war itself into a cult?

I would say that this is generally a matter of respect for the person. It's not about ancestors. After all, what is a great power? If a great power is a country whose citizens live well, where the efforts of the state are aimed at ensuring that the old people have a good pension, everyone has good medicine, the young have a good education If there is no corruption, if there are good roads, then these questions do not even arise. These questions, in my opinion, are the result of a different idea of ​​greatness, which absolutely does not correspond with me. And this is usually a derivative of national inferiority. BUT feeling of inferiority Unfortunately, in our country - source of national idea. A kind of inferiority complex. And therefore our answer to everyone is always the same: “But we defeated you. We can do it again."

‒ To the question of literature and the state. Tell me, were Soviet teenage books heavily censored or were they already written within certain limits?

Both. And they were further censored by editors, including after the death of the author. I have a separate article about this in the edition of "Deniskin's Stories" - about how they censored and edited, how "Deniskin's Stories" were shortened - although, it would seem, what is there to censor? And it is considered there on a large number of examples.

‒ One of your publications is “Konduit and Shvambrania” by Lev Kassil. You write that the original author's version was very different from the current well-known text. Why couldn't they just publish it instead of comments?

- “Konduit and Shvambraniya” I released in the original version. This is what Leo Kassil wrote and published for the first time. These are two separate stories, very different from the existing late author's combined version. For example, because the place of action is the lands where the Volga Germans lived compactly. This is the city of Pokrovsk, the future capital of the first autonomy in our country, the Autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans. Since the action of "Konduit" and "Schvambrania" takes place during the First World War, this is the time of anti-German sentiments, anti-German pogroms in cities. All this was in Pokrovsk. Kassil wrote quite a lot about this, he wrote with great sympathy for his German friends and classmates. There was also a considerable Jewish theme in the text. Naturally, all this was not included in the later version. And here we can already talk about censorship, about a combination of internal and external censorship. Such historical circumstances just require commentary.

‒ You publish a lot of relatively old books, 1920s-1970s. What can you say about modern teenage literature?

I think she's on the rise right now. And I expect that she is about to come out on a completely new level, at some peak, both in the 20s and in the 60s. Literature is generally not spread evenly over time. There was a Golden Age, there was a Silver Age. I think that even now the heyday is close, because a lot has already been accumulated. A lot of authors work, a lot of decent, even very decent books have been written, wonderful books are about to appear.

‒ And what would you name as outstanding contemporary teenage books? Or at least cute to you personally?

No, I'm not ready for this. First, I read relatively little now, to be honest. I'm actually not one of those adults who like to read children's books. I don't read children's books for myself. And secondly, it so happened that I know the people who write books much better than their works.

‒ What do you attribute such a rise to now? Does it have some external causes or are they just internal processes in literature itself?

I don't know, it's a complicated thing, you can't explain it that way. I think it's all there in the complex. After all, what is the Golden Age of Pushkin or the Silver Age of Russian poetry connected with? Probably, there are special studies, but I can only state this.

This is exactly what I really want. I don’t want to, on the contrary, just continue to do what is already good. Something new has become interesting, but you don’t do it because your previous business is doing well. I don't work like that.

‒ Thank you very much for the interview.

Interviewed by Evgeny Zherbin
Photo by Galina Solovieva

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Evgeny Zherbin, holder of the diploma "Book expert of the XXI century", member of the children's editorial board of "Papmambuka", 14 years old, St. Petersburg

Books of the Ruslit series

Ilya Bernstein - about adult themes of children's literature, the era of the thaw and the book tastes of different generations

Philologists have recently realized that Russian children's literature, especially at the time of its heyday - the era of the thaw in the USSR, tells about its time and people no less deeply than adult literature. One of the first to open this treasure was Ilya Bernshtein, an independent publisher. He began publishing children's books with several hundred pages of commentary. And they diverge, becoming popular reading among adults who once grew up on "Deniska's stories" or "Dunno on the Moon." The publisher spoke in more detail about his projects, personal path and children's literature in general in an interview with Realnoe Vremya.

“The time was like this: youth, impudence, hatred and extremely low professional requirements”

Ilya, your path to the book and publishing world was not easy and long. Can you tell us what you had to go through before becoming what is known as an "independent craft publisher"?

When I had to choose a future profession, it was 1984, and my ideas about the possibilities were very narrow. The previous two generations of my "ancestors" went the same way, in general: in the company that met in my parents' house, all the men were candidates of technical sciences and lab heads. I had neither the ability nor the interest to do so. But others were skeptical about any other specialty for a man.

I took the path of least resistance, trained as a software engineer, and even worked in my field for a while. Luckily for me, the 1990s soon came, when a choice arose - either to leave the country, as the absolute majority in my environment did, or to stay and live in a new situation, when all niches opened up and you could do anything.

I have loved books since childhood. Just as an object - I liked a lot about them besides the text and illustrations. I read the output, memorized the names of typefaces (fonts), I was worried. If the books were commentary, I often read them before the text. Growing up, I became a book collector. Every day, returning from work, I made a transfer at the Kuznetsky Most, where a speculative book market functioned for many years. In the dark (especially in winter), silent people walked or stood, approached each other, exchanged conspiratorial phrases, stepped aside and exchanged books for money. I spent almost an hour there almost every day and spent all the money that I earned as a “young specialist”.

But I didn't buy books to read them. From my large library I have read units of percent. At that time, the book was a rarity, an object of hunting. I had a sports interest. And I did not understand what to do with this interest. The first thing that came to mind was collecting. Literary monuments, Academia, Akvilon - the standard way. And if they asked me how I see my future, I would answer (maybe I answered) that I would be a salesman in a second-hand bookstore, but not in Russia, but next to some Western university. But all this was speculative, and then I was not going to do anything for this.

Then I caught such a fish in troubled waters: many, having earned their first money, decided that the next thing they would do was to publish a newspaper. And I became the editor of such newspapers. These editions rarely survived to the second or third issue, although they began stormily. So in a couple of years I edited half a dozen different newspapers and magazines on a variety of topics, even religious ones. The time was like this: youth, adventurism, impudence, hatred and extremely low professional requirements, and moral ones too - everyone deceived each other in some way, and it’s embarrassing to remember much that I did then.

Then, as a result of all this, an editorial team was formed - a photographer, designer, proofreader, editor. And we decided not to look for the next customer, but to create an advertising agency. And I was the person in it who was responsible to the customer. Those were the terrible times of night vigils in the printing house. And all this resulted in the fact that for five years I had my own small printing house.

“I have loved books since childhood. Just as an object - I liked a lot about them besides the text and illustrations. I read the output, memorized the names of typefaces (fonts), I was worried about it. Photo philologist.livejournal.com

- How did the regular economic crises in the country affect you?

I am literally their child. They made a big difference. I had a printing house, a design department, and I was proud to say that all my employees with the highest art education. And then the crisis began, I had to fire people and become a designer myself, make various booklets, brochures, exhibition catalogs, albums.

But all this time I wanted to make books. I remembered this and easily parted with my comparatively successful and financial occupations, if it seemed to me that the door to a more bookish world was opening. So from a manufacturer of advertising printing, I became a designer, then - a book designer. Life sent me teachers, for example, Vladimir Krichevsky, an outstanding designer. In the course of, in general, a casual acquaintance, I offered him to work for him for free, if only he would teach me. And it seems to have given me more than any other teaching (and certainly more than regular "high school").

When I became a designer, it turned out that in small publishing houses there is a need for total editing. That is, it would be nice if the designer could work with both illustrations and text, be able to both add and cut. And I became such a versatile editor who does literary, artistic and technical editing himself. And so far I remain so.

And 10 years ago, when there was another crisis and many publishing houses left the market, and the rest reduced the volume of their output, I decided to make books, as I already knew how: all by myself. And I started with my favorite children's books - those that, as I thought, undeservedly fell out of cultural use. In 2009, my first book was published - "A Dog's Life" by Ludwik Ashkenazi with illustrations by Tim Yarzombek, I not only prepared it, but also financed the publication. The publishing house, listed on the title page, was engaged in sales. I made a dozen (or a little more) books, was noticed by colleagues, other publishers offered to cooperate with them. First "Scooter", then "White Crow". Then there was just a boom of small children's publishing houses.

Accidents have always played an important role in my life. I discussed with colleagues the publication of books with large complex commentaries. While they were thinking whether to agree to this (I needed partners, because the projects promised to be expensive), everything was already “building” in my mind, so when everyone refused, I had to open my own publishing house for this. It's called The A&B Publishing Project, and the last two dozen books have come out under that name.

- How is the work of your publishing house or, as it is also called, a workshop?

This is largely dictated by the economic situation. I don't have the money to hire qualified employees, but somehow I have to attract people so that they want to work for me. And I propose to recreate some kind of pre-industrial production and education. This is now in use all over the world. This is not a conveyor production of a book, when it has many performers and each is responsible for his own section.

I am creating, as it were, a medieval workshop: a person comes, he does not know how, he is a student, he is taught on the basis of working material, he is given work in accordance with his qualifications, and this is not a schoolboy problem, but a real book. I pay him not a scholarship, but a small salary, which is less than what I would pay a ready-made specialist, but he gets an education and practice. And if my student wants to open his workshop, I will help, I can even donate the idea of ​​the first book or bring it together with publishers who will agree to publish his book.

I have never worked with publishers as a hired hand, only as a companion. The book legally belongs to me, the copyright is registered with me. The publishing house does not pay me a fee, but shares with me the proceeds. Of course, the publishing house does not like this situation, it is ready to go for it only if it understands that it will not be able to make such a book on its own, or if it will be too expensive. You must be able to make such books, for the sake of which the publishing house will agree to accept your conditions.

I don't do things that I'm not interested in, but supposedly successful. This has not happened in my practice yet, although it would be time already. Rather, an idea arises, and I implement it. I always start a series, this is right from a marketing point of view: people get used to the design and buy a book without even knowing the author, due to the reputation of the series. But when mass production is established, five or ten such books are made, it ceases to be interesting to me, and the next idea appears.

Now we are releasing the Ruslit series. At first it was conceived as "Lit. monuments", but with reservations: books written in the 20th century for teenagers, provided with comments, but not academic, but entertaining, multidisciplinary, not only historical and philological, but also socio-anthropological, etc. P.

“I have never worked with publishers as an employee, only as a companion. The book legally belongs to me, the copyright is registered with me. The publishing house does not pay me a fee, but shares the proceeds with me. Photo papmambook.ru

“We are like pioneers who just staked out plots and move on”

How did you come to write big, serious commentaries on children's books?

I also made comments in other series, it was always interesting to me. I am such a bore who can easily, reading a book to a child or watching a movie together, suddenly stop and ask: “Do you understand what I mean?”

I was lucky, I found colleagues who are professional philologists and at the same time cheerful people, for whom the framework of the traditional philological commentary is too narrow. Oleg Lekmanov, Roman Leibov, Denis Dragunsky ... I won't list them all - suddenly I forget someone. We have published 12 Ruslit books. There are plans for the next year or two.

It so happened that these books with comments suddenly shot. Previously, if such a request existed, it was in a latent, hidden form, there was nothing of the kind, it never occurred to anyone. But now that we have it, it seems self-evident that it is possible to publish "Deniska's Stories" with a two-hundred-page scientific apparatus.

Who needs it? Well, for example, grown-up readers of these books, those who loved these books and want to understand what the secret was, to check their impressions. On the other hand, the children's literature that we choose gives us the opportunity to try out a new genre - these are not comments in the generally accepted sense of the word (explanation of incomprehensible words and realities, bio-bibliographic references), but a story about the place and time of the action, which is based on the text .

We explain many points that do not require explanation, but we have something to tell about this. Sometimes it's just our childhood, with which we are closely connected and we know a lot that you can't read in books. This even applies to the Dragoon. We are younger than Deniska, but then the reality changed slowly, and it is not difficult for us to imagine what happened ten years earlier.

- Previously, no one was engaged in commenting on children's literature?

Children's literature was not considered by serious philologists until recently as a field of professional activity. Whether it's the Silver Age! And some Dunno - it's not serious. And we just ended up in the Klondike - this is a huge number of discoveries, we do not have time to process them. We are like pioneers who just staked out plots and move on: it’s so interesting what’s next that there is no time and desire to develop an open plot. This is unknown. And any touch to it and going to the archive opens the abyss. And the novelty of our “adult about childish” approach also allows us to use interesting research optics. It turned out that it is very "channel".

- And who buys?

Humanitarian-oriented people buy. Those who buy any intellectual adult literature. It becomes a kind of intellectual literature for adults. Despite the fact that there is always the actual work made for children, large-scaled, with "children's" pictures. And the comment is removed to the end, it does not interfere with getting an immediate impression. You can read a book and stop there. Although the presence of a voluminous commentary, of course, makes the book more expensive.

“They could write for children without lowering the demands on themselves, without kneeling either literally or figuratively”

It is clear that the situation with literature is not constant. One would assume that at any time there are great, good, average and bad writers, the percentage of them is approximately comparable. And at any time outstanding works are created. But it is not so. There was a Golden Age, a Silver Age, and between them - not so dense. And during the years of the thaw, many good children's writers appeared, not just because freedom came (albeit very limited). There are many factors here. A lot depends on circumstances, on individuals.

Thaw is the pinnacle of Russian children's literature, then many bright and free talented people. The thaw did not abolish censorship, but gave birth to a desire to try to "get around the slingshots." Writers still could not publish their bold “adult” texts. And children's literature, in which there was much less censorship, allowed those who, in a situation of free choice, would most likely not have chosen children's literature to realize themselves.

There was also, so to speak, a "business approach". If you read what Dovlatov published in the Koster magazine, it will become embarrassing - this is an outright opportunistic hack-work. But there were many "adult" writers who were disgusted by such things even in detlit.

Informal literary groups were formed. I have a series of "Native speech" in the publishing house "Scooter" - this is the Leningrad literature of the thaw. When I started publishing this, I did not even imagine that such a phenomenon existed. But according to the results of the “field research”, it became clear that these books and these authors have a lot in common. Victor Golyavkin, Sergey Volf, Igor Efimov, Andrey Bitov, many of the living and writing, for example, Vladimir Voskoboynikov, Valery Popov. The circle, which is usually defined through the names of Dovlatov and Brodsky, is people of approximately the same time of birth (pre-war or war years), children of repressed (or miraculously non-) parents, brought up outside the Stalinist paradigm, to whom, relatively speaking, the 20th Congress of the CPSU to which he did not open his eyes.

And they could write for children without lowering the demands on themselves, without kneeling either literally or figuratively. Not only did they not abandon the ideas and tasks of their adult prose, not only did they not reconcile themselves to censorship, but even in children's literature they were not guided by the considerations “Will the little reader understand this?” This is also one of the important gains of the thaw - then not only books ceased to be instructive, didactic and ideologically loaded, the general tone changed.

Previously, in children's literature, a hierarchy was clearly built. There is a small child, there is an adult. The adult is smart, the child is stupid. The child makes mistakes, and the adult helps him correct himself. And here, time after time, the child turns out to be deeper, thinner, smarter than an adult. And the adult is shocked.

For example, in the story "The Girl on the Ball": Deniska learns that "she" has left - the artist Tanechka Vorontsova, whom he saw only in the arena and still in his dreams. How does dad react? "Come on, let's go to a cafe, eat ice cream and drink soda." And the child? Or in another story: “How did you decide to give up a dump truck for this worm?” “How can you not understand?! After all, he is alive! And it glows!

“Dragoonsky is a skilled fighter of the censorship front, he was not a dissident - a man from the pop world, successful, and one cannot imagine him as a writer “from the underground” and a victim of censorship. It would be more correct to speak of censoring his stories after his death. It's a nasty thing, and it's all over the place." Photo donna-benta.livejournal.com

On the other hand, in pedagogy the role of an adult, looking down from above, has undergone a noticeable revision in the thaw, and this has benefited literature.

A lot has changed in terms of aesthetics. Those who came to children's literature, the conditional circle of Dovlatov, tried to patch up, to connect the broken connection of times - after all, it was still possible to find those who caught and remembered the Silver Age, for example. After all, young people, in their own words, according to Brodsky, came to literature "from cultural non-existence." Bitov told me: the previous generation was decently educated, knew languages, and when writers could not publish, they had other opportunities - literary translation, academic career. "And we, yesterday's engineers, had no other option than to go into children's literature." On the one hand, they were brought up on the newly arrived European modernism: Hemingway, writers of the "lost generation", Remarque. And with that, they came into children's literature. Children's literature then drew from various sources.

- You said that there was some kind of censorship in children's literature. What exactly was censored?

Dragunsky is a skilled fighter of the censorship front, he was not a dissident - a man from the world of variety, successful, and one cannot imagine him as a writer "from the underground" and a victim of censorship. It would be more correct to speak of censoring his stories after his death. It's a nasty thing, and it's all over the place. A simple comparison between the lifetime edition and the posthumous edition reveals hundreds of changes. They can be reduced to several categories: for example, it is decency. For example, in the story “The wheels of tra-ta-ta are singing,” Deniska rides a train with her dad, they spend the night on the same shelf. And dad asks: “Where are you going to lie down? At the wall? And Deniska says: “On the edge. After all, I drank two glasses of tea, I will have to get up at night. In the thaw times, not so sanctimonious, there was no crime in this. But in modern editions no tea.

Another, more complex and paradoxical, type of editing. Literary editing presupposes the existence of norms and rules, which the editor is trained in, and he can help the inept author to correct obvious flaws. Often this is necessary. But in the case of a truly artistic text, any editorial smooth writing is worse than the author's roughness.

When I was working with Golyavkin's story "My Good Dad", I got a royal gift - his own correction: before his death, he was preparing a reprint, took his book from the shelf and straightened it by hand (I assume that he restored what he once came with to the editor). Imagine two dialogue options: in one, “said”, “said”, and in the other - “flashed”, “grunted” and “hissed”. The second option is an editorial correction: the basics of the profession - you can’t put cognate words side by side. But “said, said, said” is better: this is how the child’s speech, his character and manners are conveyed, it is he who tells, and not an adult. And deliberate correctness betrays the censor.

Dragunsky was a spontaneous modernist, many of his tricks are straight out of a textbook on the history of literature of the 20th century. Let's say stream of consciousness. A long period without dots, with endless repetitions, as if Deniska is excitedly talking, waving his hands: “And he told me, and I told him ...” This was under Dragunsky, but in existing publications the text is cut into neat phrases, cleaned up, repetitions removed, cognate words nearby, everything is clean (we restored the old version in our edition).

Dragunsky is very sensitive to the word, he wrote "crumb", not "crumb", but the editor corrected it. A book like "Deniska's Stories", an undoubted literary achievement (that is, first of all, not "what", but "how"), is a text where all words are in their place, and one cannot be replaced by another without significant losses. Not all children's writers make similar stylistic requirements, but he has everything exactly, subtly, a lot of necessary little things. For example, the story "Top down diagonally" (about the house painters who left their inventory and the children messed up). In the commentary, we write that it was not by chance that the painter was called Sanka, Raechka and Nelly, this is an obvious social cross-section: the limiter Sanka, the fashionista Nelly and Raechka are mother's daughter, did not go to college the first time, earns seniority. Dragoon leads, of course, adult game, this is read by his circle, but this is also a feature of children's Russian literature of the thaw: it fundamentally does not have a clear age orientation and a lot is embedded in it. These are not figs in your pocket, but rather landmarks "for your own."

“Books about the Great Patriotic War, despite the powerful patriotic trend, parents are in no hurry to buy”

- What children's books struck you as an adult? For example, I recently read the story "Sugar Child", we had an interview with its author Olga Gromova.

- “Sugar Child” is a brilliant book (by the way, I published a book about the same thing - both repressed parents and life in evacuation in Uzbekistan - “The Girl in Front of the Door”, written on the table in censored times and published only in samizdat. Very I recommend it. And a child of 7-10 years old will be quite tough).

The USSR is a huge country, the literary word was very significant, many people wrote and a lot of things were written. We have touched only the very tops. If someone just undertook to read a half-century selection of some regional magazine like "Siberian Lights" or "Ural Pathfinder", then they would surely find so many treasures there that no one knew about.

I don't have time to publish all the books I want. This trend, in the creation of which I played an important role - the reissue of the Soviet - is already somewhat limiting me. And I postpone or even cancel the planned. For example, I was thinking about publishing books by Sergei Ivanov. He is known as the author of the script for the cartoon "Last Year's Snow Was Falling", but besides "Snow", he wrote a lot of good things. “Olga Yakovleva”, “Former Bulka and his daughter” (there, by the way, they seriously talk about death, part of the action takes place in an oncological hospital - this topic, according to popular belief, was not touched upon in Soviet children). But my main shock from acquaintance with not read in childhood is “Waiting for the Goat” by Evgeny Dubrovin. The book is so tense, so terrible, that I did not dare to take it. This is about the post-war famine, the late 1940s. And then Rech republished it - well, in such a kind of "exactly" way.

“I don’t have time to publish all the books I want. This trend, in the creation of which I played an important role - the reissue of the Soviet one - already limits me somewhat. And I postpone or even cancel the planned. Photo jewish.ru

Many children's writers we talked to say that in Russia, children's literature that deals with controversial topics (such as suicide, incest, homosexuality) is not accepted by parents, although in the West such books are received calmly. How do you feel about it?

In the West, probably, it is considered: if something exists and a child can face it, literature should not pass by. Therefore, incest and pedophilia are quite a “topic”. But in fact, our parent community has about the same rejection of traditional, completely open topics. I am based on personal experience- many times traded at book fairs in different cities. And I talked a lot with my parents.

Books about the Great Patriotic War, despite the powerful patriotic trend and the great efforts of the state, parents are in no hurry to buy. “It’s hard, why is this, don’t you have anything more fun?” The fact that the lack of empathy, the ability to empathize, the lack of a special attitude towards the development of empathy is one of the main features of the Russian modern society. You can see it from here, on the other side of the bookshelf.

People don't want to buy a book about a disabled child, or an incurable disease, or about death in general, because it's "indecent" or conflicts with their pedagogical attitudes. It’s hard - “he will grow up and find out himself, but for now it’s not necessary.” That is, the problem is not at all in the promotion of texts about incest, heavy drama books are sold poorly and bought, parents themselves do not want to read it. Well, not all, but most of them.

- What do you think about modern teenage literature in Russia?

I'm not doing it as a publisher yet, but this year I hope to publish the first modern book written now about the 90s. It seems to me that in order to flourish, you need to professionalize the environment. In order for 10 outstanding books to appear, you need to write and publish 100 just good ones. To learn how to tell stories well. And this, in my opinion, has already been achieved. I'm not sure that 10 outstanding books have been written, but that 25 or even 50 good ones have been written, I vouch. New children's writers are now writing in such a way that it's hard for the book award's expert board to pick winners.

Natalia Fedorova

Reference

Ilya Bernstein- independent editor, commentator and publisher, winner of the Marshak Prize in the "Project of the Decade" nomination, is engaged in the reprinting of Soviet children's classics and works from the "thaw" with comments and additional materials. Publisher (“Publishing project A and B”), editor, commentator, compiler of the series “Ruslit” (“A and B”), “Native speech” and “How it was” (together with the Samokat publishing house) and other publications.

January 24 publisher Ilya Bernstein gave a lecture on books Conduit. Shvambrania" and " Republic of Shkid". Both works have become classics of Soviet children's literature. However, we know about them, as it turned out, not all. AT Children's hall of foreigners the publisher told what mysteries he had to face in the preparation of these books.

How to edit a classic

New edition of “Conduit. Shvambrania” surprises from the very title. Where did the traditional conjunction "and" go?

Ilya Bernstein: “The writing is different. And this is no coincidence here. I published the first author's edition. Lev Kassil originally wrote two separate stories, and so it existed for several years. Only then did he combine them and rewrite them into one text.».

Ilya Bernshtey n: " Since I am publishing the first author's version, I am publishing it as it was. Is it logical? But I don't. I imagine myself to be the publisher to whom young Kassil brought his manuscript. And I believe that I can fix in the book what this first publisher might have recommended that a novice writer fix.

So typos, old spelling, some semantic errors were corrected in the book. That is what, in my opinion, the editor of the first edition should have paid attention to.

At the same time, I do not make corrections myself, but check with later editions of the work. And if I saw that Kassil made a mistake, then corrected it in a different edition, but in principle it can be left, then I left.

What do Lev Kassil and Bel Kaufman have in common?

Ilya Bernstein: The Conduit was not written for children at all and was not published in a children's edition at all. He appeared in the New LEF magazine.

The new time needed a new literature, a literature of fact. Not fairy tales and fiction, but something real. Or at least something that is given the appearance of the present. That's why "Conduit" seems to be composed of real documents: school essays, diary entries...

Do you know another work that is similarly arranged? It is from a completely different time, written in a different language, but also about the school. This is "Up the Down Staircase" by Bel Kaufman.

I don’t know if the writer has read The Conduit, but it seems to me that there is an obvious inheritance here, although it may be accidental ... "

How photographer Jean wrote a mission to Ilya

Preparing for publication the book of Lev Kassil, Ilya Bernstein examined the scene of the stories, the city of Engels, formerly Pokrovsk. He also got acquainted with the press of that time. One of the advertisements in an old Saratov newspaper won the publisher's heart. Pokrovsky photographer named Jean accurately formulated his own principle of work.

Ilya Bernshtey n: " If I ever have my own website, and it will have a "Mission" section, then I will limit myself to this. “I ask the gentlemen of the customers not to mix my work with other cheap things that cannot compete with me because they use the work of others. All the work that I propose will be done by me, by my own labor and under my personal supervision.” This is how I make my books.».

Ilya also wondered what the Dostoevsky School really was, spoke about an alternative continuation of the book

galina artemenko

To the story on & nbsp "Scooter"

In St. Petersburg, the All-Russian Literary Prize named after S. Ya. Marshak, established by the Detgiz publishing house and the Union of Writers of St. Petersburg, was presented for the tenth time.

Mikhail Yasnov became the winner in the Best Author nomination, Mikhail Bychkov, a St. Petersburg illustrator, designer, member of the Union of Artists of Russia, who illustrated over a hundred books, was named the best artist. The prize "For the best book" was awarded to the work of Leonid Kaminsky, a collector and illustrator of children's folklore, and the publishing house "Detgiz" for "The History of the Russian State in excerpts from school essays."

The only Muscovite who received the highest award was the publisher Ilya Bernstein, who became the best in the category "For Publishing Dedication". The award was presented at the Central Children's City Library of St. Petersburg at noon on October 30, and on the same evening Ilya Bernstein gave a lecture "Children's Literature of the Thaw: the Leningrad School of Children's Literature of the 1960s-1970s" in the St. Petersburg space "Easy-Easy". The proceeds from the lecture were donated to charity.

Ilya Bernstein presented a series of books "Native speech", which are published by the Samokat publishing house. It includes books that convey the atmosphere of the Leningrad writing environment of the 1960s and 1970s, represent the names and themes that arose at that time. Among the books in the series are works by Valery Popov, Boris Almazov, Alexander Krestinsky, Sergei Wolf.

The series was born like this: the publisher was offered to republish two books by Sergei Volf. But it is not in the rules of Ilya Bernstein to simply republish books - he actually publishes them anew, looking for illustrators. He read Wolf, then Popov, and decided to make a series: "All these writers entered literature after the 20th Congress, most of them were somehow familiar, friendly, many of them are mentioned in his notebooks by Sergei Dovlatov."

But the main thing that the publisher notes is that in children's literature these writers did not set themselves "children's tasks." After all, in fact, children's literature is a bright plot, an interesting plot that does not let the reader go, funny characters, an obligatory didactic component. But for these authors, something else became the main thing - the interaction of words in the text. The word has become the main character. They didn't lower the bar in any way by talking to the child reader about all sorts of things.

Now there are eight books in the series, including "Look - I'm growing up" and "The most beautiful horse" by Boris Almazov, "We are all not handsome" by Valery Popov, "Tusya" by Alexander Krestinsky, "My good dad" by Viktor Golyavkin and "We are Kostik” by Inga Petkevich, “Somehow it turned out stupidly” by Sergey Wolf and “What's what ...” by Vadim Frolov. By the way, the story of Frolov, famous in our time, published now back in 1966, is still included in the compulsory extracurricular reading programs in Japanese schools, in the USA the author is called "Russian Salinger". And here, as Bernstein said, after the reprinting of the book, they recently refused to put it in a prominent place in one of the prestigious bookstores, citing the fact that "its labeling "12+" does not coincide with too adult content." The story is a growing up story

A 13-year-old teenager whose family has a dramatic conflict: the mother, having fallen in love with another man, leaves home, leaving her son and three-year-old daughter with her husband. The boy is trying to figure out what's going on...

Boris Almazov's book "Look - I'm growing up" was marked "6+". For those who did not read it in childhood, let me remind you that the action takes place in a post-war pioneer camp near Leningrad, where children rest, one way or another traumatized by the blockade war, evacuation, and the loss of loved ones. It is impossible to leave the territory of the camp - mine clearance is all around, and not far from the captured Germans are restoring the bridge. One of the boys, who nevertheless left the territory, got acquainted with the prisoner and ... saw him as a man. But his friends don't get it...

Ilya Bernstein notes that the Native Speech series did not initially involve commenting and scientific apparatus. But the publisher wondered: what was the gap between what the author thought and what he was able to say? The books were written in the sixties, the writers had a lot to say, but not everything. Worked external and internal censorship. So the book "Tusya" by Alexander Krestinsky - a story about a little boy who in the second half of the thirties lives with his mother and father in a large communal Leningrad apartment, included a later story, written already in 2004 in Israel a year before the author's death. "Brothers". And this is actually the same story of a boy, only now Alexander Krestinsky speaks directly about repressions, and about arrests, and about what kind of hard labor one of his brothers went through and how another died. This story is no longer accompanied by illustrations, but by family photographs from the Krestinsky archive.

Boris Almazov's book The Most Beautiful Horse also includes two of the author's later works, Thin Rowan and Zhirovka, where Almazov tells the story of his family. They are also accompanied by family photographs.

Bernstein at the publishing house "Scooter" makes another book series“How it was”, the purpose of which is to tell modern teenagers about the Great Patriotic War honestly, sometimes as harshly as possible. The authors are again people of those times who have gone through the war - Viktor Dragunsky, Bulat Okudzhava, Vadim Shefner, Vitaly Semin, Maria Rolnikayte, Yitzhak Meras. And now in every book in the series piece of art supplemented by an article by a historian, presenting today's view of the events described.

To the question of how much modern children and adolescents need these books, how they are read and will be read, the publisher answered as follows: to whom it is addressed today. I don’t have any special mission, maybe these books will help you understand what is happening today and make your choice.”

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