The first years
Writer Viktor Pelevin was born on November 22, 1962 in Moscow in the family of a teacher of the military department of Moscow State Technical University. Bauman Oleg Pelevin. The exact profession of her mother Zinaida is unknown. Some sources report that he was a deli manager, others that he taught English at school. At first, the family lived in a communal apartment on Tverskoy Boulevard, and then in Northern Chertanov. Rumor has it that the author still lives there.
At the same time as Mikhail Efremov, Anton Tabakov and other famous people, he studied at secondary school number 31 with a bias towards English. Actor Andrei Lukyanov spoke about this in an interview with TVC:
“Everyone was at our school number 31: Misha Efremov, Yulia Rutberg, Anton Tabakov and Viktor Pelevin. Nikita Sergeevich’s granddaughter Nikita Khrushchev also studied in a parallel class.
After graduating from school in 1979, Pelevin entered the Moscow Institute of Energy Engineering (MPEI) at the Faculty of Electrification and Industrial Automation, after which he worked as an engineer at the Department of Electricity Transport. He defended his diploma in “Electrical equipment of an asynchronous traction drive trolleybus”. In 1989, Pelevin entered the Gorky Literary Institute, but was expelled from the second year with the phrase “for leaving the institute.”
Publications in journals
To become a member of the Journalists’ Union, Pelevin found a job at Bilim ve Din magazine. In 2001, Nezavisimaya Gazeta published a short autobiography, which Pelevin added to his application to join the Union:
“I, Pelevin Viktor Olegovich, was born on November 22, 1962 in Moscow. He graduated from secondary school number 31 in 1979. In 1979 he entered the Moscow Institute of Energy Engineering, which he graduated in 1985. He entered MPEI’s full-time graduate school in 1987, where he studied until 1989. He entered Lit in 1989. institute. Gorky. He worked as a staff reporter for Face to Face magazine for one year since 1989. Since then he has collaborated with various newspapers and magazines published in Moscow. December 1, 1993″
The author first published his materials in “Science and Religion” – a short story “The Sorcerer Ignat and the People”, a great article “Divination by Runes, or Ralph Bloom’s Runic Oracle” and a fantastic story “Reenactor”. In 1990, Pelevin’s first story “The Hermit and the Six Fingers” was published in the “Chemistry and Life” magazine. A year later, his story “The Life and Adventures of Cabin Number XII” was published in the same publication.
In 1991, Pelevin published four stories in Knowledge is Power: Crystal World, Ruler, Lunokhod, and Kroeger’s Revelation.
Books and recognition
Pelevin made many useful contacts at the Literary Institute. In particular, he befriended the prose writer Albert Egazarov and the poet Viktor Kulle, who founded the Den publishing house (later renamed Raven and Myth). As an editor, Pelevin edited a three-volume work by the writer and mystic Carlos Castaneda. This author significantly influenced the author’s worldview.
Pelevin’s first collection of short stories, The Blue Lantern, was published in 1991. The book went unnoticed for two years after its publication, and in 1993 the author received the Little Bookstore Award for this book. In 1992, Pelevin published his famous story Omon Ra, which won the Interpresscon and Golden Snail awards, in Znamya magazine. A year later, the author’s novel The Life of Insects was published in Znamya.
In 1993 Pelevin published an article in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, John Fowles and the Tragedy of Russian Liberalism in response to criticism of his work. In the same year he was accepted into the Union of Journalists of Russia. The novel “Chapaev and the Void”, published in 1996, brought the author wide fame. It was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and brought the author the Wanderer 97 Award. In 1998 Pelevin was included in the list of top European young writers according to The New Yorker.
According to a number of sources, Pelevin could earn nearly $10,000 writing before the “Generation P” cult book was published in 1999. The novel has sold over 3.5 million copies worldwide and won a number of awards.
Collaboration with Eksmo
Since the early 2000s, Pelevin’s books have been published by Eksmo publishing house: Numbers, The Werewolf Bible, The Helmet of Fear: Creativity on Theseus and the Minotaur, Empire V, t, SNUFF, Batman Apollo”, “Love for Three Zuckerbrins”, “Watcher “, “Methselah’s Lamp, or the Ultimate Battle of the Chekists with Masons”, “iPhuck 10”, “Secret Views of Fuji”, “Invincible Sun”, “Transhumanism Inc.” and KGBT+.
Despite years of cooperation, Pelevin’s editor at the publishing house, Olga Aminova, admitted in an interview that she had never seen him:
“We call him regularly, but I don’t know what number he called and where this number is stored.”
In 2006, the publishing house released the novel Empire V, which was shortlisted for the Big Book Award. But the text of the work appeared on the network before the official release – Eksmo said it was stolen. Some critics attributed this to the publisher’s marketing gimmick.
Interview
Pelevin’s only video interview was released in 1996 – Canadian-American writer Clark Blaze spoke with the author. Pelevin said in a conversation that local critics classify him as a postmodernist, but he doesn’t know what that might mean because “we didn’t have modernism, and postmodernism came to us after socialist realism.”
Until 2010, the author spoke with journalists quite often – a total of 46 interviews were conducted, according to the website pelevinlive.ru. The second was published on Snob in November 2010.
“I made no commitment to give or not to give interviews. I do what I want,” he told the reporter.
There were rumors on the Internet that the author sold the interview with his new story to Snob, and the editors paid $10,000 for this set. In an interview, Pelevin said that he stopped looking for his name on the Internet because he was “ego surfing. worse than masturbation.” He also said that he does not use drugs and that the plots of the books are “influenced by reality”:
“The truth sure does affect me, but drugs don’t because I don’t like them. Sooner or later there comes a time when the most interesting experiences, like jumping into a well to enjoy weightlessness, aren’t worth a loan interest, so to speak. Drugs don’t seem to have these rates at all. A person does not always understand how and with what he pays.
The alleged photos of Pelevin
In 2021, the Mash Telegram channel reported that the author has been living on Koh Samui, Thailand’s second largest island, for more than a year. The source said Pelevin spent 2017 and 2018 traveling, occasionally returning to Russia “only to transfer from one flight to another.” On November 30, 2019, he allegedly flew from Moscow to Bangkok and did not return.
Mash also released alleged photos of the author and a recording of the reporter’s conversation with the hotel receptionist, who said Viktor Pelevin was staying in room 108. He then forwarded the call to the phone in the guest room, but he did not answer.
One of the last known photographs of Pelevin was taken at the 2001 Literary Symposium in Tokyo. He then stopped attending literary award ceremonies and premieres of movies and plays based on his books.
In October 2021, actor Yura Borisov, made up as Pelevin, appeared on the cover of Rules of Life magazine. While the issue was not yet out, the editor-in-chief of the publication, Sergei Minaev, distributed photos of the fake Pelevin through the Merciless PR man Telegram channel. In August of the same year, The Blueprint published a photo of Pelevin allegedly in 2020. The digital algorithm calculated that the photo was 75% similar to the author’s old photos.