Journalist and writer Peter Vail

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

It's been more than six years since the writer and journalist Peter Vail left this world. But analysts of the book market confidently note the steady growth of reader interest in this author. And this is another reason to take a closer look at it. Writer Pyotr Vail, whose years of life span six decades, managed to say a lot about Russia, about the countries of the post-Soviet space and about the far corners of the Earth, where he had a chance to visit.

Some facts from the biography

The future writer Pyotr Vail was born in September 1949 in Riga, in the family of an officer of the Soviet army. Here, in Latvia, he graduated from high school. He received his higher education in the capital of the Soviet Union, at the editorial department of the Moscow Polygraphic Institute. After returning to his hometown, he was a literary collaborator for the popular newspaper Soviet Youth. Here Peter Vail, whose biography later intersected with many prominent people of our time, met Alexander Genis, his permanent collaborator.

In the future, their literary duo will become widely known. Pyotr Vail himself, whose photo with a co-author adorns the back of the cover of several books, considered himself obligedAlexander Genis a significant part of his literary success.

Emigration

In 1977, the writer moved to permanent residence overseas. In New York, Peter Vail collaborates as a journalist with such well-known publications as New Russian Word and New American, edited by Sergei Dovlatov. The writer works hard and publishes widely. Newspapers and magazines in Russian were traditional centers of attraction for the intellectual and cultural life of all three waves of Russian emigration. And this circumstance ensured a fairly high level of literature that has been published in these publications since the beginning of the century.

Here Pyotr Vail met the famous poet Joseph Brodsky, who emigrated to the United States three years earlier than him. Their friendship lasted until the last days of the Nobel laureate.

Radio Liberty

Cooperation with the famous radio station "Freedom" the writer began in 1984. And soon he headed the New York bureau of the Russian edition of this radio. In 1995, Petr Vail moved to Prague to the post of deputy director of the Russian service of Radio Liberty. First, it is in charge of information programs, and then thematic ones. The writer leads a series of programs "Heroes of Time" on the radio, reads his literary works and travel essays, written in collaboration with Alexander Genis. The Russian edition of Radio Liberty, under his leadership, becomesa noticeable center of intellectual attraction for all who speak and write in Russian, regardless of their country of residence.

Authors from all countries and territories into which the Soviet Union collapsed after 1991 collaborate with Weill's editors. Just a simple enumeration of writers, artists and musicians, whose voices sounded on the air of this radio station, would take a lot of time. In the last years of his life, Pyotr Vail headed the Russian edition of Radio Liberty.

Books by Peter Weil

From everything that is written by Weil, it is not so easy to single out fiction in its purest form, with fictional characters and situations. The so-called "literature of fact" brought fame and recognition to the author - historical and geographical essays, travel notes and literary essays on a wide variety of topics. The most popular are the author's collections of essays based on geography - "The Genius of the Place" and "Map of the Motherland". In them, Pyotr Vail reflects on the conditionality of the history of Russia by its grandiose geographical spaces. Of course, all the essays were written under the impression of the author's travels through all these spaces.

In the course of his wanderings in the post-Soviet space, the writer often found himself in difficult situations and hot spots. First of all, we are talking about the first Chechen war. No less significant is the book "Poems about me", where the author sets his priorities in the hierarchy of Russian poetry of the twentieth century.century. He was personally acquainted with many poets.

Co-authored with Alexander Genis

In a creative duet with his old friend and co-author Pyotr Vail wrote large cycles of cultural essays about Russia and America: "The Sixties. The World of the Soviet Man", "Paradise Lost", "Americana" and "Russian Cuisine in Exile". The situations in Russian literature are devoted to the cycles of literary articles "Modern Russian Prose" and "Native Speech". All essays by Weil and Genis are characterized by a lively colloquial language and vivid imagery. These books are easy to read and do not at all give the impression of routine literary criticism, characteristic of a university course in Russian literature.