Writer Mikhail Uspensky: biography

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

Famous Russian writer Mikhail Uspensky recently left this world. He lived only 64 years. But there are his books that many have yet to read.

Biography Facts

The future writer, Uspensky Mikhail Glebovich, was born in 1950 in the ancient Altai city of Barnaul. The young man showed a taste for literature quite early, as well as a desire to realize himself in this direction. His first poetic publication took place in the provincial periodical press, when Mikhail was only seventeen years old. This largely determined his future life path.

Mikhail Uspensky received his professional education at the Faculty of Journalism of Irkutsk University, one of the oldest and most respected educational institutions in Siberia.

Into great literature

The road to success is rarely easy. Mikhail Uspensky, whose books are today recognized both by the literary community and by a wide circle of readers, felt himself an accomplished writer only in 1988, when his first book, a collection of short stories "The Evil Eye", was published in Krasnoyarsk. And before that, there were long years of hard work, odd jobs and rarepublications, mainly in Siberian periodicals. But the stories from the collection were well received by both ordinary readers and literary critics. Some of them began to live an independent life - they were performed from the stage by conversational artists.

This first serious success became a good stimulus for the writer for further creativity. And the opportunity to change the direction of the vector of their creative forces towards science fiction, as well as what is commonly referred to by the term "fantasy". At that time, this genre was not a widespread literary phenomenon. The public was just getting started with Tolkien's classics.

Genre synthesis and semantic diversity

Mikhail Uspensky himself, whose books were most often referred to as science fiction by critics, refused to recognize clear boundaries between genres of literature. Such separation, according to the author, significantly reduced the potential of the initial impulse to creativity, with which the writer opens a blank sheet of paper or touches the computer keyboard. And the synthesis of different genres opens up completely new, previously unexplored expressive possibilities for the creator. It is precisely by the embodiment of these principles and approaches that such an atypical representative of Russian science fiction as Mikhail Uspensky most clearly showed himself in Russian science fiction. All the author's books are characterized by the fact that they do not have a clear boundary between fantasy and reality, between sophisticated fiction and everyday life.

Exactlywith these qualities they are interesting to a thoughtful reader who loves intrigue and unpredictability of plot twists. The most popular among readers are such novels by Mikhail Uspensky as "Look into the eyes of monsters" and "March of the Ecclesiastes".

In the science fiction community

Any writer is pleased to see that he is readable and understood by the public to whom his works are addressed. But even more significant is to receive recognition from fellow writers who work in the same direction and are competitors in the struggle for the attention of readers. Mikhail Uspensky in this sense was a happy man - his services to his favorite genre of literature were recognized in the community of science fiction writers at the highest level. Back in 1993, he was honored with his personal award by the most outstanding coryphaeus of the genre - Boris Natanovich Strugatsky. The honorary regalia was called the "Bronze Snail". And she was far from the only one. Moreover, Boris Strugatsky blessed his younger colleague in terms of age and position in the hierarchy to continue the cycle of classic novels about the World of Noon. This story was called "Snake's Milk". It continues the themes and images from the books of the Strugatsky brothers.

And the last significant work that Mikhail Uspensky managed to complete was the novel "Bogatyrism of Kostya Zhikharev". This is a book in the fantasy genre on Slavic themes. The characters of Russian folk tales and ancient Slavic epics are widely represented in it.

Publicposition

For all the recklessness of immersion in the world of literary images, Mikhail Uspensky could not stay away from acute social conflicts and socio-political processes in Russian society. The intensity of political passions and contradictions reached a particularly high degree in the winter of 2011-2012, during the parliamentary and presidential elections. These days, Mikhail could often be seen at opposition rallies and marches. He belonged to the number of unconditional opponents of the political regime existing in the country. At the same time, it is even a little surprising that in his literary works Mikhail Uspensky almost does not indicate his political preferences in any way.