Narrative strategies in Mikhail Elizarov's collection of short prose “We Went Out for a Smoke for 17 Years”

The article is devoted to the narrative features of Mikhail Elizarov's collection of short prose "We Went Out for a Smoke for 17 Years". The aim of article is to show the originality of the author's narrative strategy in the works placed in the book. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that it attempts a holistic literary analysis of the collection from the point of view of the author's narrative strategies. In order to achieve the set goal, the structural method and the method of intertextual analysis are used in the work. In Elizarov, in comparison with other contemporary Russian writers, intertext acquires greater weight. The unreliability of the narrator also becomes an important part of the poetics of the collection. In Yelizarov's stories, the narrator combines the traits of the biographical author, the narrator, and the narrator. A large part of the book is occupied, on the one hand, by far from reality fiction, on the other hand, by documentaryism. Elizarov creates a strong link with the literary tradition of the past: one can trace the intersections with A. P. Chekhov; there is an obvious connection with the works of Nikolai Gogol, Alexander Pushkin, as well as with the novel "The Sun of the Dead" by I. S. Shmelyov. The book is not so much a collection as a separate work, in which it is possible to identify a single course of the plot, with retrospection and a view from the future, a single hero / storyteller / narrator / author. At the same time, the method of narration changes from story to story. A special place in the book is given to binary oppositions, which often turn out to be the centre of a particular story. The opposition "past / present" runs through the whole book, the author develops the opposition "East / West", the opposition "native / native" becomes important, and through the opposition "intellectual / common man" the narrator tries to find out who he is and what his place in the global world is. The connection with the literary tradition of the past, reflected in the principles of narration, in the themes, conflicts and images of the collection, allows both the book and the personality of the writer to become an important link in the literary process.

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