Books like Moscow to the End of the Line

Genre of drinking songs is known since the ancient times and by writing his drinking poem Venedikt Erofeev managed to widen boundaries of the genre significantly. Moscow to the End of the Line is written in a gloomy but frilly vers libre.The protagonist awakens to a fine and crisp morning full of freshness…Oh, that morning burned in the heart! Oh, the illusory nature of calamity. Oh, the irretrievable! What’s worse about this burden which no one has yet called by any name, what’s worse – paralysis, or nausea? Nervous exhaustion or mortal sorrow somewhere in the region of the heart? But, if that all equal, then all the same what’s worse about it – tetanus, or fever?And using commuter rail the hero embarks on the epochal suburban journey. And some local travels can be much more exotic than any voyages around the world… While travelling one may encounter a lot of intriguing fellow commuters…The other passengers looked at me almost indifferently with their round, vacant eyes.I like that. I like that my country’s people have such empty, bulging eyes. This instills in me a feeling of legitimate pride. You can imagine what the eyes are like where everything is bought and sold – deeply hidden, secretive, predatory and frightened. Devaluation, unemployment, pauperism… People look at you distrustfully, with restless anxiety and torment. That’s the kind of eyes they have in the world of Filthy Lucre.And the travelled distance corresponds to the consumed liquor… And the more one drinks the stranger becomes the world and the more enigmatic turns reality…If I should ever have any children, I’ll hang on their wall a portrait of the Procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, so that they will grow up neat and clean. Procurator Pontius Pilate standing there washing his hands – that’s the right kind of portrait.Even the most hopeless boozers must have their romantic ideals…