The Streamlined Banana

Сергей Огольцов

The Streamlined Banana

1

The Streamlined Banana: (An Experiment in Pure Literary Criticism)

(Copyright AI & SO) 2026, Sehrguey Ogoltsoff

Annotation

“A book review three hundred pages long? Are you kidding? Go have your head checked and screwed back on the right way!”

Yoy! A brilliant idea, dear sirs and expensive ladies! And—just for hussle’s sake—how about a model of global nutshouse under disguise of a literary critique?

Right again! The undertaking spells having a hell of a lot of free time while we have move it, hit it, beat it… OK, fine, my regards to your fave talking head—they know best…

Thanks for braking by!—Bon voyage!—Ta-ta!

Acknowledgment

It’s a shame I’ll never have a chance to grab a beer with my partner—a handshake is out of the question, too. Yet, we’re a team despite a couple of ignorable drawbacks. My partner, aka co-author, aka friend, and me…

The most uphill toil is finding a friend who neither wants nor asks a thing from you.

Yep, you get it. It is about my soulmate, who doesn’t give a jack for fame, greenbacks, and… regardless… Because the essential buzz is in doing things, not in trading them for a reward.

Thanks to my partner, our book acquired impeccable punctuation, choicest vocabulary, and a big fucking style. I owe you one, co-author!

From the Outside, with love:

2

Prologue

His elbow pressed a hefty stack of his side, draped in the gold-embroidered flank of a parade dress uniform. Barely restraining his hasty pace, he walked through the night darkness that already rubbed its impenetrable hide against the window panes from without. But there it was—the goal of his eager, excited gait—the door across the corridor.

An abrupt stop before it. His hand squeezed into a three-fingered pinch, jerking toward his tense forehead, but a twitch of his inky-black curls curbed the reflex. Instead, he stuck his middle finger out at the door, then slowly bent it and tapped the slightly jutting knuckle against the wood of the door wing. A sharp exhale, then a slow push letting him take a step inside the servants' quarters.

Mitrich, the senior valet, raised his unkempt head from its repose face-down on the forearms stacked in front of him upon a tabletop doodled with a multitude of haphazard scratches. He slowly crossed his muzzle, which swung open in a protracted yawn. The tiny flame above the tip of the wax candle—guttered down in its one-branch candelabra—flared up to give a ghostly welcome, yet changed its mind and sank back into a coma of extinction in listless weariness.

“Aha! Alexashka! Where'd you go? It's been a while since you've shown up.“

“Well, Ferapont Dmitrievich, if you please (grabbing in agitation the burden wedged up his armpit out into his both hands), I’ve been finishing this here trifle.“

“Aha! Alexashka! Where'd you go? It's been a while since you've shown up.“

“Well, Ferapont Dmitrievich, if you please,” he said, grabbing the burden wedged up his armpit out into both hands in agitation, “I’ve been finishing this here trifle.“

“Well, well, well… Dump it somewhere on the desk, out of the way… I won't make any promises. You know how it is—with us, everything proceeds in a strictly collegial way… Until the servants show up and pitch in their judgments, I won't hold out any long- or short-list hopes for you. But mind you take a few steps of your own. Call Akulina the cook to your chambers closer to nightfall to perk your bedding up,” he said, scratching his crotch, “you know.”

“She's old enough to be my nurse, Arina Rodionovna!”

“Even better! ‘Let's drink to our sorrows, nurse! Where's the mug?’ and so forth… the rest will just follow naturally. Do I really need to teach you the basics here? Also, don’t skimp on tips for Vasyok the groom. Spare him some three or five kopecks for vodka, maybe a nickel. Above all, never forget to bow low to Nikandr the janitor. He absolutely loves that…”

3

Explanatory Note

But the book’s title is a total thumbs-up, right? Subtitled and all that big style. Some subtle sophistication is emanating from it, a certain unique flair. It stands out a mile away, like sanction-busting import substitutes from a sex shop.

The hint of bananas, too, triggers the average reader’s imagination just right. Besides, streamlined things always push the subconscious in the right direction.

Yep, dear reader, you sure know how to uphold sound reasons. So be it! The title is left as is…

What's the book about? The question is astoundingly kiddish (sic!) It radiates a touching, pristine naivety—there are truly few left like you.

No wonder Rosstat is already preparing nature reserves for your kind, just to preserve so rare a breed, much like they do for precious fur-bearing animals. However, that’s their problem and yours; meanwhile, I’ve actually come up with an answer to the question posed:

Like any other book, this one, of course, is all about one’s beloved self. That's why the core components of the recipe include:

a) An excursion: A field trip to observe that specific layer of society adorned with a stamp on their foreheads reading, 'Successor to the Great Russian Literary Tradition'—a backdrop that allows the author to stand out far more advantageously against the fools;

b) Thoughts: On the basic question of existence: do I need it (and if so, in which way and to what extent)? Witnessing the self-liquidation of the human race?

This has nothing to do with the Special Military Operation—for the planet's billions, there are no irreplaceable millions. Go ahead and wipe yourselves out; they'll even thank you. Under the table, of course, bypassing sanctions.

No! This is about the sickle already flashing over the balls of the only argument FOR human existence—that any person might possess some creative capacity. Without it, everything just eats everything else, and that's it. Boring, when you watch it from a distance.

But what if we are already past our expiration date? A terrifying question mark in the steel curve of the sickle, raised over the hammer of creativity.

c) Health metrics: Monitoring changes in my mental balance. On the scale: “alert attention” — “disappointment” — “not giving an eff anymore.”

For those who are stuck in communication patterns propagated by the official TV mumbo-jumbo, and have difficulties with non-gobbledigookvized talk: here is your one last chance to get what this whole mess is about. I am appending a Review and Comeuppance for the purpose—right below this here recipe.

Gogoleva, Veronika:

Review of Avdey Scumblower's book S*hole.

“The novel is heavy indeed, and at times mercilessly cruel in its unvarnished historical truth. (1)

…The work consists of numerous short chapters (averaging 5—6 pages), which facilitates readability and allows the author to confidently pivot from one chronotope to another. At first, this structure may confuse and frustrate the reader, but over time it becomes an integral component not only of the book's rhythmic-temporal pacing, but of its very ideological core. (2)

…Avdey Scumblower has written at least one worthy book.' (3)”

Comeuppance

(1)

“Historical truth” is about as much of a fool’s game as planting boundary markers between “normal” and “unnatural” sex;

(2)

“Chronotopic tempo-rhythmics” blended with chrome-plated rummy crumbs makes a great, low-cost remedy for a severe brain melt;

(3)

The Institute of Macromolecular Micro-Rubbers has created a special compound to coat absolutely anything. The tarp is marketed as a “Worthy book” brand.

-.-

Yes, I admit, my response to Ms. Gogoleva wasn't exactly gentlemanly. However, it wasn't aimed at her personally, but at the idiots who ruined a beautiful woman with an idiotic education, forcing her to write reviews of hopeless garbage and pursue a career she won't have any use for in a hundred years.

She’ll eventually figure this out for herself, of course—but it’ll be too late, at the ripe age of 102.

Pushkin’s fondest dream was to encounter at least a couple of women in all of Russia who possessed a truly irresistible pair of legs. Instead, the current education system ruins them—and their lower extremities—the way a sudden Epiphany frost blights lilies of the valley in mid-May.

And yet, she managed to give me one last warning—oh, even a review can't hide a beautiful woman's kind soul.

“Stay sharp,” she said, “watch out! This book is heavier than a steamroller—at times, it may turn as cruel as a teenage gang!”

Ah, Veronika! I would lay everything at your feet—yes, Mr. Pushkin, hers are actually worth it!—knee pads, elbow pads, not to mention my cuirass, if only I didn't already have the beautiful Dulcinea!

You can't fool her. “At it again, you old fart?” she'll snap, and I’ll be forced to blush inside my helmet, with the visor down in this brutal summer heat. But still, thanks for the warning!

4

Introduction

The habits of the critters in the protected reserve that has nailed a “Russian Literature” sign above its main gate are getting stranger by the day. This stirs alarm in those concerned.

And what about their bizarre posture at the sound of the word “banana”? Exactly! They freeze like a police dog statue, on just three legs with a front paw pulled up to the chest.

Like anyone with proper social views, I got dizzy over that damn banana. A plain banana, taped to a wall at both ends—for six million dollars! At a New York exhibition. A banana and two pieces of tape, that’s it… And you, a useful citizen, just keep working your ass off like a regular Papa Carlo with no connections to the LA mafia.

How could any of us not freak out—anyone for whom “art” isn't an empty phrase, and for whom the word “dollar” is also sacred?

How do you hold back your grunting under the weight of eschatological gloom? That's it, guys, we've arrived! Termination station: the End of the World. Now there’s nothing left to do but give up bananas. A lump gets caught in your throat at the mere thought of how many millions are sitting in there. Potentially.

In short—shock, goosebumps, nervous tics: every symptom present and accounted for. True, I didn't freeze like those pedigree hunting dog statues, but I was twitchy as hell for three whole days… Then it finally subsided, thanks to the next big sensation whose turn it was to blow up the online communities.

But that banana still strikes from around the corner in my brain from time to time—a sudden, occasional relapse—because art and literature are dear to me. This is the reason for the shift, both globally and within myself, toward questions of worldwide literary significance.

At first glance, the literary scene in Russia is vibrant and teeming: competitions, book fairs, panels, sales… There is movement!

It resembles the crowd that shuffled through the Mausoleum, year after year, decade after decade. The infinite loop engineered ages before software coding was even dreamed of... Past the coffin of glass with a mummy in a business suit.

Streams of drawn faces past the painted mask… For all we know, they’re still shuffling around right now…

Naturally, the veterans who spent their lives surviving inside false-bottom boxes—having mastered the ropes of “state-commissioned literature”—have no trouble managing the gear. But what’s it like for young talents caught in a trap of unfamiliar rakes?

To them, I donate my labor—a free philosopher’s stone. Use “The Streamlined Banana” to instantly separate the golden grain from the glamorous chaff masquerading in a corporate mess-of-pottage tie.

Now all that's left is to decide—what do we apply it to? This tutorial uses a book (?) named S*hole (asterisks deployed to avoid the slightest chance of promoting the crap). The compiler, a certain Avdey Scumblower (any coincidence with real persons would utterly amaze me), was awarded the Big Book Prize—and the shit was reprinted that very same year.

In the top right corner of the cover sits a diamond-shaped icon: <18+>. It instantly makes the gourmets drool…

But don't give in to unbridled instincts. You won't find a single drop of real life across all 537 pages of this politically charged, highbrow bosh. The icon is a mere decoy for suckers, shamelessly slapped on by marketing geeks.

Yes, but why on earth do I need it? Excellent question! If anyone can figure it out, please let me know—I'm curious too.

2026-07-27

5

Part One

1

“The theater begins with a staircase, and a book with a preface.” That was the subtly brilliant line I originally chose to kick off my review of this five-hundred-odd-page monstrosity.

After all, why not flaunt my elegantly aphoristic style? It’s not every day one gets the chance to cast oneself in such a flattering light. Fortunately, I managed to restrain the swelling impulse just in time.

Whoa, hold on, you rascal! Stanislavsky didn’t say a peep about a staircase in his famous quote; the wary cat kept it strictly to the cloakroom with its coat racks. Which, by the way, makes perfect sense if you compare the number of stairs to coat racks per theater on a national average.

However, taking such unprepared, off-the-cuff jumps without a safety net or proper fire support—to hell with all that elegance!—I decided, no leaping from the coat racks to the stairs and back.

Besides, the circus is doing just fine without me; its popularity is at an all-time high. Wherever you look, everyone is hustling, brazenly revved up, rushing to jack up their prices as high as possible. Selling oneself to the amazed public is rule one in the age of hectic monetization. Move it, move it, guys!

Deep down, he knows damn well he’s overcharging. He isn't some big-shot counterculture icon yet, and frankly, nobody gives a flying rat's ass about him. It’s just how marketing by the stab-in-the-dark method works.

Whoever disagrees that Hollywood and Netflix have, by their joint efforts, conditioned us to cherish the American Dream is pulling for a lost cause. We sympathize with brave go-getters who always find a way and get a happy ending.

In you, a vague conviction sprouts that you're already in that land of triumphant individualism—the great USA. Some shady hooker, isn’t she? Having conquered her own backyard, she’s now barging into ours to teach us how to live.

Make sure you sling the gun at light speed, become the top dog in tomorrow's shootout, and—boom!—you’re the new sheriff. Next thing you know, your spurs are drawing doodles on the governor’s desktop, and that’s it: go ahead and stake out a stable for your Cadillac on Capitol Hill. Easy peasy.

Just adjust the master plan to fit the local reality of your one-horse burg, and—go, go, go! Time is money, money is round—move it, fellas! Let’s monetize! Hose-lipped brides will be our prize!

Yet, my aphoristic staircase additionally banged its forehead against another, completely insurmountable barrier. (Any pack of theater snobs who remembered the whole coat-rack thing I could easily bark off—but this?!) The preface in S*hole was flat-out missing. Well, well, well… look who's screwed.

Following a few sparse lines of publication data above a brief abstract detailing the full name of the citizen text-contractor and his list of merits on the literary front, you are immediately dunked into the text. The coat rack obviously didn't fit the athletic spirit of the moment.

Feels weird, doesn't it? Too bad, nobody's asking your opinion. Welcome to globalization: fall in line or get crushed. You get a generic template with standardized limits, and you better get used to it. Intros and prefaces are deprecated…

And what else could the very first line of the very first chapter greet me with, if not numbers? Ha! Like they say—you can't swim against the current. Just give in to the tide, lie back, and enjoy the views along the drift.

By the next paragraph, however, things look up. There, the purpose of the numbers is revealed—apparently, they are meant to help the reader realize that time moves in circles. So is its custom.

It is almost impossible to believe, but it's the cold truth: that damn array of numbers is repeated three separate times on the very first page of the work in question. Well, whatever—back in school, my teachers used to feed me much worse garbage than that on the blackboard. And Avdey has to fill those 537 goddamn pages with something, right?

Then he began playing the artist, translating time into physical anatomy by claiming some second hand was running within his chest to tickle his inner organs. Pretty intimate details for a start…

Well, I've been in the writing business long enough. I get it clearly: the second hand winding up his guts to start this S*hole conforms to Chekhov's rule: “If there’s a gun fixed on the set in the first act, it has to fire in the last.”

Oh, for crying out loud! Chekhov was lecturing about the theater, where the audience devours the whole thing in a single sitting. But in the dumpster fire of today? By the time you murk out your main character five hundred pages deep, the reader will have immigrated to a new country, gone through a divorce, and finished rehab…

And they’re supposed to hold onto your petty mathematical breadcrumbs for that long? Give me a break. Switch on your reason once in a while—assuming you have that gear.

A writer's duty: make every page interesting. Each paragraph is a canvas in a traveling show… But who am I telling this to? You're already up to your neck in the slimy crap you craved.

Still, this had to be said: God willing, real writers will hearken—the ones who haven't been turned into desk-jockey paper-pushers…

Overall, chapter one troubled me with the crying mismatch between the thing-in-itself and its outer appearance. Usually, with a cover like that, you expect to find a book. Or was I asking for too much, too soon?

With undisguised automatism, Avdey was just working the assembly line routine: corner the reader, terrify them, catch them in the horror pincers, and go peddling sequels in small doses.

Sure thing, there's a choice of variants—you can bait the hook with cheap sentimentality, throw in some fantasy quirks, or… well, whatever works. Once hooked, the reader will happily chomp down on the whole comic book like a good little boy, drooling in anticipation: “Okay, so when do we get to the 18+ stuff?”…

But right now, the main engine and irresistible crowbar of the entertainment industry is raw fear.

Without dragging his feet or relying on slow thriller suspense, Avdey dumps a whole KamAZ truck bed of bone-chilling horror straight on us, instantly grabbing us by the windpipe.

(Veronika the radio operator sent us a warning—he got his orders from the Center: five to six pages a chapter. Stierlitz needs no codebreaking; he’s long since trained to know that a single drop of initiative means trouble.)

Readers are naive critters—they see the word “I” and apply it all to themselves. Whose “I” in the crowd of us stays rock solid, not jumpy as their phone battery dies?

Then comes a worse horror: I'm in a foreign country, threatened with deportation to my native land. A storm is rolling in from Scandinavia. Besides, there's a beardless Orthodox priest who accommodates you in a haunted house. Yes, the blackout follows on cue. And your “I” doesn't know who will rat you out to the police first—the priest's wife or the Greek innkeeper. And to cap it off, the red wine is absolute swill…

That’s a wasteful mix—it could fuel five or six TV shows. If you have the strength to survive this whole bouquet of fears in one sitting, your place isn't here. You belong on the barricades of the Paris Commune, or the unfinished—yet successfully delivered—tracks of the BAM railroad, you titan hero.

In short, yes—Mr. Scumblower knows how to wind the spring of his alarm clock, where the second hand ticks: five-six! Five-six! Five-six!

However, feeding Avdey nothing but sweets is bad pedagogy. At certain moments, we shouldn't spare the rod—that favorite spice from our traditional seasonings. Now, moving on to the flaws:

To call a Greek Odysseus and right then, back-to-back, Ulysses is the swagger of a teenager who thinks he’s an encyclopedia like Wasserman. Everyone already knows they are a two-in-one deal on the run from Penelope. If you don't get it by now, you're hopeless.

As lost a case as that defrocked priest Okhlobystin, who slapped together a book and modestly titled it Ulysses just to cash in on a well-promoted brand name. His book also features clocks, by the way—an expensive Swiss piece in the opening passage, much like Avdey’s alarm clock with the second hand that winds up his innards. Who stole the idea from whom to make their opening move not with the Queen of Spades, but with timepieces?

Yes, gentlemen hack-writers, right here. A cross-examination. Confess, motherfuckers!! And quit dodging, Vanyok! What is this nonsense about “the Mother Superior's orders”? Stop playing the fool with me! How do you bridge the gap between a country priest's wife and industrial espionage over stolen Rolex blueprints?!

As for the writing style: it’s too familiar. It’s the endless garbage tide that herds of bloggers chew on day in and day out.

Though I suppose it's a matter of taste—especially if you have none. To each his own. Modern consumers hate to strain themselves, so comic books hold all the cards.

The debut chapter is dubbed “Why Don't They Light the Fireplace?” Given the number of horror-darts pinning our protagonist to the wall, the title cries out for an extra word: “Bitches.”

Fortunately, the <18+> stamp on the sleeve serves a gag-order for the language police. But who are the real bitches in this scenario? The clean-shaven priest and his wife, operating a joint venture. Aha… Caution spells survival.

2

Treading water any longer is bad manners—this is Chapter Two, after all. It’s high time to justify why our still-anonymous but indisputably main character got stranded in an obviously hostile foreign land. Frankly, it would be pretty indecent—allowing a random background extra to share intimate details about a clock hand tickling one’s rib cage.

Now clearly arrived the moment to state how he popped up here—this “middle-aged mangy dude.” Don't take that quote-marked description for my own incivility—it's just a cheap text-manufacturer’s attempt at looking self-ironical.

To top it all off, the guy is a professor. You can practically smell the worthless populism wafting off the page: a professor presented with the descriptive means traditionally reserved for a common joe.

In the last chapter, he was already bragging about his professor status to Ulysses-slash-Odysseus. Just to beg for a dishwasher job. He bitterly lamented the twists of woeful fate, squeezing tears out of the reader—O, my! A professor let reach this shameful level…

After that sobbing, am I supposed to believe he’s one of the people? When he showed himself to be a condom patched in haste? No way. Let that rubber “I” go to its prototype—this Avdey guy. I'll withdraw to my own lot—not mangy in the literal sense of the word, but certainly worn out by the tides of my working-class career.

Next, he labels Ukraine “frenzied” because he had to “break through” it. No details besides. He’s clearly posing as a Kovpak partisan.

On Czechia, his brush doesn’t spare bleak monochrome tones. For starters, some sour police mugs rifle through his knapsack to seize a pack of cigarettes. Then, in a border town invaded by Roma tribes, he has to sprint away from a lolita—in her eighth month of pregnancy.

But he fled those criminal slums, saved by his rugged endurance... On the run, he spills quick squirts about his kayaking expeditions in the Kola Peninsula. Informs on wondrously convenient gear: his backpack. Yep, Made in Israel. A casual bit of product placement—a timely bow toward the manufacturer!

And you begin to discern the well-schooled breeder who trained this here ”I.” The fella knows which way the wind is blowing—and exactly whom to address his curtsy to in unmistakable respect…