More than six years have already passed since the moment when the writer and journalist Peter Weil left this world. But book market analysts have noted with confidence a steady increase in reader interest in this author. And this is another reason to take a closer look at it. The writer Peter Weil, whose life spans six decades, managed to say a lot about Russia, about the countries of the former Soviet Union and about the far corners of the Earth, where he happened to visit.
Some facts from the biography
The future writer Peter Weil 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 employee of the popular newspaper "Soviet Youth". Here Peter Weil, whose biography later intersected with many prominent people of our time, met Alexander Genis - his permanent co-author.
In the future, their literary duet will become widely known. Peter Weil himself, whose photo with the author adorns the back cover of several books, considered himself obligated to Alexander Genis as a significant part of his literary success.
Emigration
In 1977, the writer moved to a permanent residence overseas. In New York, Peter Weil collaborates as a journalist with such well-known publications as The New Russian Word and The New American, edited by Sergey Dovlatov. The writer works hard and is widely published. 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 provided a rather high level of literature, which was published in these publications from the beginning of the century.
Here, Peter Weil met the famous poet Joseph Brodsky, who emigrated to the United States three years before him. Their friendship lasted until the last days of the Nobel laureate.
Radio Liberty
Collaboration 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, Peter Weil moved to Prague to the post of deputy director of the Russian service of Radio Liberty. First, it runs information programs, and then thematic ones. The writer leads on the radio a series of programs "Heroes of the Time", reads his literary works and travel essays, written in collaboration with Alexander Genis. The Russian edition of Radio Liberty, under his leadership, is becoming a prominent center of intellectual attraction for everyone who speaks and writes in Russian, regardless of country of residence.
Authors from all countries and territories, into which the Soviet Union collapsed after 1991, collaborate with the Weil editorial staff. Just a simple listing 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, Peter Weil heads the Russian edition of Radio Liberty.
Books by Peter Weil
Of all 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 - "Genius of the place" and "Map of the Homeland." In them, Peter Weil reflects on the conditionality of the history of Russia with its grandiose geographical spaces. Of course, all the essays are written under the impression of the author’s travels through all these spaces.
In the process of his wanderings through the
post-Soviet space, the writer often found himself in difficult situations and
hot spots. It is primarily 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. He was personally acquainted with many poets.
In collaboration with Alexander Genis
In a creative duet with his old friend and co-author, Peter Weil wrote large cycles of cultural essays on Russia and America: “The Sixties. The World of Soviet Man”, “Lost Paradise”, “Americana” and “Russian Cuisine in Exile”. Situations in Russian literature are devoted to cycles of literary articles "Contemporary Russian prose" and "Native speech." All essays by Weil and Genis are characterized by lively spoken language and vivid imagery. These books are easy to read and do not at all give the impression of a routine literary criticism characteristic of a university course in Russian literature.