Интервью европейскому журналу Nazar Look 09-12

TM: Valery, you are a Chuvash from the Chuvash Republic. Where is your country located?

Valery Petrovskiy: Yes, I was born in 1957 in the Chuvash Republic, and Chuvash is my native language. You know, in vast plains of Russia many nations reside. It’s supposed that they inhabit outlying districts mostly, in Siberia or the Caucasus possibly. In fact, Tartar, Bashkir or Chuvash folks dwell in the middle of European part of
Russia in their own republics.

Not long ago their leaders were called presidents, and now we have a Head in my Chuvash
Republic. It lies by the Volga River 600 km to the East from Moscow. Though the area is undersized if collated to Bashkir or Tartar republics, it’s quite comparable with Belgium yet smaller.

TM: Tell us about your native language.

Valery Petrovskiy: They say, it’s of the same roots as Bashkir and Tartar, and belongs to Turkic branch of the Altaic family of the languages. While the first two have much
in common, Chuvash differs from them to some extent, and I don’t understand them. To my mind, Chuvash stands aside from all the modern Turkic languages: Tartar, Uzbek, Kazakh, Azerbaijan and some others because of its ancient origin. And it’s akin to dead Hunnic, Khazar and Bulghar languages.

TM: Why do you write?

Valery Petrovskiy: Nice you don’t ask what I do write about: never could explain this. Still, why? I have no definite explanation. From one side, for me writing is better than to do business, what I tried once in early 90-ties. More than that, writing keeps me alive; I don’t know much ground to make one’s life reasonable, and art makes it so. And any story written, free me from monsters in my head, so to say. I know one thing: I take delight in writing.

TM: Do you have other writers or artists in your family?

Valery Petrovskiy: A good question, I never thought about it. My family account was cut
half a century ago by two events: WWII cruelties and Stalin’s repressions started even
earlier, in 1930. So I can speak about my postwar folks only, I mean my Uncle Joseph. He
tried his hand at painting in 1960-ties when young. I liked his work then; yet he mainly just copied well-known Russian artists. Amusing, but to the moment I turned to writing my son got the First prize for a Sci-Fi story in the region, when in his graduation class.

TM: Do you create in your native language?

Valery Petrovskiy: No, it happened so from the very beginning. I write in Russian mostly, and in English in case of need. Why not Chuvash? It’s a long story.

Russian language dominates in the Chuvash Republic since 1960-s, when I went to school.
So I finished school in a Russian class, though we had two more groups, studying Chuvash.
Then education in Russian was considered a better one. I was good in History and English,
so I joined an English Department at Pedagogic Institute in Cheboksary, at the same time I’ve been studying History at Chuvash State University. Alas, I had no written practice in Chuvash at both the colleges when I studied there in the middle of 1970-s.

Still we have a good number of Chuvash writers of the elder generation active - Michail Yuchma first of all, and less of my age and younger. And most of the prewar cohort was oppressed by Stalin’s regime.

I turned my hand to creative writing rather late, after many years of my journalism work.
In my republic they know me better as a journalist, and they won’t consider me a Chuvash writer because I write in Russian.

In Moscow they have no interest in my writing; I tried many magazines there in 2008-09 with no success. I mean, they simply don’t respond. So, I had to seek for publishers abroad, first in Russian journals in Germany, Israel and the U.S. To my surprise, some of them accepted my work in 2010, but they couldn’t release an issue because of finance problem.

My last chance was to pass on to publishing in English.

TM: What is an average day like for Valery Petrovskiy?
Valery Petrovskiy: It’s of no interest, I think.

TM: How would you describe the ambiance of your workspace?

Valery Petrovskiy: Before, it was a small room in a wooden izba, with a sofa-bed, a
bookstand and my writing table, where I worked on my notebook computer. I have three
narrow windows there, looking to the west and north (that kept my monitor from much sun),
then an icon, a clock and an electricity meter above the windows.

Now the room is under reconstruction: we took away a TV set and pulled down a bulky Russian stove. Afterwards, I’ll set a pair of armchairs in to meet my friends.

TM: Are you happiest reading or writing?

Valery Petrovskiy: Facing the dilemma, I choose writing now. It was different earlier, I
was mad about reading, and that happened to me not once. I went to join a library next day I went to school (in fact, they didn’t sign up me then, only in half a year with my group). I think I was one of the best readers there till I turned
out a teenager and had some other concern, playing football, for example.

So, it was a boy’s choice: adventure, travelogue, and later scifi… I didn’t read much of fiction at college but textbooks and books prescribed for the English class.

Afterwards, I reverted to reading in the Army, where I devoured all the books in a small
library: over and over again I had a night duty. Next time I was keen on reading when
Perestroika occurred in the USSR, and much of literature forbidden before was released:
Dudintsev, Rybakov…

Then a journalist, we set to writing a collective novelette ourselves to have it published in the weekly. George Yanin, a gifted Chuvash journalist, suggested, “Valery, it’s enough of reading, let’s start creating…” So, in 1985 I first tried my hand at fiction, but gave up then. I had my chapters ready, but some other partners had not…

It was a long way till in 2006 my flash fiction was first published in a republican tabloid Vedomosti (Gazette).

TM: Is there a time of day or night when you have energy that is more creative?
Valery Petrovskiy: I like morning better, starting writing right after a cup of hot tea.

TM: Who are your biggest creative influences?
Valery Petrovskiy: On my bookshelf one can find books by Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood
Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.D. Salinger… It happened so that my style is rather laconic like one of Hemingway. And I enjoy Sherwood Anderson’s short stories greatly - “The Untold Lie”, “I Want to Know Why”, to be exact. And Salinger’s “Nine Stories” are marvelous, as well as his “Franny and Zooey”.

Among great Russian literature masters I prefer Lermontov and his “A Hero of Our Time”.

TM: How often do you submit your work?
Valery Petrovskiy: Every day, in fact: I have some flash fiction pieces ready beforehand and can submit one at any moment. I find a call to submit at “Every Writer’s
Resource” or another site for writers and then do it. First I tried almost every publication I met there, but lately I did my best to follow editors’ instructions.

While I had simultaneous submissions, some problem occurred: two magazines at once wanted my story in America. A small publication was first to accept the piece, and I had to turn down a high ranking journal’s request. The nonfiction work “One Who’s Won”
is still marked as Accepted on their site. Their nonfiction editor shared me a piece of good advice, “In order to get published in a high ranking magazine one should be patient
enough…”, or something like this.

Well, I wasn’t patient enough and it happened twice or thrice, that I had to say “no” when a piece was just accepted elsewhere.

TM: Fiction or nonfiction?
Valery Petrovskiy: The best fiction is nonfiction. I don’t know the right answer: any
word uttered is a lie. As for me, anything written is ever fiction because it’s told from
one’s point of view, an author’s or protagonist’s. The same event told by somebody else would sound differently, though the case had a place. My every work considers an event that once took place, even though it was my dream. A dream is fiction or nonfiction,
what do you think?

So, the bit of fiction in my nonfiction differs…

TM: How does living in the Chuvash Republic come into play with your work published in English?
Valery Petrovskiy: I can’t tell what’s more unreal with me: living in a country side or
publishing overseas. Both seem to me fantastic now: at times I don’t go out for a few days, and at times I have several pieces per month published as far as Romania, America or Australia.

Still I feel quite comfy staying in a distant country village, where gas for heating and
Internet to communicate are provided, and my native folk surrounds me. I can add that a
highway is right behind my garden to get to Cheboksary in an hour, and I enjoy people
speaking Chuvash in a bus.

Sure, I’m not happy they don’t know my work. Something alike occurred to great Chuvash
poet Gennady Aigy: he was known all over the world, nominated for Nobel Prize in literature and never published in Chuvash language. I mean it was ever a problem to translate his great avant-garde poetry from Russian.

TM: What is the biggest obstacle you have ever had to overcome?
Valery Petrovskiy: This reminds me of a questionnaire for applicants. Do you mean any occasion in my living? I was happy enough to live an active social life and to stay out of mischief. Still my life story was not even and polished: while opposing Komsomol
and Party leaders as Editor-in-Chief of the republican youth’s weekly, in the end of 1980-s I was dismissed.

As a result, for many years in the Chuvash Republic they had no newspaper for youngsters in Russian.

In fact I prefer to get round difficulties. Last year they didn’t admit me in Moscow
to the Gorky Literary Institute, Translation Department, and the same month I had eight stories published in America.

TM: What is the worst job you have ever had?
Valery Petrovskiy: After school I started as a lab assistant at a chemistry laboratory. I stayed there alone in my nook all day long, and I liked it. But at any moment a
supervisor could come in with a rush order and it kept me tense constantly: my working time depended on them, not me, and I hated it.

TM: What is your favorite dish from the Chuvash cuisine?
Valery Petrovskiy: Do I have one, I wonder? When they conscripted me into Army in 1982,
we had civil clothing on till we got into the barracks. It was late at night; we had leftovers they had given us at home for the journey. We did our best to take it all before going to sleep: the next two years we had to chew soldiers’ kasha. Then a fellow treated me to a national dish Shart’an, a kind of blood pudding or a big
rounded servelat. I liked it immensely then!

It was home-made, and it’s difficult to find it nowadays.

TM: When you are not writing, where would we most likely find you?
Valery Petrovskiy: I have no other hobby but writing, not hunting or fishing, to relax I
like Russian baths (banja). Here they keep a private banja at any household, it’s a small
cabin parted in two - a hot house and a changing room. I have a banja as well, and I
spend two hours there every weekend enjoying myself.

TM: What is your current project?
Valery Petrovskiy: Sure, you mean something gorgeous me to fulfill next, a novel
or a short story collection, but my venture is a small one, just a chapbook in the U.S.A.

Meanwhile, I’m happy that GDS, an outstanding magazine in Australia, just accepted my short story “Sharm-al-Sheikh” for their annual issue #33. Last time I was lucky to
have my piece “Cloudberries” published there among 37 works chosen from about 3,000
submissions. I know this from their editorial…

TM: Do you think that the internet is crucial to the success of writers today?
Valery Petrovskiy: The role of writers changed much lately. Is there a gap between a
writer and blogger anymore? A blogger is writing in Internet, sharing there his ideas, and what about a writer published in magazines?

You know, publications are often online. So, is there mush difference: a blogger speaks
straight to his audience, and a writer’s work is published online after an editor accepts it?

As for the success, yes, I have many works published overseas since I started submitting
in January 2011 - in America, Canada, Australia, the U.K., India…

And I did it thank to Internet, staying afar in a remote Chuvash village.

TM: What is the best advice you can give
to a writer just starting out?
Valery Petrovskiy: You better don’t! If earnestly, a young man just starting writing
knows better than me what he is after. He handles Inet better, he knows his audience
rather well - they are all his company, and the lingo they speak is at his disposal. So I’m not inclined to giving any advice, if only, “Just try it…”

TM: What question would you have liked for me to ask and what is the answer?
Valery Petrovskiy:
- What do you write generally about?
And the answer is: I don’t know…