The first publication (in 1997) of Anatoly Naiman’s novel “B.B. and etc." caused, if not scandalous, then a rather ambiguous reaction from the cultural elite. Someone identified themselves as the prototype of the main character (designated in the romance as B.B.), someone recognized themselves in other characters, but in the first and second cases the circumstances and contexts of what was happening were not too flattering and decent... (Me name is Alexander Germantsev, this name might have caught your eye if you read Anatoly Naiman’s book “Poetry and Lies.” I was close, if not to say belonged, to the circle of young Leningrad poets that he describes... He persuaded me to talk about B. .B., explaining this gem, that his figure was of general interest, that we knew him equally closely... But I forced him to agree to the tape recorder: I never liked to write long things... Everything that is written here is true, I am ready to sign under each page - the way I signed the interrogation protocol at one time. In short, I didn’t write this.)