Alekhine's stories tend to form a single text, just as mercury balls tend to form a poisonous puddle. To have a collection of his works on a bookshelf one day will mean to have at least one human life sensually and accurately recorded. There is nothing in common with Proust here; Alekhine is a polar, prickly planet. He is pathologically unable to lie. He feels that he must be able to as a writer, but he always breaks down to the truth. This is the synchronous voice of the hero and the author, which will cease to exist if it does not bare its conscience. Alekhine's reader is his Last Judgment. Any pretentious thing is ridiculed, the skin is torn off. That is why there is such a sharp, tragic perception of reality, the experience of modern Russian life as Purgatory.