AuthAABC NIGHT An Interview with George Orbeladze Following the publication of Chapter One of Breaking the Paradigm
Good evening, dear viewers.
Tonight, joining us from Reality A is a writer who has spent quite some time insisting that the world is collapsing, society is degenerating, institutions are hollowing out, and, regrettably, most people do not seem especially troubled by any of it. Until now, he has done this mostly through essays. But apparently one reality was no longer enough for him, so he has now moved on to a novel.
Yes, the ambition remains intact.
George Orbeladze, welcome.
Hello.
Before we get to anything serious—you once wrote that you like a good Burgundy. May I offer you a glass?
No. I’d rather have a single malt. Twenty-five years old.
Of course. Ambition, even in the choice of poison.
What can I say. I like good things.
That much we’ve already noticed. Now to the point: did essays stop being enough, or did you simply decide to sell your dissatisfaction in more expensive packaging this time?
A bit of everything. It is difficult to imagine the green eyes of a beautiful, intelligent woman while writing an essay. Or rather, once you do start imagining the green eyes of a beautiful, intelligent woman, it may be best to stop writing about old clowns and take refuge in the Seventh Republic instead.
Wonderful. You mention a beautiful woman once, and the entire room immediately shifts its attention to form. Some of our viewers are probably already thinking that you didn’t move from essays to fiction at all—you simply wandered into a woman’s eyes.
You see how easily even you react to provocation. Had I added a few more details, we might have had to end the interview right there. But never mind. It seems that kind of weakness exists in every reality.
So you do know exactly how an audience works.
The media calls it manipulation. I prefer observation.
Fine. Let me ask more simply: why a novel? Did the essays fail?
Essays never had quite the power that their writers—and sometimes their readers—like to imagine they do. Breaking the Paradigm is something else for me. A switching mechanism. A more dynamic space. Characters I care about, characters I feel for. A world that took a different path and still arrived at the same decisions.
So: catastrophe, but better designed.
You may call it that. Just don’t call it escape. Escape does not feel like my style.
Good line. Slightly self-satisfied, too.
You’ve seen worse.
Unfortunately, yes. Which is why I’ll ask this: your ambitions do seem rather limitless. Are you ever afraid you overreach?
Sometimes. But like many ambitious people, I got pulled into the game.
At least you’re not pretending to be modest. That alone is rare.
II
Let’s move to Chapter One. You seem to be aiming at something grand—almost civilizational in scale: system, history, power, paradigm. And yet the text moves rather quickly toward the body, toward attraction, toward intimacy. Sometimes sex is simply a very effective way of concealing an author’s inability to reveal a character’s inner nature.
Yes, I agree. But life becomes much more interesting when a philosophical text contains healthy animal desire as well—not just old people grumbling about the inadequacies of the young.
Good. Better than self-defense. So for you, this is not provocation?
No. The real problem is that sex and intimate relationships have been artificially pushed outside the boundaries of serious discussion. And then everyone wonders why homophobia, sexism, and permanent hypocrisy remain so difficult to get rid of.
So the reader’s discomfort is not your concern?
No. Especially when that discomfort is built on falsehood.
You clearly do not care much for the reader’s comfort.
The reader’s comfort is not literature’s obligation.
A lovely sentence from a man who still wants to be read.
Being read and being soothed are not the same thing.
Also good. So let me put it plainly: you really believe that the body, desire, sex, intimacy—these are not secondary themes, but central intellectual ones?
Of course. Ideas that never descend into the body are often either propaganda or academic fog.
That is almost the sort of answer that makes me forget, for a second, that I’m hosting a show.
Dangerous. Be careful.
Don’t worry. I rarely betray the format. But I will admit this much: the subject has turned out to be more interesting than I expected.
III
Fine. Let’s be more direct. You said this novel functions for you as a switching mechanism. If it is not escape, then what is it—research?
Research, yes. Obsession too. If you have a better word, I’d be happy to hear it.
Then let me ask directly: is all of this—The Seventh Republic, the alternative history, the entire architecture—research, or obsession?
Obsession. Real obsession. You do not build a world any other way.
You build worlds? I was under the impression you merely described them.
There you are. A few sips of your excellent drink and my ambitions have already grown.
I did not think that was possible.
Nor did I. A pleasant surprise.
Very well. Then in light of this elevated opinion of yourself, let me ask: what exactly are you looking for in this novel—truth?
No. I never look for truth. It doesn’t interest me.
Oh. That is a slightly awkward thing for a writer to say.
Only if you believe in absolute truth. I don’t. I believe only in relative truth—truth dependent on time, subject, object, observer. Under those conditions, there is not much point in looking for Truth. Questions are another matter.
Then why this scale? A man who does not believe in universal truth usually reduces the size of things. You do the opposite. You expand reality.
Because the absence of truth does not mean the absence of questions. I like thinking. I try to look at events as broadly as possible. And if it turns out that the Seventh Republic falls within that field of vision, then I should study it. Why not?
So in other words—you cannot leave things alone.
Coming from you, that sounds like a diagnosis. I would call it attention.
And this world that took a different road only to make the same choices—what does that mean? That the problem lies not in the system, but in the human being?
I’ll leave that question to the reader.
Lovely. The writer asks the question and hands the burden of the answer to someone else.
No. Sometimes the right question is simply more honest than a rushed answer.
Another annoyingly good line. So then, in one sentence: what is Breaking the Paradigm to you?
An arena where questions have a little more life in them than answers do.
Good. That sounds almost like an ending. Then let me end with one sentence of my own: either you really do think, or you play the role of a thinker with remarkable refinement.
And either you really do understand certain things, or you play the role of a superficial host with remarkable refinement.
That landed cleanly. George Orbeladze, thank you.
Thank you.
And as for the rest of you: Chapter One of Breaking the Paradigm is now out. Read it. Or don’t. But then do not act surprised if some parallel reality ends up explaining your own better than you ever could.or