“Solo on Wittgenstein” is an author’s collection that includes six stories, a novella, and a selection of humorous miniatures. Behind their funny form hide deep meanings: they turn into layered, many-sided kaleidoscopes in which an intellectual reader can see a great variety of interpretations (clues or keys to such interpretations are the epigraphs to each of the stories).
“Solo on Wittgenstein” is an allusion to the famous Dovlatov “Solo on Underwood” and “Solo on IBM.” So what does German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein have to do with it? The answer is given in the epigraph to the work, where the film hero Derek Jarman regrets that he doesn’t have enough sense of humor to bring his most cherished dream to life—to write a philosophical work entirely made up of jokes. It seems Ivan Khlyupov, unlike Ludwig Wittgenstein, did manage to do it…