The Sorrowful Tale of Nikolai Turgidprosnikov

From my novel, "The People's Republic of Retail":

Nikolai Turgidprosnikov

1822-1880

NikolaiTurgidprosnikov

Born in the shadow of the Ural Mountains, his family made their living by selling wolf's milk. His early experiences in the family trade resulted in the loss of three fingers from his left hand. In 1835 His mother was kidnapped by a renegade band of Cossacks. His father set out in search of her but was mauled to death by a bear. The 13 year old Turgidprosnikov was sent to a military school in St. Petersburg.

In 1848 he participated in the Moloshnivic Conspiracy. The participants had planned to assassinate Tsar Nicholas I with Moloshnivic Cocktails - the precursor to the Molotov cocktail. However, the Moloshnivic Cocktails were considered substandard owing to the fact that Moloshnivic Vodka was so diluted with water as to render it completely nonflammable.

For his part in the conspiracy - Turgidprosnikov was sentenced to 10 years in Siberia. He suffered terrible degradation - bad food - exposure to the elements, and that was just the train ride there.

During this time he began work on his novel "The Ceaseless Winter". After serving only 7 years of his sentence he was released and promptly met & married a Siberian peasant named Mishna. Three years later, tragedy came to call when Mishna who was only 14 at the time suffered a miscarriage when she tried to carry the finished manuscript (15,998 pages) to her husband's study. She died 3 days later.

The grief stricken husband was charged with murdering his wife and was sentenced to another 15 years hard labor.

"The Ceaseless Winter" was released to biting reviews from the few critics that managed to navigate the colossal narrative. One European reviewer stated that his sympathies lay with "the forests of trees felled for this bloated and joyless drivel."

During the period of his second imprisonment (1858-1875) he worked on a new novel called "Cold & Sorrow". Upon his release he carted off the half completed manuscript (30,968 pages) in a trolley he had constructed in the prison workshop.

Ext: Prison Courtyard - Siberia

Flurries of snow whip about. A Cold wind howls. The color palette is white - black - and shades of grey.

Turgidprosnikov is pulling a trolley with an enormous stack of papers that are lashed in place with a crude rope. He moves slowly - straining with the huge load. The guards watch him from the high walls. Suddenly a wheel breaks and a gust of wind disperses the manuscript throughout the courtyard. The guards laugh and curse in Russian.

Turgidprosnikov (grim faced and visibly in pain) begins gathering the papers one by one.

At 53 he married again - Katya (12 years old). Turgidprosnikov suffered from many ailments including: epilepsy - consumption - gout - pleurisy - syphilis (contracted in prison) - lumbago - alcoholism - hemorrhoids - rheumatism - arrhythmia - high blood pressure - glaucoma - and acute hypochondria.

In 1880 an increasingly paranoid Nikolai Turgidprosnikov became convinced that at 58,137 pages - he had written himself into a corner. In a vodka induced rage he set fire to his manuscript which resulted in an inferno that soon consumed the house killing Katya. Turgidprosnikov was severely burned and crawled into the forest where he died of hypothermia several days later.

Only "The Ceaseless Winter" survives but is rarely carried by bookstores because of its enormous girth. Very few readers make it through the novel. The most notable - Thomas Pynchon, could not be reached for comment.

Rough Draft of Nikolai Turgidprosnikov

Nikolai Turgidprosnikov is a composite of three photographs - chopped together and painted over using Micosoft Paint. I used a photo of Dostoevsky for his face, his hat is Tolstoy's, and I used Vladimir Lenin's eyes after he had the stroke.

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