“A shitty life”

“A shitty life” is Eduard Limonov’s blunt reply to Emmanuel Carrère’s account of his life as fascinating, romantic, dangerous, and directly engaged with history. Spoken at the end of their interview, the phrase punctures the biographer’s elevated description and turns the question of how Limonov’s story should end into a question about failure: whether it diminishes a life, or gives that life its force.

The interview and the remark

The phrase comes after Carrère has finished asking his questions. It is four in the afternoon, darkness has fallen, and the refrigerator hums in the room. Limonov looks at his rings and strokes his musketeer’s goatee. The interview has followed an asymmetrical pattern: Carrère asks, Limonov answers, and when the answers are finished Limonov waits for the next question. Carrère notes that Limonov does not ask about his life, family, tastes, or work, although Limonov says that showing interest in other people is part of his mission in life. The biographer concludes that this is not the kind of encounter in which Limonov’s curiosity will be engaged.

Only at the doorstep, as Carrère is leaving, does Limonov ask why he wants to write a book about him. Carrère answers sincerely that Limonov is living, or has lived, a fascinating life: romantic and dangerous, and one that dared to engage directly with history. Limonov responds with a dry laugh, without looking at him: “Yeah, a shitty life.” The contrast is immediate. Carrère names adventure and historical consequence; Limonov reduces the same life to its misery. The phrase is not a detailed rebuttal of the biographer’s account, but its abruptness changes the emotional register of the encounter.

A verdict that resists the biography

Carrère does not accept the remark as a satisfactory final judgment. He says that he dislikes this ending and does not think Limonov would like it either. He is also wary of anyone risking a judgment about another person’s karma, or even about his own, because such judgments are certain to be wrong. The phrase therefore becomes more than Limonov’s assessment of his circumstances: it confronts Carrère with the danger of turning a complicated life into a settled moral verdict.

Carrère discusses this dissatisfaction with his eldest son, Gabriel, a film editor with whom he has written two television screenplays. Their conversation takes the form of a screenwriter’s test of a scene: whether it works or does not. Gabriel identifies the issue as Carrère’s discomfort with portraying Limonov as a loser. Carrère agrees. When Gabriel suggests that the concern may be about hurting Limonov, Carrère distinguishes that from what bothers him. His hesitation is thus presented as a problem of how to shape the story, not simply as reluctance to offend its subject.

Failure as an ending

Gabriel answers by pointing to celebrated stories whose heroes end in failure. His example is Raging Bull. In its last scene, the boxer played by De Niro has lost his wife, friends, and home, and earns his living performing in a dingy nightclub. He is heavy and worn down; waiting in his dressing room for the call to go on, he pulls himself out of his chair, looks in the mirror, bounces on his feet, and mimes a few boxing moves. He murmurs, “I’m the boss. I’m the boss. I’m the boss.” Gabriel’s judgment holds two responses together: the moment is pathetic and magnificent. Defeat does not automatically make an ending artistically weak; a last remnant of self-assertion can make failure more affecting than a scene of straightforward triumph.

Gabriel applies that logic to Limonov. After all his adventures, an ending in which he checks Facebook to see whether he has more friends than Garry Kasparov could, Gabriel argues, be better than seeing him victorious on a podium. The contrast is between public conquest and a small, almost undignified measure of status. In that imagined ending, Limonov would not be rewarded with power or a grand historical victory; the residue of his ambition would appear in the ordinary act of counting online friends. The comparison makes the original phrase resonate differently: a life called miserable might still yield an ending whose failure is compelling rather than merely bleak.

An ending left open

Carrère admits that Gabriel’s argument is persuasive, but says that something continues to nag at him. The passage does not resolve the disagreement or establish what the perfect ending for Limonov would be. Instead, it closes on Gabriel turning the problem back toward Carrère and asking whether he would choose Limonov taking power. The question is left unanswered in the supplied passage. That suspension matters: the biographer has not settled whether the story should culminate in defeat, triumph, or a less conclusive image.

The phrase’s significance lies in this unresolved contest over interpretation. Limonov’s dry dismissal counters Carrère’s romantic account without erasing the adventures that prompted it. Carrère, in turn, resists allowing the dismissal to become the final word, while Gabriel shows how a failed hero can remain dramatically alive. “A shitty life” is therefore both a bitter assessment and a challenge to the form of the biography: it forces the question of whether a life must be vindicated by victory, or whether its losses can provide the more powerful ending.