The article is devoted to the problem of non-sentimentalism, one of the modern art discourses, of which Lyudmila Petrushevskaya is a vivid representative. In the work, related concepts of sentimentality, sentimentalism and non-sentimentalism are bred. The first is considered as a personal quality, the second as a literary direction, and the third as a discourse, rooted in the first and second concepts. A distinctive feature of non-sentimentalism is its synthetic nature, a connection that, it would seem, would not be reconcilable. Therefore it is logical that Petrushevskaya's work is viewed through the prism of two types of catharsis: tearful and laughable. One of the literary pioneers of such a combination of dissimilar discourses is Gogol. The connection of laughter and tears was evident in his story "Overcoat". This work domestic literary criticism referred to sentimental naturalism. The screenplay for Gogol's novel, written by Petrushevskaya, is a work of non-sentimentalism, since in it a teary start is served on a laughing background. It is also important that the writer combines two different genres in the script: an anecdote and a parable, which are also associated with heterogeneous catharsis. The second literary text to investigate the problem posed is the story of "La bohème". It is extremely lapidary: it consists of ten phrases. It presents other forms of connection of laughter and tears, conditioned by brevity. Firstly, it is the intertextual connections that refer the reader to musical works (Puccini's opera "La Boheme" and the famous Soviet song), to the famous painting by Rembrandt. Secondly, this is an unusual form of narrative that fluctuates between the figure of an unreliable narrator and an impersonal narrator. This form allows you to update the teardrop in some cases, and in others - a laughing one.