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3 books match the query 'Borden, Richard C.'
Encounters with Lise and Other Stories
Leonid Dobychin
Northwestern University Press, 2005
In 1994 Russian writer Victor Erofeyev proclaimed Leonid Dobychin "one of the main heroes of twentieth-century Russian literature." Obscure for many years, Dobychin is now celebrated as a modernist master. His short stories are hailed as a sort of Soviet version of Joyce's Dubliners-subtle and tightly constructed miniatures linked by recurring themes and full of ironic juxtaposition, context, allusion, and style.
For Dobychin early Soviet society was an absurdist wonderland. He was not anti-Soviet but trans-Soviet, practicing realism but looking at reality from jarring angles. A typical day for a Dobychin hero includes participation in character-building sports, witnessing a parade, attending a funeral, and memorial to fallen communists-and finally reflecting at the end of the day that he almost met a pretty young sick-nurse. Dobychin's stories reveal a Brave New World where idealism rubs shoulders with heartless ambition and political denunciation, and ubiquitous acronyms and revolutionary cliché maul the language. But he also describes the absurdities of a place where office girls pray for the arrest of disliked co-workers and prisoner work gangs are made to spell out beautiful but empty platitudes in beds of sand. This collection includes all of the stories published in Dobychin's lifetime, plus two stories that remained unpublished until the late 1980s.
For Dobychin early Soviet society was an absurdist wonderland. He was not anti-Soviet but trans-Soviet, practicing realism but looking at reality from jarring angles. A typical day for a Dobychin hero includes participation in character-building sports, witnessing a parade, attending a funeral, and memorial to fallen communists-and finally reflecting at the end of the day that he almost met a pretty young sick-nurse. Dobychin's stories reveal a Brave New World where idealism rubs shoulders with heartless ambition and political denunciation, and ubiquitous acronyms and revolutionary cliché maul the language. But he also describes the absurdities of a place where office girls pray for the arrest of disliked co-workers and prisoner work gangs are made to spell out beautiful but empty platitudes in beds of sand. This collection includes all of the stories published in Dobychin's lifetime, plus two stories that remained unpublished until the late 1980s.
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The Art of Writing Badly
Valentin Kataev's Mauvism and the Rebirth of Russian ModernismRichard C. Borden
Northwestern University Press, 1999
"The art of writing badly" is a phrase the Russian writer Valentin Kataev coined to describe the work that came out of the mauvist movement in Russia-a style of writing that consciously challenged Soviet dogma. In this book, Richard Borden discusses the cultural and political context from which these authors emerged and the development of "bad writing."
Beginning with a close examination of the work of Kataev, the best-known progenitor of "bad writing," Borden then broadens his study to include the "mauvist creations" of post-Stalinist writers Aksenov, Bitov, Sokolov, Limonov, Evgeny Popov, and Venedikt Erofeev. Borden shows how these writers' shared mauvistic characteristics reveal major philosophical and aesthetic tendencies in contemporary Russian culture, bring to light facets of their writing that have never been discussed, and enrich the readings of the particular texts under discussion.
Beginning with a close examination of the work of Kataev, the best-known progenitor of "bad writing," Borden then broadens his study to include the "mauvist creations" of post-Stalinist writers Aksenov, Bitov, Sokolov, Limonov, Evgeny Popov, and Venedikt Erofeev. Borden shows how these writers' shared mauvistic characteristics reveal major philosophical and aesthetic tendencies in contemporary Russian culture, bring to light facets of their writing that have never been discussed, and enrich the readings of the particular texts under discussion.
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The Town of N
Leonid Dobychin
Northwestern University Press, 1998
Leonid Dobychin's The Town of N, an unrecognized masterpiece of the Soviet 1930s, virtually vanished, together with its author, following its publication in 1935 and the subsequent vilification of Dobychin by Leningrad's cultural authorities. It portrays a fallen provincial world reminiscent of the town of N found in Gogol's Dead Souls, a place populated with characters who are petty, grasping, perfidious, and cruel, quite unlike the positive heroes of socialist realist novels.
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