Slot: 29A-4 Dec. 29, 8:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.
Panel: Recent Writing and Interpretations
Chair: TBA
Title: The Turn from Textuality: Changes in the
Reception of Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Author: Lisa Ryoko Wakamiya, Florida State
University
Evaluations of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's
work traditionally focused on its broader humanistic implications, connecting
the reader's experience of world of his texts with universal values of
democracy and human rights. These universal values gave way to more localized
concerns in Solzhenitsyn's work written since the early 1990s, changing the
public perception of the writer in Russia and the West. George Steiner
described the reception of his work as "distantly respectful" or
"hostile," while Russian critics tended toward utopian or dismissive
readings.
More recently,
the critic Viacheslav Kuritsyn questioned the content of Solzhenitsyn's work
while noting, "We love him because he is our Solzh and no one else has a
Solzh like we do." In recent months, Liudmilla Ulitskaia and Eduard
Limonov have similarly criticized Solzhenitsyn's work while expressing
appreciation for him as "the last,
great Russian writer" and
"nash velikii chelovek." While it is difficult to find anything
resembling public consensus about Solzhenitsyn, the current tendency to view
him as a public persona
representative of localized concerns — cultural
conservatism and
literariness among them — suggests that the localized system
of values
characteristic of his recent work finds greater acceptance as it
becomes disconnected from issues of textual interpretation.
My presentation
aims to account for the shift from textuality to extratextual concerns in the
reception of Solzhenitsyn's work. Drawing from Arjun Appadurai's Modernity
at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, I examine how Solzhenitsyn's perceived
need to protect Russian culture from "internal deformation and external aggression"
(Rossiia
v obvale) may find
greater acceptance among audiences attuned to globalizing trends. I will also
consider how Solzhenitsyn's extraliterary work, such as his screenplay for the
2006 television adaptation of V kruge pervom, facilitates this shift by rigidly
defining the role of the empirical author while stimulating extratextual
interest in the system of ideas associated with his work and public persona.
Title: Postmodern Parody with a Twist: Andrei
Iakhontov’s Uchebnik zhizni dlia durakov
Author: Erika Haber, Syracuse University
According to Mark Lipovetsky, Russian
postmodernism “consciously brings about the temporary death of culture; through
a strategy of dialogue with chaos during the process of this global rite of
passage postmodernism models a liminal liberation from all versions of
structural order” (240). This definition—especially the phrase “dialogue with
chaos”—perfectly describes both the style and content of Andrei Iakhontov’s
1996 Uchebnik zhizni dlia durakov.
The editor’s
blurb claims that Iakhontov’s ideas parody those of Andrew Carnegie and other
such successful, self-made men. With suggestions for living a “better” life,
Iakhontov’s text tackles every sphere of life from family to friends, school to
work, childhood to adulthood. The parody in this self-help text is complex and
plays out on the stylistic, narrative and thematic planes of the work. But
there is a significant departure from the usual self-help text: Iakhontov’s
work is actually a novel complete with character development, plot line and
dialogue. However, instead of Andrew Carnegie’s rags-to-riches story of
accomplishment, philanthropy and keys to success, Andrei Iakhontov tells the
tale of a man who promotes disdain for books, high culture, and the rules of
polite society.
By closely
examining how Iakhontov creates a novel out of a self-help textbook, I plan to
analyze the different levels (stylistic, narrative, thematic) of parody in this
text. In the process, I will show precisely how Iakhontov’s darkly comic work
serves as an improbable primer for getting ahead. Ironically, the “lessons”
taught in this witty romp of a novel provide brutally honest, practical
guidance for life in our complex and chaotic 21st-century society.
References
Iakhontov, Andrei. Uchebnik zhizni
dlia durakov. Moskva:
Samotsvet: 1996.
Lipovestsky, Mark. Russian Postmodern
Fiction: Dialogue with Chaos.
Eliot Borenstein, ed. NY and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1999.
Title: The New Nabokovs? Shteyngart, Vapnyar,
Bezmozgis, Grushin, and the Wave of “Russian Debutantes”
Author: Adrian J. Wanner, Penn State University
This paper is devoted to four writers who
were all born in the former Soviet Union and have received lavish critical
praise and major awards for their literary débuts in America: Gary Shteyngart with his novels The
Russian Debutante’s Handbook
(2002) and Absurdistan
(2006), Lara Vapnyar with There are Jews in My House (2002) and Memoirs of a Muse (2006), David Bezmozgis with Natasha (2004), and Olga Grushin with The
Dream Life of Sukhanov
(2006). These authors are part of a growing phenomenon of Russian émigrés who
have become bestselling writers in the language of their adopted
homelands. Reviewers have compared
them to Vladimir Nabokov as well as other classics of Russian literature. In spite of common thematic materials,
the four authors have quite different individual styles. Shteyngart cultivates a genre of fast
paced satirical grotesque, while Vapnyar and Bezmozgis resort to humor of a more
gentle and muted nature. Grushin
stands out with an ambitiously “high literary” prose. Despite these differences, there is considerable overlap in
the way the publishers of all four authors use their “Russianness” as a
promotional tool.
This paper investigates
the complexity of the identities of these “Russian Debutantes.” In addition to being Russian and
American, Shteyngart, Vapnyar and Bezmozgis are Jewish, with Bezmozgis also
buttonholed as Latvian and Canadian. Based on their literary work and
interviews with print and electronic media, this paper explores the attitude of
the four authors toward their multiple identities. It also analyzes the
reception of the “Russian Debutantes” in their former homeland, where their
work has been criticized for indulging in clichés and stereotypes and dismissed
as “typically American.” In this
sense, the ambivalent status of the “Russian Debutantes,” who are perceived as
“foreign” both in their current and former countries of residence, presents an
interesting case of transnational cultural hybridity.