Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States

by Mikhail Iossel (Editor), Jeff Parker (Editor)

Overview

For half of the twentieth century, there were two superpowers in the world and a gulf of silence between them. Knowledge of Russian culture was based on propaganda and rumour, and their knowledge of the West was no better. When the Soviet Union fell, Russians began to travel to America more regularly, and what they discovered was a very different place to the one they had imagined, but, at the same time, not exactly the one that Americans think they know. This collection of beautifully written and entertaining literary essays by a wide range of Russian writers - young and old, funny and sombre, angry and celebratory, many being translated for the first time - offers readers a unique chance to see Americans in a whole new light, to question how the American dream stands up to the American reality, and to experience the wit and generosity of today's Russian writers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781564783561
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	05/01/2004
Series:	Russian Literature
Pages:	174
Product dimensions:	5.58(w) x 8.64(h) x 0.56(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Iossel is a native of St. Petersburg, Russia, where he worked as an engineer. Since 1986 he has lived in the U.S. and has an MFA in English from the University of New Hampshire. He was a Stegner Fellow in creative writing at Stanford Universityfrom 1989 to 1991. He is the Founder and Director of the Summer Literary Seminars program.

Parker's fiction, nonfiction, and hypertext have appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, The Iowa Review, The Mississippi Review, and others. He has written about contemporary Russian literature, music, and culture. He has been involved in the Summer Literary Seminars program in St. Petersburg, Russia, since 1999, and is currently the Co-Director.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	ix
	Mistakes in the Guidebook	3
	The Ocean: A Journey to San Francisco	8
	Chelyabinsk-Moscow	14
	You Are Not in Chicago, My Dear!	16
	Spaces and Places	22
	Otherworldly America	28
	Do Not a Gun	34
	Nine-and-a-Half Americas	58
	Gone with the World	64
	America of the Mind	67
	A Real American Girl	73
	Goodbye, America. And--Hello!	76
	On American Culture	82
	"Mew" instead of "Moo"	87
	A Poem about a Canadian Passport	95
	Luxembourg	109
	When I Think of America...	116
	The Zoo of Freedom and the Russian Mentality	118
	Forever and the Earth	124
	Worn Jeans and Banned Fruits	130
	America As Freedom and Image	133
	America As It Is and Is Not	140
	A Letter to Americans	143
	Low-Level Flight in Tense Atmospheric Conditions	147
	America in My Life	150
	A Semester in Texas	154
	Contributors	165

Editorial Reviews

"The seventh America is deeply repulsive to me. This is the America of informers, hypocrites, bureaucrats, and lawyers. The America of legal wrangling and civil suits, in the course of which irresponsible idiots are awarded huge amounts of money from companies that don't provide special useful instructions about their products for irresponsible idiots. An America of spurious, deceitfully interpreted political correctness, offensive to all participants in the process of human society. This is the America where a passerby will not even think of offering help to a person who is dying in the street, because they are afraid of being sued. I won't go on: it's boring and obnoxious to go through it all."--Max Frai, "Nine and a Half Americas"

Dalkey Archive Press

From the Publisher

Editors Iossel (Every Hunter Wants To Know) and Parker (a contributor to Ploughshares, Tin House, and the Iowa Review) have compiled the first book of essays to document in English the perception of the United States from the vantage point of contemporary Russian writers. Although references to Russian and American literature pepper the text, the slant is sociological rather than literary, and the writers focus on their personal experiences of America. The difference between direct and indirect experience is the subtle dichotomy at work in this book (not all the authors have visited America). While the tone is often eager, recalling other immigrant dreamers, the observations are not at all generalized. Instead, they are stunning in their detail. A more sizzling contrast and a better sense of balance might have been achieved had the book included perceptions of Russian and American writers of both countries. Nevertheless, this is a singular book that fills a niche. Recommended for all academic libraries.-Maria Kochis, California State Univ., Sacramento Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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