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Book synopsis

Begun in 1929 under the title "New Prose," and drastically revised after Vladimir Mayakovsky's sudden death, A Hunt for Optimism (1931) circles obsessively around a single scene of interrogation in which a writer is subjected to a show trial for his unorthodoxy. Using multiple perspectives, fragments, and aphorisms, and bearing the vulnerability of both the Russian Jewry and the anti-Bolshevik intelligentsia -- who had unwittingly become the "enemies of the people" -- Hunt satirizes Soviet censorship and the ineptitude of Soviet leaders with acerbic panache. Despite criticism at the time that it lacked unity and was too "variegated" to be called a purely "Shklovskian book," Hunt is stylistically unpredictable, experimentally bold, and unapologetically ironic -- making it one of the finest books in Shklovsky's body of work.

Book details

Book category Books in English Literature & literary studies Literature: history & criticism Literary studies: general

• Full title: Hunt for Optimism
• Author: Viktor Shklovsky
• Language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160
• EAN: 9781564787903
• ISBN: 1564787907
• ID: 01218866
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Weight: 244 g
• Dimensions: 139 × 203 × 14 mm
• Date of publishing: 15. January 2013

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