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| Authors: Ilya Ilf and Evgeny
Petrov |
In 1935, well into the era
of Soviet communism, Russian
satirical writers Ilya Ilf
and Evgeny Petrov came to
the U.S as special correspondents
for the Russian newspaper
Pravda. They drove cross-country
and back on a ten-week trip,
recording images of American
life through humerous texts
and the lens of a Leica camera.
When they returned home,
they published their work
in Ogonek, the Soviet equivalent
of Time magazine, and later
in the book Odnoetazhnaia
Amerika (Single-Storied America).
This wonderful lost work—filled
with wry observations, biting
opinions, and telling photographs—is
now collected in Ilf and
Petrov's American Road Trip,
the first English translation.
From Ilf and Petrov's American
Road Trip:
" The word 'America'
has well-developed grandiose
associations for a Soviet
person, for whom it refers
to a country of skyscrapers,
where day and night one
hears the unceasing thunder
of surface and underground
trains, the hellish roar
of automobile horns, and
the continuous despairing
screams of stockbrokers
rushing through the skyscrapers
waving their ever-falling
shares. We want to change
that image."
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From Booklist
Ilya Ilf (1897-1937) and
Evgeny Petrov (1903-42)
are the foremost comic
novelists of the early
Soviet Union. Their The
Twelve Chairs (1928)
was never suppressed,
and in 1970 Mel Brooks
made one of his earliest
hit movies out of it.
Their popularity and
doctrinal orthodoxy helped
them land an assignment
for a series of articles
about the real America,
illustrated by photos
Ilf snapped with a new
Leica. Starting out from
New York City in late
November 1935, they drove
to Chicago and then in
a southerly circuit through
Missouri and the Southwest,
up to San Francisco,
and back via southern
Texas and the Gulf and
tidewater coasts to Manhattan
after New Year's. They
gawked and got bored,
picked up hitchhikers,
palavered when they could
(they were stunned by
Americans' incuriosity
about them), swallowed
a couple of stretchers,
and reported everything
in 11 loosely thematic
pieces whose prose is
clean as a whistle and
much more ingenuous.
Ilf's pictures, reproduced
from the best available
sources (the negatives
have vanished), are reminiscent
of the Farm Security
Administration photos
of Walker Evans, Dorothea
Lange, and company, but
they're literally artless,
just snapshots, really.
Impeccably translated,
edited, and introduced,
and supplemented by artist
Aleksandr Rodchenko's
prepublication assessment
of the original photos
and remarks by Ilf's
daughter, Aleksandra,
this is riveting, fresh-eyed
Americana and--how d'you
say?--Sovietiana?
Ray Olson
© American Library Association. |
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$24.95 (hardcover)
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