OPPOSITION «NATIVE – ALIEN» FUNCTIONS IN THE BOOK OF TRAVEL ESSAYS BY ILLIA ILF AND YEVGEN PETROV «LITTLE GOLDEN AMERICA»

Abstract

The analysis of historical sources suggests that the book of travel essays «Little Golden America» was written by Ilf and Petrov, not according to the direction of the authorities, but became the fruit of the authors’ will. And its publications by mass circulation in 1936-1937 testifies that party leaders were counting on the necessary propaganda effect of the book by the charismatic authors. However, the influence of «Little Golden America» on the mass reader was far from unambiguous.Bolshevik literary criticism noticed negative communicative potential for the authorities hidden in the book. Numerous facts about American civilization and the standard of living of the «average American», given by Ilf and Petrov, were perceived as a real threat of destruction of political stereotypes created at that time in the mass consciousness. Attempts were made to discredit the book through undermining belief in the authenticity of information about America, which was reported in it. The fact that the information component of «Little Golden America» was perceived by the recipients as the main one is evidenced by all sources published in 1937-1960: reviews, literary-critical articles and scientific journalistic monographs, as well as reviews of readers-contemporaries of the first publication. It was added to the accusations of the unreliability and incompleteness of information that was reported by Ilf and Petrov, that they could not show a «typical» American, and «average American» and his life is not indicative and characteristic. The authors were expected to present generalizations based on imagination and speculation, sharp satire on American reality, but they went through the scientific and journalistic generalization of facts, which is subordinated to other laws than artistic.«Little Golden America» basis is a guidebook, which for many centuries of its existence has performed functions of collecting, systematizing and preserving information about the path to «alien» geographical and socio-cultural space. This loyalty to the tradition of the guidebook is observed in the analysis of such elements of the genre form of the book by Ilf and Petrov, as the route, the story about the path, and architectonics of the book, as well as methods for removing or mitigating the opposition native-alien.An obligatory for the guidebook opposition «native – alien», which is overcome as the travelling narrators progress in the unfamiliar world, is carried out with the help of comparisons literally scattered by Ilf and Petrov in the text of the book. Comparisons stimulate apperception, the main property of which is objectivity, contribute to filling the geographical and socio-cultural space with documentary images.