Reading for Entertainment in Contemporary Russia: Post-Soviet Popular Literature in Historical Perspective by Stephen s> Lovell Birgit Menzel (review)

Abstract

340 SEER, 85, 2, 2007 'azure and mother-of-pearl'of his S,Jean Holabird has done a great service. Her interpretationof Nabokov's alphabet offers for the first time a pictorial realization(inwatercolour)of the very exact tonal qualityof the letters,as well as a depiction of their visual character. The letters are not given in their alphabetic sequence but are ordered, rather, in Nabokov's groupings, from black which includesA, G and R, the 'sooty rag being ripped' (pp. ii and 36) through the colours which form Nabokov's own very unique rainbow spectrum white, blue, green,yellow, brown and red. These appeartogether in a final concludingimage to make up what he describedas his 'primary,but decidedly muddy rainbow' and the 'hardly pronounceable: kzspygv' (pp. 35 and 36). In his foreword, Brian Boyd dextrously explores the implications of Nabokov's 'auditioncoloree', emphasizingthe fusion of science and art that it encapsulates,and its manifestationin the multiple and various rainbowsthat feature throughoutNabokov's work. These range from the images that recur throughout Speak,Memoy to the fanciful rainbow-hued butterflies that he sketched in the margins of his manuscripts,to the themes that connect this distinctivespectrumof colours so intriguinglywith the most vital elements of his art:language, imagination and memory. School of Slavonic andEastEuropean Studies Bm~BARA WYLLIE, University College London Lovell, Stephen and Menzel, Birgit (eds).Readingfor Entertainment in ContemporagyRussia :Post-Soviet PopularLiterature in HistoricalPerspective. Arbeiten und Texte zur Slavistik, 78. Otto Sagner, Munich, 2005. 206 pp. Notes. Bibliography.?32.00 (paperback). WITH the increasing marginalization of 'serious' literature, shifting reader preferences,and a commerciallydrivenpublishingindustry,popularliterature continues to grow rapidlyin significancein Russia.This timelyvolume examines the expansion of popular literaturein Russia in the post-Soviet period, surveyingthe most prominentgenres of contemporaryRussianpopularfiction with respect to their literary roots and social, historical and economic influences. At first glance, entertainment seems to be antithetical to the goals of Russian literature as traditionallyperceived. However, by tracing the commercialelements of Russianliteraryhistoryfrom the nineteenthcenturyto the present and demonstratingthe links between popular and mainstreamliterature ,Lovell and Menzel arguethat popularor entertainmentliteraturedoes in fact 'belong in the mainstreamhistory of Russian culture' (p. I2). In an introductorychapter entitled 'Reading the Russian Popular', Lovell classifiespopular genres in Russia and examines their production and reception . Two of the problems in addressingthe role and evolution of Russian popular fiction include the relativenewness of a term for popularcultureand a relatively thin body of critical literature. Lovell differentiatesSoviet mass REVIEWS 34I fictionfrom its Westerncounterpartby virtueof the former'smoraland philosophical dimension, but he also notes that post-Soviet mass fiction has begun to approximateWestern models. Menzel's chapter on 'Writing, Reading and Selling Literaturein Russia I986-2004' focuseson fourmajorchanges in Russiancultureand theirimpact on literature,including the 'erosion of the intelligentsia;the dissolutionof all the state institutions that had ruled literary life since 19I7; the commercialisation of culture since I99I; and the changing impact of new/mass media' (p. 39). She identifiesa correspondingshiftin the 'new Russianwriter',who is characterized by professionalization, 'an orientation towards commercial success', and a 'playfuland parodic authorialpersona' (p. 47). Five essayson currentgenres of Russianpopularliteraturefollow the three introductorychapters.The chapter on Russian detective fiction, or detektivy, is written by Marina Koreneva. Though she notes the absence of a detailed historyof the genre, Koreneva locates some of the genre'srootsin folkloreand providessix examplesrangingfrom the seventeenthcenturyto the presentday to illustratethe genesis and development of the detective novel in the Russian context. The current form of Russian detective fiction emerged in I996-97, and the authorial persona became a significantelement of the reception of these works. Koreneva identifies two distinct types of detective fiction based on the gender of the authorand the protagonist;considerablespace is devoted to women's detective fiction because of its innovativeness. In his chapter on the boevik, a genre with roots in the Soviet spy novel and political detective novel, Boris Dubin analyses the hero as loner, his key qualities of 'invulnerability,invisibility, [and] orphanhood', and the ways in which these qualitieslink to the hero's autonomy (p. I04). He findsmodels for the boevik in 'the feudal era and ... .] in popular novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' (p. io6). Dubin also analyses the temporal and spatial structuresgoverningthe formulaof the boevik and...