Author and Hero in the Labyrinth of Ideas

The name of Andrey Astvatsaturov—a literary scholar, professor at SPbSU—is well known not only in professional philological circles: he is the author of books and articles about Anglo-American literature, novels “People in the Raw,” “Sunstkcamber,” “Autumn in Your Pockets,” and “Don’t Feed or Touch the Pelicans.” In his new book, Andrey Astvatsaturov turns to the works of the classics of the 20th century, as well as to contemporary Russian writers. The combination of serious subject matter and an engaging manner of exposition—through which Astvatsaturov is known as a brilliant lecturer—is present in his scholarly literary studies as well. His masterful analysis makes it possible to see paradoxes, seemingly in the canonical works of Anglo-American modernists—Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway, Jerome David Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, and John Updike. And modern Russian authors, in the most unexpected way, turn out to be their heirs: in Roman Sencin’s criminal story, the plot of Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” ("Desire"/“A Streetcar Named Desire”) emerges, while the chronicler of Russian emigration abroad, Andrey Ivanov, appears as a Russian Henry Miller. The book is aimed at a wide readership—both philologists and those who would like to understand world classics better, get acquainted with the brightest names of contemporary Russian literature, and feel the whimsical logic of the literary process.