Red Bread

by Alexander Genis

These literary pieces by one of Russia's foremost essayists reflect the author's bi-culturalism. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566633362
• ISBN13: 9781566633369
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher
• Length: 191 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Today's DeToqueville

This handsome book of collected essays by the expatriate genius from New York is really worth your time. Alexander Genis, a Russian living in the big apple, contributes to a field where the maestro is Alexis DeToqueville, the colonial French author who reviewed and explained America to Americans. However, this Americanology through a Russian eye is but one of several excellent pieces. "Darkness and Silence" is an exquisitely subtle piece which belongs to no nation- it is a cosmopolitan, intricate piece of philosophy, delving into the art of living in real time. Alexander Genis is obviously a master in the high genre of Criticism, but this particular work demonstrates his place in world literature !

A thought-provoking read

Of the five sections in this book of essays, I can say that I most enjoyed "A View from the Window," an undersized overview of the now-defunct twentieth century, and "Brodsky in New York," which profiles the great Russian/American poet; the section "Red Bread" puts the peculiarities of Russian cuisine into a historical context; and the crux of the book, "USA from A to Y"--an observant portrayal of those everyday Americanisms that we ourselves tend to overlook--will also be interesting for wordly readers, especially those who are not used to looking at their own culture from without. Alas, I felt the last section, "Darkness and Silence," to be the weakest in the collection and was unable to delve very deeply into it. Still, I can recommend this book highly. The translations are refreshingly un-translationlike, and Mr. Genis himself is a very fine writer.