Ebook: Shklovsky: witness to an era

"Shklovsky: Witness to an Era is a blend of riotous anecdote, personal history, and literary reflection, collecting interviews with Viktor Shklovsky conducted by scholar Serena Vitale in the '70s, toward the end of the great critic's life, and in the face of interference and even veiled threats of violence from the Soviet government. Shklovsky's answers are wonderfully intimate, focusing particularly on the years of the early Soviet avant-garde, and his relationships with such figures as Eisenstein and Mayakovsky."--Provided by the publisher.;Machine generated contents note: The Interviews -- December 23 -- On the infinity of the novel -- Art has neither beginning, middle, nor end -- Epilogues are cloying leftovers -- Art deals always and only with life -- December 24 -- The memories begin -- Childhood in Petersburg -- How to eat blintzes -- Digression on the drawbacks of having a secretary -- Shklovsky meeting Mayakovsky, he doesn't remember exactly when; the beginning of their friendship -- The futurist evenings -- the technique of scandal -- Baudouin de Courtenay -- Poets shouldn't be allowed to divorce -- Seminarians and carpenters duking it out on the ice -- December 26 -- Young philologists meet and discuss literature at the University of Petersburg -- The birth of formalism -- Lev Jakubinsky -- Yevgeni Polivanov -- Poetry and time: "The Bronze Horseman" -- Poetry as the "deep joy of recognition." shklovsky, says Blok, understands everything -- Yury Tynyanov -- Boris Eikhenbaum;Note continued: A mistreated hat -- An uplifting song -- December 29 -- The birth of Soviet cinema is compared to the creation of the world -- The Letatlin: a dreaming machine -- The weapon of patience -- Mayakovsky didn't want debts -- Digression on Pasternak's poetry, Bulgakov's novels -- Shklovsky begins to work in cinema, he writes intertitles and then scripts -- He meets Eisenstein -- What was the role of dishes in the october Revolution? Some films Shklovsky wrote: By the Law, Bed and Sofa, Minin and Pozharsky -- Shklovsky tears apart Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev -- An unusual editing job -- An even more unusual writing job -- December 30 -- Tolstoy begins to write -- "A History of Yesterday." For some reason Shklovsky tore up the first volume of Tolstoy's Complete Works -- The young Tolstoy left for the Caucasus with an English dictionary, a flute, The Count of Monte Cristo, and a samovar -- An ancestor of ours left out of Zoo, or Letters Not about Love;Note continued: How two ex-formalists argued the day Akhmatova died -- Derzhavin's arrival spells the end of formalism -- Man's destiny is the material of art -- Which has to be shaken up once in a while, like a clock that stops ticking -- On the futility of looking at flags -- December 27 -- Khlebnikov, Filonov, and a painting that refuses to hang on the wall -- Malevich's square -- February 1917 -- Memories of war -- A stomach wound -- A kiss from kornilov -- Russia and Asia -- Russia and Europe -- Esenin in valenki -- Mayakovsky has the last word: the people know how to drink -- December 28 -- Civil war in Petrograd, dead horses in the streets -- The "ship of fools." The Serapion Brothers: lots of young people, some in their teens -- Revolution = dictatorship of the Academy of Sciences -- Meyerhold, the oldest director in the world -- His archives saved by Elsenstein -- Two Inspector Generals -- Zoshchenko turns on some disconcerting lights -- Berlin;Note continued: Frightening, poetic dreams -- What does realism mean? -- January 2 -- The word -- Poetry of words and poetry of letters -- Mayakovsky loved the radio -- An ugly, stupid box -- One mustn't fear the future -- Tolstoy gets edited -- The old scholasticism and the new -- The living Russian word.