Not a playful debunking, a holding of amusing foibles to the light, but an often bitter denunciation of much the conventional Russian literary canon and the writers who created it. Expatriot
Druzhnikov (Russian literature, U. of California-Davis) takes up such themes as Pushkin, Stalin, and Other Poets; Hitting it Off with Pushkin; the Dangerous Jests of Albert Robida; Alexander
Kuprin from Midden to Mantlepiece; The Overt and Covert Lives of Konstantin Ventzel; the Richyi Churchyard Mystery; and Trifonov's Fate, or A Good Writer in a Bad Time. The text is double
spaced. The final word of the title is missing from the cover. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
