 
|
Energy of Delusion: A Book on PlotAuthor: Viktor Shklovsky Translator: Shushan Avagyan Russian Literature Series 428 pages, Paperback, 9781564784261 Retail Paperback Price: Our Paperback Price: $11.96—20% OFF! 
|
|
Book Description
One of the greatest literary minds of the twentieth century, Viktor Shklovsky writes the critical equivalent of what Ross Chambers calls "loiterature"—writing that roams, playfully digresses, moving freely between the literary work and the world. In Energy of Delusion, a masterpiece that Shklovsky worked on over thirty years, he turns his unique critical sensibility to Tolstoy’s life and novels, applying the famous "formalist method" he invented in the 1920s to Tolstoy’s massive body of work, and at the same time taking Tolstoy (as well as Boccaccio, Pushkin, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Turgenev) as a springboard to consider the devices of literature—how novels work and what they do.
Available in English for the first time, Energy of Delusion provides contemporary readers with a new way of thinking about how great literature is written (and how great criticism might be) that is as timely today as ever.
About the Author
|
Viktor Shklovsky (1893-1984) was a leading figure in the Russian Formalist movement of the 1920s and had a profound effect on twentieth century Russian literature. Several of his books have been translated into English, including Zoo, or Letters Not about Love, Third Factory, and Theory of Prose, all published by Dalkey Archive Press. Over the next few years, Dalkey Archive will also publish Shklovsky's Hamburg Account, Bowstring, and The Energy of Delusion, none of which have ever before appeared in English. |
 |
About the Translator
| Shushan Avagyan, translator of Energy of Delusion, has also translated the works of Armenian poet S. Kurghinian. She is currently working on her doctoral degree in Comparative Literature at Illinois State University. |
Praise
"Perhaps because he is such an unlikely Tolstoyan, Viktor Shklovsky's writing on Tolstoy is always absorbing and often brilliant."—Russian Review"A rambling, digressive stylist, Shklovsky throws off brilliant aperçus on every page. . . . Like an architect's blueprint, [he] lays bare the joists and studs that hold up the house of fiction."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post
"Shklovsky is a disciple worthy of Sterne. He has appropriated the device of infinitely delayed event, of the digression helplessly promising to return to the point, and of disguising his superbly controlled art with a breezy nonchalance. But it is not really Sterne that Shklovsky sounds like: it is an intellectual and witty Hemingway."—Guy Davenport, National Review
More Information
Also by Viktor Shklovsky:A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs, 1917-1922
Knight's Move
Literature and Cinematography
Theory of Prose
Third Factory
Zoo, or Letters Not about Love