Unsocial Realism
The Bluebottle is an addition of some in3P°I..,t‘ ance to the growing corpus of `smuggle"_, Soviet literature now available in the West aria, consisting of work too critical of the official Soviet image to hope for publication in Russia itself. The volume contains two stories whie,h together add up to the length of a short novel; Each story traces the fate of an intellectual Soviet citizen entirely disillusioned with Soviet society, both heroes being presumably portraits of of the unknown author (Valeriy is a pseudonym). Valeriy, whoever he may be, is a master of, quiet and deadly irony, as he shows again Oat again in his portraits of conforming Sriv?„ philosophers and editors, of the housing cris"; and so on—and also in his delicious analysis 01 such official doctrines as the compulsory WV'. ary theory of Socialist Realism. His qualit.'„6„ are revealed at their best in a telling descriliti" of the rise of the party functionary APost01°„' a thinly disguised Khrushchev. Carefully re"- dered into English by a translator also pseuda: nymous, this is one of the best short passage' in 'smuggled' Soviet literature. Like many disaffected citizens, valeta heroes take refuge in sex, which in the end 10.: vides no more of a haven than politics, but ri! portrayed with the same playful irony. 13t;5 ticularly liked the introduction of one fetrunes fatales, which begins: Rosalia was charming and seductive and &Foil man who looked at her felt he was belof roasted on a slow fire. This was clearly trite a her husband, Afanasy Grib, a drab, w,egitic man with a greenish skin, moist hands an eyes of a hurt dog. . .
It is a pity that an author with such a-
not timate knowledge of the 'Soviet scene cool- cid have given tauter construction to his plotsit,tie had to fall- into the perpetual pitfall of `:„ Russian fiction-writer—a tendency to indulgeo`, too much `philosophising.' There is also a dency to overplay self-conscious literary evlie ceits which remind one of Soviet-writing in Ire Twenties. It happens that these defects especially prominent in the first quarter of etile st book, but it is to be hoped that readers will thrers them with patience, for the book gat" enielr strength as it proceeds and contains some 'r did material.
RONALD
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