London: Routledge, 1999 — 320 p. — ISBN-10: 076560177X; ISBN-13: 978-0765601773.This text offers a critical study of postmodernism in Russian literature. It takes some of the central issues of the critical debate to develop a conception of postmodern poetics as a dialogue with chaos and places Russian literature in the context of an enriched postmodernism.Contents.
Editor's Introduction: Postmodernism, Duty-Free. Eliot Borenstein.
Introduction.
Chaos as a System.
The Russian Oxymoron.
Postmodernism Plus/Minus Modernism?
Intertextual Play.
Subverted Dialogism.
Dialogue with Chaos as a New Artistic Strategy.
Culture as Chaos.
Sacking the Museum: Andrei Bitov's Pushkin House.
From an Otherwordly Point of View: Venedikt Erofeev's Moscow to the End of the Line.
The Myth of Metamorphosis: Sasha Sokolov's,* School for Fools.
Active Nonbeing.
The Poetics of Chaosmos.
Context: Soviet Utopia.
Vasily Aksyonov: Utopia as a Fantasy.
Yuz Aleshkovsky: Bodies versus Ideas.
Context: Mythologies of Creation.
Tatyana Tolstaya: In the Broken Mirror.
Sasha Sokolov (1980): Chaos Speaks.
Lev Rubinshtein: Creation of the Kaleidoscopic Self.
Context: Mythologies of History.
Vyacheslav Pietsukh: "The Enigma of the Russian Soul Revisited.
The "Historical" Stories of Viktor Erofeyev: An Apotheosis of Particles.
Sasha Sokolov (1985): Self-Portrait on a Timeless Background.
Context: Mythologies of the Absurd.
Yevgeny Popov: The Jester's Work.
Vladimir Sorokin: Narrative Theater of Cruelty.
Famous Last Words.
Conclusion: On the Nature of Russian Postmodernism.
