By Irina: Russians in America

I am a Russian Artist, Event Entertainer Irina. I am based in Miami. You can reach me at 786-301-2456. My passions are art, start-ups, helping others to succeed and Russian culture among other things. I see myself as a humble artist & community server, please call me with any questions. (Oh, and I earn my living as an event entertainer, so please look around and refer me for party entertainment gigs.)

And now... our feature presentations for this post. I am looking forward to attending this book club organized by the Russian Round Table, a wonderful Russian club of Miami.

JULY book club meeting

When: NEXT Thursday of July (July 30th) from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm

Where: at our usual place in Coral Gables library.

Chosen book

Title: Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip: The 1935 Travelogue of Two Soviet Writers

Authors: Evgeny Petrov, Ilya Ilf

Where you can get the book

in English translation: from Amazon.com or check your local library

in Russian original: http://www.lib.ru/ILFPETROV/amerika.txt

Short Synopsis/review

... a jovial and surprisingly affectionate account... a fascinating snapshot of a nation's history... before the Cold War took firm hold. -- CNN Traveler, Dec. 2006

July meeting will take place on the last NEXT Thursday, July 30th, from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm at our usual place in Coral Gables library. Our formal discussion will start at 7:00 pm, which will give us 30 minutes to catch up with each other and socialize.

The book Marina Ilinska chose for our July meeting is by two famous Soviet writers Ilf and Petrov "Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip: The 1935 Travelogue of Two Soviet Writers". You can get English translation of the book from Amazon.com or check your local library. You can download Russian original from the following link: http://www.lib.ru/ILFPETROV/amerika.txt.

Following is the short synopsis of the book provided by Amazon.com

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Ilya Ilf (1897-1937) and Evgeny Petrov (1903-42) are the foremost comic novelists of the early Soviet Union. Their The Twelve Chairs (1928) was never suppressed, and in 1970 Mel Brooks made one of his earliest hit movies out of it.

Their popularity and doctrinal orthodoxy helped them land an assignment for a series of articles about the real America, illustrated by photos Ilf snapped with a new Leica.

Starting out from New York City in late November 1935, they drove to Chicago and then in a southerly circuit through Missouri and the Southwest, up to San Francisco, and back via southern Texas and the Gulf and tidewater coasts to Manhattan after New Year's.

They gawked and got bored, picked up hitchhikers, palavered when they could (they were stunned by Americans' incuriosity about them), swallowed a couple of stretchers, and reported everything in 11 loosely thematic pieces whose prose is clean as a whistle and much more ingenuous.

Ilf's pictures, reproduced from the best available sources (the negatives have vanished), are reminiscent of the Farm Security Administration photos of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and company, but they're literally artless, just snapshots, really.

Impeccably translated, edited, and introduced, and supplemented by artist Aleksandr Rodchenko's prepublication assessment of the original photos and remarks by Ilf's daughter, Aleksandra, this is riveting, fresh-eyed Americana and--how d'you say?--Sovietiana? Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
... a jovial and surprisingly affectionate account... a fascinating snapshot of a nation's history... before the Cold War took firm hold. -- CNN Traveler, Dec. 2006

In 1935, two Soviet writers embarked on a Borat-like tour of the U.S. Relive their strange journey in this delightful book. -- Entertainment Weekly, "The Must List", November 10, 2006

Now translated, this is a riveting piece of Americana. -- Booklist, September 15, 2007

Sorry, Borat, but two sassy Soviet Russians beat you to it. Just published for the first time ever in English, this lost treasure is a cool, srange artifact, but it's also simply a hoot. -- Very Short List, November 9, 2006