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November 17, 2006
Before Borat: Ilf & Petrov's Excellent Adventures
Long before Sasha Baron Cohen ripped up Americans in Borat, Soviet satirical writers Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov took a coast-to-coast driving tour of the U.S. in 1935, writing about their adventures for Ogonek, the Soviet version of Life magazine. Their long-lost reports and photos have been republished in "Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip."
The book is an easy read, full of pictures from the road that give the Soviet-eye view of what made America tick. Street signs are endlessly fascinating, as is the friendly but uninquisitive nature of Americans. Indians, Mark Twain's hometown, gasoline stations, the depradations of Wall Street all get mentioned. Seventy years later, some of the writing still provokes a shock of recognition:
The state of New Mexico received us in an unfriendly way: at the very first gas station, they took two cents more per gallon from us than in Texas. The price for gasoline fluctuates in the most capricious way in America. Every state has its own price. There are good states, where gas costs 14 cents per gallon. Your reminisce about these states with a warm, friendly feeling. Then there are states that take 30 cents from people passing through.
I was amused by the passages that present the Soviet perspective on the United States. Ilf and Petrov were, after all, writing for their Stalinist masters. Consider this passage from New Mexico:
To a Soviet person, used to the nationality policy of the USSR, all the mistakes of the American government's Indian policy are evident from the first glance. The mistakes are, of course, intentional. The fact of the matter is that in Indian schools, class is conducted exclusively in English. There is no written form of any Indian language at all. It's true that every Indian tribe has its own language but this doesn't change anything. If there were any desire to do so, the many American specialists who have fallen in love with Indian culture could create Indian written languages in a short time. But imperialism is imperialism.
This has the makings of a good movie, also, perhaps a Russian one about two Odessa-born examples of New Soviet Man among the friendly barbarians and their incredible highways.
Van | 11/17/06 at 07:07 AM | Categories:
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Comments
Sounds like an interesting book !
Paul | November 17, 2006 03:01 PM
Checkout 'The Prism' at http://prism-views.com.
Jim
Jim | November 18, 2006 08:18 PM
When I took a high school Soviet literature class (sounds kind of funny now), we read a delightful translation of Ilf & Petrov's "The Golden Calf." It mocked the Soviet system, albeit gently, but ideology aside, it was a very funny book. Over the years, I've made various half-hearted gestures to find that long out-of-print edition, but have only been able to track down a less-inspired version which gave the more common translation of the title as "The Little Golden Calf." (A quick Google search on it informed me that there's currently an effort to re-translate the book, in some collaborative, Wiki-styled way.)
Ilf & Petrov also wrote "The Twelve Chairs," which Mel Brooks filmed in 1970, to little acclaim.
Drew W | November 20, 2006 01:33 PM
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