life under Stalin (cont.)

[Steven Hill]

Dear colleagues:

Does anyone know whether Evgenii Aleksandrovich Evtushenko's "Precocious
Autobiography" is in print?  Or OP?

It did have a significant advantage over many Russian books: it was SHORT.
Students could easily read it in one week.  Moreover, it concentrated on
the writer's life when he was a lad and then a young man, actually the same
age as undergrads & grad students today.  (In the first chapters, even younger
 -- this academic drop-out & would-be semi-pro soccer player, born 1933, became
a "professional sports versifier," if memory serves, before his 16th birthday.)

Evtushenko, sports fan-cum iconoclast that he was, also devotes a memorable set
of pages to the mass tragedy of uncontrollable crowds at Stalin's funeral in
1953. (Where Evtushenko claims he himself pitched in & tried to save some of
those being trampled, crushed, & suffocated.)

Even if Evtushenko doesn't win many Bookman or Nobel Prizes as a creator of
"high literature," ahem, still his "Precocious" might work out very well in
some classes, for its historical & cultural content, told from the viewpoint
of a youngster who has an eye for vivid detail and is never ponderous or boring.

Best wishes to all,
Steven P Hill,
University of Illinois.
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