Help with a short story: the unopened letter

[Alex Spektor]

it does describe the incident from oblomov's dream.  they eventually do open the
letter and even start to answer it, but then stop.  This is a fun game.  Do you
have any more? :)

Best,
Alex Spektor

Quoting eric r laursen <eric.laursen at M.CC.UTAH.EDU>:

> This describes an incident from Oblomov's dream in Oblomov.  I think they
> open the letter after four or five days and it turns out to be a request for
> a beer recipe (which they never answer).  --Eric Laursen
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list on
> behalf of Hugh Olmsted
> Sent: Sat 11/8/2008 7:04 PM
> To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
> Subject: [SEELANGS] Help with a short story: the unopened letter
>
>
>
>
>       Dear friends,
>       On behalf of a colleague not in our field, I wonder whether our
> collective wisdom can identify a Russian short story just from a few
> clues in its subject.  What we know is this:  a family living far out
> in the provinces unexpectedly receives a letter from the Center,
> probably St. Petersburg.  It is a very official-looking, obviously
> important letter, and causes great consternation in the family:  What
> should they do?  Maybe it's bad news, maybe they shouldn't open it?
> Or maybe that would be just the wrong thing to do:  if they didn't
> open it, might that bring terrible consequences?  And so they hang,
> unable to decide, not opening it, not resolving their dilemma.
>       And that's all we know.  How it turns out, who wrote it, what
> its title might be, all remain to be recovered.
>       From this shred of evidence, can anybody provide the title and
> author?
>       Thanks for your attention; we'll be very grateful for any leads,
>       Hugh Olmsted
>
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