Western Crime Fiction Goes East

The Russian Pinkerton Craze 1907-1934
Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-90-04-23310-2
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 11, 196 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 241 mm, Gewicht: 440 g

Reihe: Russian History and Culture

This book examines the staggering popularity of early-twentieth-century Russian detective serials. Traditionally maligned as “Pinkertonovshchina,” these appropriations of American and British detective stories featuring Nat Pinkerton, Nick Carter, Sherlock Holmes, Ethel King, and scores of other sleuths swept the Russian reading market in successive waves between 1907 and 1917, and famously experienced a “red” resurgence in the 1920s under the aegis of Nikolai Bukharin. The book presents the first holistic view of “Pinkertonovshchina” as a phenomenon, and produces a working model of cross-cultural appropriation and reception. The “red Pinkerton” emerges as a vital “missing link” between pre- and post-Revolutionary popular literature, and marks the fitful start of a decades-long negotiation between the regime, the author, and the reading masses.

Zielgruppe

All those interested in popular genres, crime fiction, popular culture in the Russian Empire, Soviet literature, the dynamics of adaptation and cultural appropriation.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dralyuk, Boris

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Prosa, Erzählung, Roman, Prosaautoren

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Abstract

Introduction

Chapter 1 – “As Many Street Cops as Corners”: Displacing 1905
in the Pinkertons

Chapter 2 – A Terrible Vengeance: The “Avenger Detective” in Russia

Chapter 3 – Slumming Littérateurs and Starving Students
The Pinkertons’ Purported Authors

Chapter 4 – The Persistence of Pinkertons: Reception Before and
After the Revolution

Chapter 5 – The Red Pinkerton’s Rise: Bukharin and the Komsomol

Chapter 6 – How the Mess Was Mended: Marietta Shaginian and Red
Pinkertonism

Chapter 7 – The Novel, the Film, and the Kinoroman: Parody and the
Decline of the Red Pinkerton

Chapter 8 – The Question of Genre and the Pinkertons’ Legacy

Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Dralyuk, Boris
Boris Dralyuk received his Ph.D. (2011) in Slavic Languages and Literatures from UCLA, where he is now a Lecturer. He has published work on various topics in Russian, Polish, and American literature, and works as a translator.