Kulagin, A. (2025). Kushner and Russian classics. Book 2. Kolomna: IP Shmatala A. E. (In Russ.)

Abstract

A. Kulagin’s book is resolutely postmodernist. The author applies methods of historic-literary description to the modern writer: literary criticism may be oblivious of the distance between subject and object, but the history of literature recognizes it without fail. Kulagin both shortens the distance and engages in a direct conversation with the author (A. Kushner), which defines the entire book. In terms of genre attribution, Kulagin’s book resembles a zine — a collection of articles on historicliterary and didactic-methodological topics, cultural studies and memoirs. This, too, goes against the historic-literary canon. The fact that it is a second book with the identical title suggests that this study should be viewed as an aperiodic chronicle by the same author. Kulagin’s work demonstrates the validity of the postmodernist presumption of text as a collage of other people’s words, while attempts to identify the source of a quote often reveal the method to be hopeless and redundant.