Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip: The 1935 Travelogue of Two Soviet Writers [Hardcover]

Evgeny Petrov (Author), Ilya Ilf (Author), Erika Wolf (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 31, 2006

In 1935, well into the era of Soviet communism, Russian satirical writers Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov came to the U.S as special correspondents for the Russian newspaper Pravda. They drove cross-country and back on a ten-week trip, recording images of American life through humerous texts and the lens of a Leica camera. When they returned home, they published their work in Ogonek, the Soviet equivalent of Time magazine, and later in the book Odnoetazhnaia Amerika (Single-Storied America). This wonderful lost workfilled with wry observations, biting opinions, and telling photographsis now collected in Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip, the first English translation.

From Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip:
"The word 'America' has well-developed grandiose associations for a Soviet person, for whom it refers to a country of skyscrapers, where day and night one hears the unceasing thunder of surface and underground trains, the hellish roar of automobile horns, and the continuous despairing screams of stockbrokers rushing through the skyscrapers waving their ever-falling shares. We want to change that image."

A Cabinet Book published by Princeton Architectural Press

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Ilya Ilf (1897-1937) and Evgeny Petrov (1903-42) are the foremost comic novelists of the early Soviet Union. Their The Twelve Chairs (1928) was never suppressed, and in 1970 Mel Brooks made one of his earliest hit movies out of it. Their popularity and doctrinal orthodoxy helped them land an assignment for a series of articles about the real America, illustrated by photos Ilf snapped with a new Leica. Starting out from New York City in late November 1935, they drove to Chicago and then in a southerly circuit through Missouri and the Southwest, up to San Francisco, and back via southern Texas and the Gulf and tidewater coasts to Manhattan after New Year's. They gawked and got bored, picked up hitchhikers, palavered when they could (they were stunned by Americans' incuriosity about them), swallowed a couple of stretchers, and reported everything in 11 loosely thematic pieces whose prose is clean as a whistle and much more ingenuous. Ilf's pictures, reproduced from the best available sources (the negatives have vanished), are reminiscent of the Farm Security Administration photos of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and company, but they're literally artless, just snapshots, really. Impeccably translated, edited, and introduced, and supplemented by artist Aleksandr Rodchenko's prepublication assessment of the original photos and remarks by Ilf's daughter, Aleksandra, this is riveting, fresh-eyed Americana and--how d'you say?--Sovietiana? Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

... a jovial and surprisingly affectionate account... a fascinating snapshot of a nation's history... before the Cold War took firm hold. -- CNN Traveler, Dec. 2006

In 1935, two Soviet writers embarked on a Borat-like tour of the U.S. Relive their strange journey in this delightful book. -- Entertainment Weekly, "The Must List", November 10, 2006

Now translated, this is a riveting piece of Americana. -- Booklist, September 15, 2007

Sorry, Borat, but two sassy Soviet Russians beat you to it. Just published for the first time ever in English, this lost treasure is a cool, srange artifact, but it's also simply a hoot. -- Very Short List, November 9, 2006

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press; 1 edition (August 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568986009
• ISBN-13: 978-1568986005
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #659,325 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Still-recognizable portrait of America November 10, 2008

By T. W.

Format:Hardcover

Apart from this book's obvious value as a humorous and intelligent look at 1935 America, it is most interesting for showing the many respects in which FDR's New Deal America was already fixed in many of the cultural and political ruts in which we still find the U.S. It can be so revealing because it observes the ordinary and the stupid as keenly as the elite and accomplished. (As a result, the book's occasional smugness will certainly grate on some American readers. The authors describe to us an incurious and unthinking people and are most dated by their certainty that the economic stagnation of 1935 is a loud and final trumpet-blast giving the final verdict on the American kind of capitalism. Maybe it was, in some ways, but in general this is facile in retrospect, especially in comparison with the Soviet trajectory. The point of this positive review is how much truth comes through despite this somewhat churlish--though always witty--attitude.)

The very premise of the book is that knowledge of the nation comes on a road trip, that the rhythm of stopping at gas stations and proceeding along endless highways is somehow definitive of America. Ilf and Petrov ponder the essential sameness of so many American towns. The book begins at once with New Yorkers' and Washingtonians' admonitions to the authors that the "real America" lies somewhere else, out on the roads sprawling westward. (The New Yorkers' children meanwhile, they observe, learn what a cow might be like by looking at the rhino in the Central Park Zoo....)

Some of what Ilf and Petrov hear in 1935 America is disgustingly familiar to us still: otherwise thriving families bankrupted by medical expenses; the ordinary man's belief that it's all right to soak the rich with progressive taxation so long as we leave them $5 million (around $75 million today) -- $4 million being perhaps not generous enough; Santa Fe overrun by millionaires; Los Angeles characterized by the peculiar ineradicability of exhaust in its air, and by a plenty of oranges that look better than they taste. (Americans, they observe, seem more interested in vitamins than taste.)

The authors' dark diagnosis of America is perhaps most fascinated by the role of advertising and idiot mass culture. They observe that an American might well graduate from a series of excellent schools, but that a few years of watching the dreck from Hollywood will stupefy them soon enough (and this was clear to them some years before the advent of commercial TV). They see that many of America's churches, schools, and journalistic organs serve, in effect, to reinforce this same effect of the movies, that "publicity" defines a wider theater of thought invasion than just the explicit ads. They are amused that Christmas is advertised in much the same way as Coca Cola, and for the same reasons. They understand how corporate branding really works--the irrelevant advertisement whose work is done just by making you pay attention to it.

They look at the business end of consumer culture, too, amazed at how much crap you don't need you will buy when everything at Woolworth's costs a nickel or a dime.

These are just some of the ideas that made an impression on me; I have omitted most of the book's topics, such as a notable report on how whites think (or, more accurately, do not think) of the blacks they keep down.

One note about what this book actually is: it is NOT an English translation of the authors' 1937 book Odnoetazhnaia Amerika (Single-Storey America). Not only does the introduction fail to clarify this, but the book's Library in Congress cataloging-in-publication is utterly erroneous in claiming this. The book SEEMS to be a (complete?) translation of the photo essays printed in the periodical Ogonek. The disadvantage of this is that you are missing the vast majority of the authors' writing about America (just at random, here are some chapters of Odoetazhnaia Amerika not represented here: The Electric Chair; Dearborn & Henry Ford; American football; A day in Mexico)--however, the entire book was immediately translated into English by Charles Malamuth and published in 1937 by Farrar & Rinehart under the title Little Golden America: Two Famous Soviet Humorists Survey These United States (not in print). But the huge advantage of this format is that it includes the photographs--which are half the fun of the whole thing (and whose omission from the 1937 book deprived it of much of its meaning, since many passages refer in detail to the subjects photographed). So I'd certainly recommend this volume as an introduction to Ilf and Petrov, and curious readers can hunt down "Little Golden America" afterwards. Read more ›

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars This almost-lost work is a gem October 17, 2008

By Paul E. Richardson VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

This new translation (the last was in 1937) of this almost-lost work is a gem. And not just because it is by two of Soviet Russia's greatest writers and humorists. After all, it is always fascinating to hear how others see us, to see what photos they take, what impressions they bring away. Ilf and Petrov were trenchant observers of human nature, and this travelogue of their 1935 trip across America is simply a piece of classic journalism.

Of course, this is not the pair's funniest work. Hardly surprising, given that the system they lampooned with The Twelve Chairs and The Golden Calf (sadly, only the former is currently in print in English) was, by the time the pair turned up in America, engulfed in a paroxysm of self-mutilation. But the account of their journey is funny and at times biting, even taking into account Ilf and Petrov's need to toe the Party line (they were working for Pravda, after all).

Add in the candid and revealing photos of everyday Americans, and you have a true collector's item. In the end, reading this book is like leafing through an old family album full of vaguely familiar faces and places, with running commentary by a sarcastic, immigrant uncle. (Reviewed in Russian Life)

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars GREAT NOVEL - A LOST GEM January 7, 2011

By Anonymous

Format:Hardcover

One of the greatest doculogues about the America of the 1930s, documenting with humor and poignant satire the culture and society of that tumultous period of depression, the great dust bowl migration, and the effect on the various people of the country as the journalists embark on a trip to find "the real america".
The translation loses some of the humor that the authors intended but having read the book in both english and russian I still find myself laughing out loud while reading certain passages. The description of the US is funny, touching and rings true even today. The culture of mass production, needless advertising [if you chew Wrigley's gum you'll be stronger, smarter, healthier, etc...], the sameness of all american towns [downtown, residential parts, a Main Street or State Street] sound very familiar and timeless.
To note, this is not the actual translation of the book that was published in russian "One Storied America". This a translation of the articles that Ilf and Petrov published in a Russian monthly periodical and is missing several chapters that were in the book. The only complete english translation of One Storied America as it was later published in Russian is the translation done in 1937 by Charles Malamuth that is as close to the original as you can get. I believe that book is now out of print and is hard to find but I managed to locate an online version of this gem at the below website:
[...]
For those looking for a good laugh and a reality check, this book is a must read.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic snapshot of 1930 USA thru Soviet Lens September 27, 2007

By John McKinney

Format:Hardcover

What a terrific job on the translation and reproduction of the documentation of this fascinating trip by the two Soviet journalists.
Highly recommend the book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I couldn't put it down! August 14, 2012

By Richard Menzies

Format:Hardcover

What a pleasant read! I laughed out loud and nearly rolled out of my hammock. The descriptions are spare but spot on. Funny how not one single hitchhiker ever was curious enough to ask these two Russians any questions. Not a lot has changed in America since the Nineteen Thirties, except that we now have even more cars, even more exhaust fumes in the air, and even fewer pedestrians walking Main Street.
"There are exactly as many pedestrians as absolutely necessary to contradict the unbidden but persistent impression that the entire population of the city has perished."

Priceless!