{"product_id":"goat-song-paperback-1","title":"Goat Song - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eKonstantin Vaginov\u003c\/b\u003e (Author), \u003cb\u003eAinsley Morse\u003c\/b\u003e (Translator), \u003cb\u003eEugene Ostashevsky\u003c\/b\u003e (Introduction by)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eTwo novels by one of the Soviet Union's most inventive writers, written in the tradition of Gogol and Dostoyevsky but with a twentieth-century, modernist edge.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eKonstantin Vaginov was an early and exemplary figure of Soviet modernist writing in all its agonized and glorious contradictions. Born into an educated middle-class family, Vaginov came of age with the Revolution. His novels of the late 1920s and early '30s are daringly experimental and tragically nostalgic, using mercilessly ironic prose to mourn the loss of prerevolutionary intellectual culture. Adrift in the brave new Soviet world, Vaginov's protagonists attempt to conjure the recent and distant past by stockpiling old books and songs, vulgar baubles and bad jokes, newspaper clippings, coins, and graffiti. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis volume contains two novels: \u003ci\u003eGoat Song\u003c\/i\u003e features thinly veiled portraits of Vaginov's contemporaries as they flounder and self-destruct in their new bracingly materialist circumstances. Echoing Gogol, Dostoyevsky, and Bely, \u003ci\u003eGoat Song \u003c\/i\u003eis both a classic Petersburg city text and its swan song: \"Now there is no Petersburg . . . the author is a coffin-maker by trade, not a cradle expert.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWorks and Days of Whistlin \u003c\/i\u003efollows the novelist Whistlin as he unscrupulously mines the lives of his friends and fellow citizens for literary material. His exploitation of human material is a wry commentary on the concurrent efforts to industrialize and collectivize the Soviet economy, at a horrific human cost.\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eKonstantin Vaginov\u003c\/b\u003e (1899-1934) was born in St. Petersburg. His mother came from a wealthy family and his father was a high-ranking official, descended from German immigrants whose name had been Russified from Wagenheim. During the Civil War, he served in the Red Army. Active in Nikolai Gumilev's Acmeist movement and the Guild of Poets, he was a core member of the avant-garde group OBERIU and well acquainted with Mikhail Bakhtin and his intellectual circle, who partly inspired his fiction. Vaginov wrote four novels before his death from tuberculosis at the age of thirty-four. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eAinsley Morse\u003c\/b\u003e teaches literature and translation at the University of California, San Diego, and translates from Russian, Ukrainian, and Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eGeoff Cebula\u003c\/b\u003e is a translator from Russian to English. He is the author of the novel \u003ci\u003eAdjunct\u003c\/i\u003e, and has published several articles on the avant-garde collective OBERIU. He lives in Indiana. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eEugene Ostashevsky\u003c\/b\u003e is a poet and translator. He was born in Leningrad, grew up in New York, and currently lives in New York and Berlin. His poetry collections, \u003ci\u003eThe Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eFeeling Sonnets, \u003c\/i\u003eare published in the NYRB Poets series. He selected and translated the poems in Alexander Vvedensky's \u003ci\u003eAn Invitation for Me to Think, \u003c\/i\u003e also in the NYRB Poets series, and translated \u003ci\u003eThe Fire Horse: Children's Poems by Mayakovsky, Mandelstam, and Kharm\u003c\/i\u003es, published in the NYRB Kids series.\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 376\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.9 x 7.9 x 4.9 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e June 17, 2025\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43159584079935,"sku":"9781681378886","price":23.94,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0105\/8226\/1823\/files\/Gcbfw79b2M9781681378886.webp?v=1776999926","url":"https:\/\/dhlswag.com\/products\/goat-song-paperback-1","provider":"BBB","version":"1.0","type":"link"}