Soviet Grotesque

This issue of Glas has a subtitle--Soviet Grotesque"--and our subsequent numbers will follow a similar pattern, dealing with such themes as The Woman's View and The Jews in Russia. We hope this approach will increase our reader's enjoyment by offering them an integrated reading experience which gives us a clear insight into some aspect of life in Russia. The sense of the grotesque has a long and distinctive history in Russian literature. It can be argued that the Soviet period has provided particularly fertile ground for its development--many Russians would certainly think so. Grotesque literature has flourished here--without official acknowledgement or encouragement, of course--but only now can it be openly published and freely read. The pieces offered here clearly demonstrate the grotesque's ability to manifest itself in an unlimited range of style and form--the following pages offer lapidary jargon sketches, urbane self-referential prose, frantic stream of consciousness, surreal naturalistic detail and realistic narrative with lyrical interludes. In every case we feel the writer has something to say to the Western reader.