Guy Davenport on Fiction

The Pleasure Factory, by Valeriy Tarsis. John Day, $4.95 The Wedding Group, by Elizabeth Taylor. Viking, $4.50 The Impossible Proof, by Hans Erich Nossack. Farrar, $4.95

The people,” a character in Valeriy Tarsis’ The Pleasure Factory confides to her journal, “is a fiction. I am growing up and entering adult life in order to serve ‘the people,’ to build Communism; but I don’t know who ‘the people’ are.” Another character complains that all the common people in Dostoievsky are philosophers. Valeriy Tarsis, who now lives in West Germany and holds a Greek passport, has been declared by his native Russia to be a) a lunatic, and b) no citizen of hers. The first decision followed from his publishing The Bluebottle, the second from Ward 7, both of which said in no very harsh or penetrating terms that Communism isn’t what it set out to be, and probably never will be. The third novel continues Noncitizen Tarsis’ objections to Russian tyranny.

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About the Author

Guy Davenport

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The Pleasure Factory, by Valeriy Tarsis. John Day, $4.95 The Wedding Group, by Elizabeth Taylor. Viking, $4.50 The Impossible Proof, by Hans Erich Nossack. Farrar, $4.95

The people,” a character in Valeriy Tarsis’ The Pleasure Factory confides to her journal, “is a fiction. I am growing up and entering adult life in order to serve ‘the people,’ to build Communism; but I don’t know who ‘the people’ are.” Another character complains that all the common people in Dostoievsky are philosophers. Valeriy Tarsis, who now lives in West Germany and holds a Greek passport, has been declared by his native Russia to be a) a lunatic, and b) no citizen of hers. The first decision followed from his publishing The Bluebottle, the second from Ward 7, both of which said in no very harsh or penetrating terms that Communism isn’t what it set out to be, and probably never will be. The third novel continues Noncitizen Tarsis’ objections to Russian tyranny.