{"id":25738,"date":"2012-01-25T08:00:01","date_gmt":"2012-01-25T13:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=25738"},"modified":"2012-01-23T17:00:52","modified_gmt":"2012-01-23T22:00:52","slug":"the-troubadour-of-honed-banality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/","title":{"rendered":"The Troubadour of Honed Banality"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Sergei Dovlatov (right) with Alexander Genis (smoking) at Novy Americanets office. Photo by Nina Alovert, 1980. <\/p><\/div>\n

A., my girlfriend, is originally from Moscow. Her mother lives around the corner from us in Queens and throws dinner parties. It\u2019s mainly an older, cultured ex-Soviet crowd.\u00a0Lots of vodka, lots of overeating zakuski <\/em>(appetizers to accompany vodka)\u2014hours of nostalgic guffawing (Soviet jokes) and choral crooning (dissident songs and Stalinist patriotic rousers, with equal pleasure). Not speaking the lingo, I grin a lot\u2014a\u00a0genial, inebriated, slightly patronized potted plant.<\/p>\n

The air of these evenings is thick with Russian irony and cultural chauvinism. Pushkin is beyond all criticism. \u201cHow dare you even pronounce his name<\/em> with your filthy mouth,\u201d A. will flare up, not altogether faking her indignance.<\/p>\n

Or an old photographer-pal of Brodsky\u2019s from Leningrad (inevitably old pals of Brodsky\u2019s are present) will assert that Russian translations of Hemingway far surpass the originals.<\/p>\n

This latter bit of flag-waving causes me to reflect that much of the literature that deeply influenced me as a writer I read in English translation. Foremost stands Isaac Babel, whose compressed, lyric violence overwhelmed me in my twenties. Then there was Bulgakov; even P\u2014n\u2019s fate-haunted tales. Later, in my early days with A., while she was away and I mooched disconsolately in her apartment, I read in translation Shalamov\u2019s horrifying, degraded, flickering Kolyma Tales<\/em> about his frozen years in the Siberian Gulag. I kept dropping the book and pacing away, moaning and clutching my head at the savagery, the unspeakable pathos. Then there were Cendrars and Simenon, Borges and C\u00e9sar Aira (another alchemical Argentinean, rendered brilliantly by Chris Andrews) .<\/p>\n

But, however good the English versions, there\u2019s always in these books a slight straining\u2014a hovering sense of idioms being just<\/em> off. This off-true shimmer I relish and try to emulate as a writer. It gives work a slightly mysterious, psychological stiffness. The simple becomes oddly estranged. (Ostranenie,<\/em> as A. would insert, quoting Russian formalist critics.) I like the status it conveys\u2014of being someone not of the place where I am. A permanent visitor, traveler, foreigner\u2014even in the mirror.<\/p>\n

Early on at those dinners in Queens, A. would nod at a stylish, dark-haired older woman down the table and murmur to me, \u201cLena is the most celebrated literary widow in post-Soviet fiction. Her husband was Sergei Dovlatov.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWho?<\/em>\u201d I\u2019d say.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe late twentieth-century Chekhov,\u201d I was informed.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh.\u201d (I\u2019ve barely read Chekhov.)<\/p>\n

To demonstrate Dovlatov\u2019s stature, A. told me about her late uncle in Moscow, a well-known folklorist and a celebrated alcoholic, famed for plunging from a fifth-story balcony, dead drunk, and landing right at his mother\u2019s feet, and surviving, and continuing to booze. Whenever a new Dovlatov came out, this uncle would shut himself in his room and read straight through in bed, laughing his head off at the vodka-bruised drolleries.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should read him,\u201d said A. I\u2019d shrug.<\/p>\n

Finally, three or four years ago, I got a translation of Dovlatov\u2019s slender The Compromise.<\/em> (All his books are slender and were long out of print in the U.S.) I laughed my head off.<\/p>\n

The Compromise<\/a> <\/em>(1982) <\/em>presents deliciously sordid <\/em>autobiographical tales in which Dovlatov deconstructs hack newspaper items he wrote (genuinely?) while working as a Soviet journalist at an Estonian paper. Then I found The Suitcase <\/em>(1986)\u2014fictionalized reminiscences of boozy Soviet pratfalls, based on the contents of the scuffed suitcase Dovlatov apparently brought out with him as an \u00e9migr\u00e9.<\/p>\n

\u201cToo bad his language doesn\u2019t really translate,\u201d A. sniffed, when I told her I had a new hero. \u201cAll these subtle ironic appropriations of late-Sovietese.\u201d I replied that I found the translation terrific and flavorsome. (Lena Dovlatov told me recently that Anne Frydman, who translated The Compromise<\/em> and much of Dovlatov\u2019s fiction, was suggested by Brodsky, who was\u2014need I say?\u2014an old Leningrad friend, and a literary admirer.)<\/p>\n

\u201cNah,\u201d insisted A., with that touch of chauvinism.<\/p>\n

Imagine my snarl of glee, when, several more books later, I read\u00a0of Brodsky saying that Dovlatov was easy to translate. \u201cThe decisive thing is his tone,\u201d wrote the Nobel poet, \u201cwhich every member of a democratic society can recognize.\u201d This tone: a bleakly sly, magnificently self-deflating deadpan, through which a tight ache of lyricism occasional bursts. Dovlatov didn\u2019t showily play around with the distorted morass that was late-Soviet language under the dead, invasive pomposity of its official culture. Rather he deftly spooned it up, undeodorized. \u201cThe troubadour of honed banality,\u201d fellow Russian \u00e9migr\u00e9 critics Peter Vail and Alexander Genis praised him.<\/p>\n

Babel famously wrote: \u201cNo iron can stab the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.\u201d Dovlatov\u2019s equivalent is the precise, hysterical placement of the dialogue break. Consider the sublime guile of the final sentence of the final passage of The Compromise<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n

My first cousin, who has been convicted twice (once for unpremeditated manslaughter) often says to me:<\/p>\n

\u201cTake up some useful kind of work. Aren\u2019t you ashamed of what you do?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re a fine one to lecture me!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I did was kill a man,\u201d my cousin says, \u201cand try to burn his body. But you!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Dovlatov and I, as I like to note, both arrived in New York in 1978. He, as part of the so-called Third Wave of Russians, those who were not just parked here waiting to go back. I arrived from Boston (I\u2019d come to the U.S. as a kid from South Africa). I too once worked as a reporter (at a drab weekly local paper near Philly, right after college). And our Queens connection: until his tragically early death of a heart attack in 1990 Dovlatov lived in the Russian enclave of Rego Park.<\/p>\n

Unlike me, Dovlatov, a big guy, had been a boxer, and was drafted as a Soviet prison-camp guard. (Actually I worked as a guard myself\u2014sullenly guarding the door at Harvard\u2019s rare-book library). He also edited an \u00e9migr\u00e9 newspaper over here, the New American.<\/em> (While I myself was toiling as a sullen fact-checker at Esquire<\/em>.) And his father was a theater director and comedian. (Mine was a domineering theoretical physicist and gluttonous sentimentalist.)<\/p>\n

So do we measure ourselves against our heroes, and clutch at affinities.<\/p>\n

Dovlatov made a splash here in the eighties and very early nineties, published by Knopf, Grove, and The<\/em> New Yorker<\/em>. (Apparently when Andrew Wylie brought his big, darkly brooding client to visit William Shawn\u2013ville, staffers fluttered at his \u201cHemingway\u201d charisma.) Dovlatov\u2019s death came just before his work, in samizdat heretofore, was published to huge popularity in his post-Soviet homeland. But, since then, as I say, his work has been out of print in English.<\/p>\n

In 2008 I began pestering my publishing contacts to bring this Russian master back into print. It was my mission of literary homage. It confirmed the scope of my lack of influence. But, to my delight, Counterpoint reissued The Suitcase<\/em><\/a> last year. And now this month comes The <\/em>Zon<\/em>e<\/a>\u2014Dovlatov\u2019s 1982 sad-sack chronicle of his time as a guard at a nonpolitical prison camp in the non-Siberian north in the early sixties. The narrative sections are wafered between later letters to his original American publisher\u2014a typically Dovlatovian m\u00e9lange.<\/p>\n

Dovlatov writes from a perch perversely inverse of the great Russian tradition of prison chronicles, from Dostoevsky to Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov. He\u2019s acutely aware of this; he knew Shalamov slightly after Kolyma. His provocative contention\u2014for an ex-Soviet writer, certainly\u2014is that guards and zeks<\/em> (inmates) share a \u201csuspicious similarity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

I came to the conclusion that it is stupid to divide people into good and evil. Also into Communists and non-Party members, into villains and righteous, even into men and women …<\/p>\n

In critical conditions, people change. They change for the good and for the bad. For better or worse and the other way round.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And he explains why The Zone<\/em> is no \u201cfreak show\u201d of camp horrors:<\/p>\n

\n

I say once again that I am interested in life and not prison, and in people, not monsters. And I absolutely do not want to be known as the modern-day Virgil who leads Dante through Hell (however much I may love Shalamov).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

These themes coalesce in a bathetic extravaganza of absurdities: the prison camp stages a play starring Lenin and secret-police chief Dzerzhinsky\u2014both played by zeks<\/em>\u2014on the anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. But at its end the guard-narrator finds himself suddenly in tears. It\u2019s some of Dovlatov\u2019s richest work.<\/p>\n

And of course a river of booze also laps at The Zone<\/em>. The zeks<\/em> guzzle hooch and chifir<\/em>, a nuclear-strength tea; the guards guzzle vodka, zek<\/em> moonshine, \u201cChartreuse,\u201d \u201cpinot gris \u2018ros\u00e9,\u2019\u201d not to mention eau de Cologne (na zdarovya<\/em>, comrade).<\/p>\n

At the table in Queens we discussed the late-Soviet technicalities of deriving alcohol from surgical glue (using a centrifuge and a pine branch to catch the, um, impurities). Then we all sat around rehearsing the proper method for drinking spirt<\/em> (ethyl alcohol, full proof). Squeeze nostrils\u2014so as not to choke on the fumes\u2014blow out all breath, gulp, chase immediately with water (it is supernaturally dehydrating) and a gobble of zakuski.<\/p>\n

The next book to be reissued will be Dovlatov\u2019s Pushkin Hills,<\/em> never before available here. It\u2019s all about the subculture of alcoholics. The book recounts Dovlatov\u2019s doleful follies, right before he emigrated, as a malcontent tour guide at the country estate of Pushkin. (Pardon: P\u2014n.) It\u2019s his funniest book, says A.<\/p>\n

I hear\u00a0that it also teases the whole overweening cult of adoration for him who may not be named by me.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s due out later this year from Counterpoint. I can\u2019t wait.<\/p>\n

Barry Yourgrau<\/em>\u2019s books of stories include<\/em> Haunted Traveller<\/a>,<\/em> Wearing Dad\u2019s Head<\/a>, and <\/em>The Sadness of Sex<\/a> (in whose film version he starred). He is at work on a memoir for W.W. Norton entitled <\/em>Mess: One Writer\u2019s Struggle to Clean Up His House and His Act.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A., my girlfriend, is originally from Moscow. Her mother lives around the corner from us in Queens and throws dinner parties. It\u2019s mainly an older, cultured ex-Soviet crowd.\u00a0Lots of vodka, lots of overeating zakuski (appetizers to accompany vodka)\u2014hours of nostalgic guffawing (Soviet jokes) and choral crooning (dissident songs and Stalinist patriotic rousers, with equal pleasure). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":169,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[5801,5805,4738,5800,5807,2265,5810,5808,5797,5809,5798,5802,5803,5804,5806,5799],"class_list":["post-25738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-literary-hero","tag-alexander-pushkin","tag-anne-frydman","tag-anton-chekhov","tag-chris-andrews","tag-counterpoint","tag-isaac-babel","tag-joseph-brodsky","tag-kolyma-prison","tag-moscow","tag-pushkin-hills","tag-queens","tag-sergei-dovlatov","tag-the-compromise","tag-the-suitcase","tag-the-zone","tag-vodka"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Troubadour of Honed Banality by Barry Yourgrau<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"January 25, 2012 \u2013 A., my girlfriend, is originally from Moscow. Her mother lives around the corner from us in Queens and throws dinner parties. It\u2019s mainly an older,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Troubadour of Honed Banality by Barry Yourgrau\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January 25, 2012 \u2013 A., my girlfriend, is originally from Moscow. Her mother lives around the corner from us in Queens and throws dinner parties. It\u2019s mainly an older,\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-01-25T13:00:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/dovlatov.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"574\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"452\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Barry Yourgrau\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Barry Yourgrau\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Barry Yourgrau\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/5ec07e0d8cc37a1e80834b3a4feb9a19\"},\"headline\":\"The Troubadour of Honed Banality\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-01-25T13:00:01+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/\"},\"wordCount\":1693,\"commentCount\":14,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/dovlatov.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Alexander Pushkin\",\"Anne Frydman\",\"Anton Chekhov\",\"Chris Andrews\",\"Counterpoint\",\"Isaac Babel\",\"Joseph Brodsky\",\"Kolyma Prison\",\"Moscow\",\"Pushkin Hills\",\"Queens\",\"Sergei Dovlatov\",\"The Compromise\",\"The Suitcase\",\"The Zone\",\"vodka\"],\"articleSection\":[\"My Literary Hero\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/\",\"name\":\"The Troubadour of Honed Banality by Barry Yourgrau\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/dovlatov.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-01-25T13:00:01+00:00\",\"description\":\"January 25, 2012 \u2013 A., my girlfriend, is originally from Moscow. Her mother lives around the corner from us in Queens and throws dinner parties. It\u2019s mainly an older,\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/dovlatov.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/dovlatov.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Troubadour of Honed Banality\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/5ec07e0d8cc37a1e80834b3a4feb9a19\",\"name\":\"Barry Yourgrau\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0c5df6eeba8ace1fdc680aedd87662c8b2fbfbae7b8a6c11c579542bb9467227?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0c5df6eeba8ace1fdc680aedd87662c8b2fbfbae7b8a6c11c579542bb9467227?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Barry Yourgrau\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/byourgrau\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Troubadour of Honed Banality by Barry Yourgrau","description":"January 25, 2012 \u2013 A., my girlfriend, is originally from Moscow. Her mother lives around the corner from us in Queens and throws dinner parties. It\u2019s mainly an older,","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Troubadour of Honed Banality by Barry Yourgrau","og_description":"January 25, 2012 \u2013 A., my girlfriend, is originally from Moscow. Her mother lives around the corner from us in Queens and throws dinner parties. It\u2019s mainly an older,","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2012-01-25T13:00:01+00:00","og_image":[{"width":574,"height":452,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/dovlatov.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Barry Yourgrau","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Barry Yourgrau","Est. reading time":"8 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/"},"author":{"name":"Barry Yourgrau","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/5ec07e0d8cc37a1e80834b3a4feb9a19"},"headline":"The Troubadour of Honed Banality","datePublished":"2012-01-25T13:00:01+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/"},"wordCount":1693,"commentCount":14,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/dovlatov.jpg","keywords":["Alexander Pushkin","Anne Frydman","Anton Chekhov","Chris Andrews","Counterpoint","Isaac Babel","Joseph Brodsky","Kolyma Prison","Moscow","Pushkin Hills","Queens","Sergei Dovlatov","The Compromise","The Suitcase","The Zone","vodka"],"articleSection":["My Literary Hero"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/","name":"The Troubadour of Honed Banality by Barry Yourgrau","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/dovlatov.jpg","datePublished":"2012-01-25T13:00:01+00:00","description":"January 25, 2012 \u2013 A., my girlfriend, is originally from Moscow. Her mother lives around the corner from us in Queens and throws dinner parties. It\u2019s mainly an older,","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/dovlatov.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/dovlatov.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/the-troubadour-of-honed-banality\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Troubadour of Honed Banality"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/5ec07e0d8cc37a1e80834b3a4feb9a19","name":"Barry Yourgrau","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0c5df6eeba8ace1fdc680aedd87662c8b2fbfbae7b8a6c11c579542bb9467227?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0c5df6eeba8ace1fdc680aedd87662c8b2fbfbae7b8a6c11c579542bb9467227?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Barry Yourgrau"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/byourgrau\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25738"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25800,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25738\/revisions\/25800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}