Word: book
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Book by Larry Gelbart...
Readers not familiar with Sinyavsky's style or the content of his life may have difficulty with the half-submerged facts. He was born into an affluent family in 1925. His father, who appears in the book as a brilliant though ineffectual figure out of a Chekhov play, was a revolutionary but not a Bolshevik. He was individualistic and something of an eccentric pragmatist. While waiting to be drafted during World War I, he practiced writing with his left hand in case he lost his right...
...dictator's toxic phantom pervades the book, which is the literary incarnation of Sinyavsky's public and private life. He admits that in 1948 he was asked by agents of the KGB to woo a fellow student, the daughter of a French naval attache. He complied without knowing their purpose or even the extent of his own motives. Years later, Sinyavsky put the intrigue to good use by enlisting the Frenchwoman to help smuggle his writings to the West...
...with a fellow scientist had acquainted me with the notions of an open society, convergence and world government. I hoped that these notions might ease the tragic crisis of our age. In 1968 I took my decisive step by publishing Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom. The book rejected all extremes, the intransigence shared by revolutionaries and reactionaries alike. It called for compromise and for progress, moderated by enlightened conservatism and caution. Marx notwithstanding, evolution is a better "locomotive of history" than revolution: the "battle" I had in mind was nonviolent...
Still in the saddle after Hollywood, hard drinking and two failed marriages, the rambunctious novelist has just produced what critics call his best book to date...