COLUMBIA GUIDE TO THE LITERATURES OF EASTERN EUROPE SINCE 1945, THE

Comparative Literature, Fall 2004 by Emerson, Caryl

A good test for a volume like this is to look up the writers you know (Are you satisfied? Anything crucial left out?) and then some you don't (Do you grasp a sense of the life? The voice and message? Do you want to read more?). I had occasion to use the Guide last year, while teaching a large undergraduate seminar on the East European novel, and I found both "known" and "unknown" entries highly satisfying. Part of the reason, I believe, is that the volume is itself designed-loosely, openly-as a sort of course. We have to take it. Although the usual practice is to dip into such reference works in any order, most of the content for most of us will be new. And as with all instruction, it is nervewracking to be given too much too fast. But the degree of detail in these entries is exactly right. The more you read, the richer and more sensible your feel for the area becomes-for, as Segel puts it in his Introduction, "the thrust of this book is to show both the commonality of shared experience and the diversity of literary response to those experiences" (p. 2). Commonality is reinforced by a "Chronology of Major Political Events, 1944-2002" prefacing the Guide, which is in itself a sobering reminder of the century's legacy in that strip of the world. The diversity comes later. Entry by entry, the cumulative effect of two dozen literary works of art compacted onto each page can take your breath away, a tribute to creativity and survival.

CARYL EMERSON

Princeton University