Life Is Elsewhere

Anne Lounsbery teaches Russian literature at New York University. She has published numerous articles on Russian and comparative literature and is the author of Thin Culture, High Art.

• AcknowledgmentsNote on Transliteration and Translation1. Geography, History, Trope: Facts on the Ground2. Before the Provinces: Pastoral and Anti-Pastoral in Pushkin's Countryside3. Inventing Provincial Backwardness, or "Everything is Barbarous and Horrid" (Herzen, Sollogub, and Others)4. "This is Paris itself!": Gogol in the Town of N5. "I Do Beg of You, Wait, and Compare!": Goncharov, Belinsky, and Provincial Taste6. Back Home: The Provincial Lives of Turgenev's Cosmopolitans7. Transcendence Deferred: Women Writers in the Provinces8. Melnikov and Leskov, or What is Regionalism in Russia?9. Centering and Decentering in Dostoevsky and Tolstoy10. "Everything Here is Accidental": Chekhov's Geography of Meaninglessness11. In the End: Shchedrin, Sologub, and Terminal Provinciality12. Conclusion: The Provinces in the Twentieth CenturyList of AbbreviationsNotesBibliographyIndex

This is another excellent release in the NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies... a nuanced and enlightening book written in clear, jargon-free prose.(Choice) This highly important book provides a new understanding of what the author calls the provincial trope in Russian literature.The book has significant implications for history as well as literary criticism.(The Russian Review) The book's scope is one of its strongest qualities: Lounsbery goes beyond Gogol' and Chekhov and includes a range of other writers' uses of the provincial trope. The result is a fascinating and exhaustive analysis of the symbolic geography of Russian nineteenth-century literature.(Slavonic and East European Review) This book does a rare thing: it takes a topic that all readers of nineteenth-century Russian literature think they understand, provintsiia, and demonstrates that this apparently selfevident construct, associated with boredom and meaninglessness, is multifaceted, vibrant, and significant. In so doing, Life is Elsewhere genuinely transforms our understanding of nineteenth-century Russian literature and culture.(Canadian Slavonic Papers) Life Is Elsewhere is a striking example of a successful thematic approach to literary analysis. At the same time, it is a bold re-evaluation of overlooked themes and texts in Russian literature, lending itself both to classroom discussion and to the rediscovery of individual writers in new contexts.(Modern Language Review) This is a magisterial book, generous in its wealth of information and citations, theoretically informed, thorough, and beautifully written.Lounsbery has proven that the Russian provinces are in fact deeply interesting, both as a foil and as a broader vehicle for helping us grapple with challenges of Russian identity and Russia's place both in the canon of world literature and geopolitically in the world.(Slavic Review)