Volume 2, Number 10 · June 25, 1964
Traveling Light
By Stanley Kauffmann
Both Sides of the Ocean
by Viktor Nekrasov
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 191 pp., $4.50
Robert Frost in Russia
by F.D. Reeve
Atlantic-Little, Brown, 135 pp., $3.95
These are two sad little books. Each deals with the travels of a writer under the auspices of his government. In 1962 Robert Frost spent two weeks in the Soviet Union. In 1960 Viktor Nekrasov, a Russian novelist, spent two weeks in the United States. Frost remarked toward the end of his trip that cultural exchange 'was a good thing but that it didn't go very far, didn't amount to much.' Nekrasov said, '…in the two weeks I spent in America, I didn't make friends with a single American…. When I write about Americans, about their tastes and aspirations, about their likes and dislikes, I shall be writing at second hand…. And so the portrait won't be a very accurate one, and not a very clear one either…' Each man can be taken at his word. The airplane conduces to 'instant experience'; just add jet fuel and stir.
Review, 2022 words
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