One of the stock routines of Soviet spokesmen is parading the numbers of American authors that are translated and published in the USSR, and bemoaning the lack of reciprocity on the American side. “We publish Hemingway, Faulkner, and Jack London,” they say. “What Soviet authors have you published?” Translation: What have you done for peace and disarmament lately?
Well, first (you could reply), it took Hemingway and Faulkner forty and fifty years, respectively, to break through the Iron Curtain. What is more, they are the exceptions. A far more typical Soviet offering of modern American fiction is Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. The Soviet edition comes, incidentally, with a thoughtful foreword (as is the custom with books d’éstime) that discusses Mr. Vonnegut’s philosophy more solemnly than The New York Review of Books ever did.
Second, the question implies that American publishing, like its Soviet counterpart, is run along ideological lines. But this is mostly nonsense. While an argument can be made that it is easier to publish a serious novel in the United States if its politics are left of center, in reality the political platform of an American publisher is the best-seller list, dominated by sagas and epics and other “big books.” So, when it comes to publishing Soviet books, the key is to find a Big Russian Novel that has been suppressed for twenty years (a surefire way to acquire solid ideological credentials) and then time its publication to a summit. Do
