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Product Description In this short, brilliant book, Viktor Shklovsky enunciates the function of the arts: what they are and, just as importantly, what they are not. In the course of defining what art is, by implication he also quietly lays to waste the theories and people who view art as a means of representing "the real world" and a method of communication. His views of the other arts then lead him into his speculations about the art of cinema photography, new at the time that Shklovsky composed his polemic in 1923. Review "A rambling, digressive stylist, Shklovsky throws off brilliant apercus on every page. . . . Like an architect's blueprint, [he] lays bare the joists and studs that hold up the house of fiction." -- Michael Dirda"Shklovsky is a disciple worthy of Sterne. He has appropriated the device of infinitely delayed event, of the digression helplessly promising to return to the point, and of disguising his superbly controlled art with a breezy nonchalance. But it is not really Sterne that Shklovsky sounds like: it is an intellectual and witty Hemingway." -- Guy Davenport"The works of Viktor Shklovsky are so appropriate to our contemporary situation as to seem to have been written for us. His writings do precisely what he has said it is art's goal to do: they 'restore . . . sensation of the world, ' they 'resurrect things and kill pessimism.'" -- Lyn Hejinian From the Inside Flap In this short, brilliant book, Viktor Shklovsky enunciates the function of the arts: what they are and, just as importantly, what they are not. In the course of defining what art is, by implication he also quietly lays to waste the theories and people who view art as a means of representing the real world and a method of communication. His views of the other arts then lead him into his speculations about the art of cinema photography, new at the time that Shklovsky composed his polemic in 1923. About the Author Irina Masinovsky is a translator, editor, and interpreter of Russian literature and language.