Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle is the creator of the world’s most famous and iconic private detective, of course: Sherlock Holmes. And the author devotes an entire chapter to Doyle’s style of composing fiction to give his character life, tell an exciting narrative, and present and solve a mystery. While Sherlock is the central figure in his analysis, as expected, the really interesting focus of the overview of Doyle’s stories is situated on the purpose served by Dr. Watson being the teller of the tales.
Leo Tolstoy (Tolstoi)
Central to the author’s theory of prose is his concept of estrangement: the making of the familiar seem unfamiliar. For Shklovsky, nothing is worse in writing than boredom: repetition, a lazy reliance upon habit, and boredom engendered by the conventional. He terms his concept ostranenie throughout the text turns to the work of Tolstoy to illustrate how to avoid these sins of composition.
Laurence Sterne
If Tolstoy is the writer to which Shklovsk turns to individual examples of the fundamental element of his theory of prose, then Sterne must be considered the iconic figure who really brings to together. No other book presents a sustained and comprehensive demonstration of concept of making the familiar seem utterly alien, unique and innovative than Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. In fact, the author does not devote and entire chapter to that novel in order to analyze its story, but rather the form it takes to take tell that story. That form is constantly challenging the reader with long, almost Grandpa Simpson-tyle digressions and such truly unusual techniques as entire pages blacked out.
Andrei Bely
Of all the writers which are examined and discussed in this volume, the least familiar to most American readers—indeed, to most modern readers outside of Russia, probably—is Andrei Bely. He seems to be one of those writers who is held in higher esteem by other writers than the mass of ordinary readers. Vladimir Nabakov ranked his novel Petersburg as one of the greatest literary achievements of the 20th century. As for Shklovsky, he goes his fellow Russian one better on the subject of Bely, singing him out as “the most fascinating writer of our times.”
