Life of a Bishop’s Assistant is a “rewritten” biography of the 18th century historical figure, Gavriil Dobrinin. The son of a priest, he became an assistant to a bishop before being fortunate to rise all the way to gubernia procurator. Despite the obscurity of Dobrinin, it is Shklovsky’s narration of his story that takes center stage. Like Zoo, or Letters Not About Love, Life of a Bishop’s Assistant is a notable example of experimentation with narrative form in the early twentieth century by one of its leading theorists.
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[S]erves up some subtly funny, suggestively subversive resonances that might remind the reader of his contemporary Mikhail Bulgakov
" - Kirkus Reviews
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Shklovsky is a disciple worthy of Sterne. He has appropriated the device of of infinitely delayed events, 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
" - National Review
