5 - Extraordinary Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists

Summary

Chapter 5 situates Ilf and Petrov’s travelogue in the context of earlier Russian American travelogues. Like the Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and the Soviet novelist Boris Pilniak, Ilf and Petrov drew on the tradition established by Maxim Gorky of depicting a journey to America as a descent into hell. Nonetheless, the Soviet funnymen had a far lighter touch than their predecessors. The chapter argues that the travelogue can also be read as an adventure story in the vein of director Lev Kuleshov’s 1924 hit comedy "The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks." Lighthearted ethnographers, Ilf and Petrov lingered over the “extra-ideological realities” of the American landscape and made gentle fun of themselves as eager adventurers and participant observers.