Chapter 13 investigates the road as a literary device, a metaphor (the “road to communism”), and a material reality. It argues that Ilf and Petrov’s travelogue can be read as a picaresque; the time–space of the road structured the chance meetings, incidents, and accidents that occasioned the collective narrator’s satirical survey of the world. Although Odnoetazhnaia Amerika deviated from the traditional picaresque, turning its gaze on the Other, rather than the rogue’s own society, it nonetheless offered an implicit critique of the Soviet “road to communism.” This was nowhere clearer than in the writers’ description of American highways; for readers familiar with Soviet roads, the contrast with the Soviet Union’s obviously inferior network of roads and roadside amenities would have been obvious.

Chapter 14 explores Ilf and Petrov’s complicated relationship with American food. By 1935, Soviet promises of plenty were everywhere, but even staple goods remained in short supply. In the United States, the authors found that food was plentiful, efficiently produced and distributed, often attractive to the eye. But they did not rave about American food as they did about American highways, claiming (not always convincingly) that it was tasteless and monotonous. The writers explained this situation as a product not only of capitalism, which put profits ahead of flavor or variety, but of (white) Americans’ inability to appreciate good food.