Close Encounters

“This collection of essays is neither a history of Russian literature in disguise nor is it a collection of separate interpretations of great Russian books. Close Encounters is an answer, a new answer to the old question of what to look for in Russian literature. . . For sheer power of convincing argument and didactic knowhow, Close Encounters, I think, can only be compared to the essays of T. S. Eliot. They need no introduction. Try reading any single one of them and you will find yourself reading all of them.” ~Horst-Jürgen Gerigk, Universität Heidelberg

"Serves as an excellent example of lucid, accessible literary criticism that will inform and inspire students at all levels. Highly recommended." ~C. A. Rydel, Grand Valley State University,

“Jackson’s luminous selection of his own critical writings over the past half-century is based overwhelmingly on close reading, immediate contexts, and direct quotation. Get all three right, he seems to suggest, and the literary critic can leap to the artist’s integral worldview in an instant. . . . Will this collection become the Essential or Portable Robert Louis Jackson? Probably not; Jackson has more to write . . . the reader senses in the final two essays that Jackson is on the edge of big new interests: in Goethe, Zhukovsky, Nabokov. This is exactly the sense one wants from essays that stretch over half a century, on some of the greatest writers in the world." ~Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

Robert Louis Jackson is a passionate advocate of Russian literature. . . . His style as a writer can be appreciated by general readers who share a literary academic’s conviction of the importance of literature in the larger scheme of things. Though the essays here have a writer’s sense of clarity, they are annotated with footnotes for academic use, and their subjects and concerns are academic. . . . . Where relevant (which is often), the author unpacks important shades of meaning for English readers by looking at the original Russian words and phrases. ~Book News, Inc.

“Demonstrating a broad, yet detailed, knowledge of Russian literature ranging from Alexander Pushkin to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Jackson invokes an impressive array of classical and modern European writers, including a significant number of German literati. . . . This collection appeals to a range of audiences with the close engagement of major works by canonical authors being instructive for the undergraduate and with many themes addressing graduate and special interests. . . . [T]he organization of these collected essays represents well Jackson’s “binding interest” in aesthetic and “moral-philosophical questions,” as he explores transcendent realities in dialogue with various types of realism, competing artistic expressions of freedom, beauty, and responsibility , and individual choices in light of a shared inevitable final departure.” ~Elizabeth Blake, Saint Louis University