Lidiia Ginzburg would have been pleased and, indeed, enjoyed the irony that a “prokliataia foreigner” would put so much effort into continuing her own search for her identity, seeking it in her notes and jottings. Then again, that is how she initiated her own scholarly career: studying Petr Viazemsky’s Old Notebook.

Emily Van Buskirk’s book on Lidiia Ginzburg, one of the most significant thinkers and eminent scholars in Soviet cultural history, follows the format of her Harvard dissertation—five chapters, an introduction and conclusion. However, it moves well beyond those confines in delving deeply into the archives to confront the meaning of Ginzburg’s unique endeavor to reimagine and reconfigure concepts of literature, character, identity and culture in an era of perpetual change.

The basic premise is cited on page 3: “The core of this book centers on an investigation of Ginzburg’s concept of the self in the wake of the crisis of individualism: a self I call ‘post-individualist.’” Van Buskirk concludes that Ginzburg “casts more doubt on the stable, permanent identity of the self than [others]; she also puts special emphasis on the social dimension” (William James, “The Social Me,” 4n9). I would suggest that James is far more illuminating in assessing Ginzburg’s endeavor than the other theorists mentioned, since she read and cited James, and discussed his writings in conversations throughout the 1980s.

Interest in investigating “the self” in literary form[s]—the “reality in search of literature” and her emphasis on the social dimension—trace back to Ginzburg’s earliest scholarship and to her education among her Formalist mentors. Ever open to new ideas offered by her teachers at G.I.I.I. (The State Institute of the History of the Arts), she was also selective—ignoring, rejecting, or confronting them as well. Consequently, as has been shown in previous scholarship and is detailed in this book, Ginzburg’s fascination with the very concept of the “inbetween” or, indeed, “inbetweenness,” is crucial to her ongoing psychological, social, and historical projects. Her absolute delight in cognition, in attempting to grasp the essence of personality or type or historical moment or thought is present in her theory and practice from her earliest publications (1926, 1927, 1929) concerning the Old Notebook. While she characterized Viazemsky variously, her studies stimulated and influenced her own notes and jottings and even her later fictionalized “Notes of a Blockade Person,” the impetus behind much of the scholarly and theoretical discussions in this book.

Particularly noteworthy is the effort to define her genre and even attempt to name it, a process that continued throughout Ginzburg’s life. An example is the excellent discussion in Chapter 2 of Ginzburg’s first publication of her Notes, “Chelovek za pis΄mennym stolom” (Person at the writing table) (269n76). Nevertheless, here I quibble with the translation. “The Person Behind the Desk” might better suggest her lifelong challenge to illuminate the identity of that “person.” Allowing her notes to speak for that “person” hints at some mystery behind the unidentified. Suggestive of the metaphor of her life is the unveiling in the final note in Ginzburg’s carefully selected and ordered set of notes of “the person behind the desk.” Van Buskirk states: “The concluding note is about nighttime writing habits and the ‘person at the writing table’ who feels alive and free from the tyranny of daytime routines” (97). A significant aspect of such feelings was admitting that some people, herself included, could live more or less “normal” lives under abnormal conditions; that nothing was what it seemed, or might not be what it appeared to be.

Although Van Buskirk did not have the advantage of directly experiencing Ginzburg’s conversational wit, warmth, and wisdom, she has had extensive access to archival materials unavailable to earlier scholars. Her book thus focuses on archival research and provides a fine scholarly introduction despite missing ingredients reflecting Ginzburg’s profound personal curiosity and intimate conversation concerning the simplest pleasures of everyday life or cultural fascination with the random aspects of life unfolding around her. For example, “why do Austrians, “prokliatye inostrantsy,” make such delicious chocolates”?; “why can’t Russians get basic vitamins in their local pharmacies”?; “why don’t American children wear school uniforms”?

She would be pleased by the scholarly effort this book represents and care shown in clarifying her archive, in re-ordering misplaced or even “lost” materials, and fascinated by the attempts to glean meaning[s] from every last fragment of her notes and jottings to “place” her in her social, psychological, and historical frames. See the amazing quotes in Van Buskirk from Ginzburg’s teenage diary (25n85), or the Hotel Europa menu of April 7, 1982, on the occasion of Ginzburg’s 80th birthday, celebrated at the House of the Writer (Dom pisatelei), followed by the hotel dinner (243n119).