This book offers a new perspective on the myth-making about Aleksandr Pushkin as a major fact of Russian literary and cultural history. Pushkin occupies a unique place in Russian culture, to be compared only to Homer, Virgil, Dante Alighieri, or William Shakespeare in other European cultures. James Rann's study is firmly grounded in the scholarly achievements of such eminent Pushkinists as Boris Gasparov, Irina Paperno, David Bethea, or Stephanie Sandler who have contributed to our understanding of the complex relationship of Russian poets with their mythical forebear by analyzing cultural mythologies, individual commemorations, and nation-wide celebrations (in 1899, 1937, 1949) centered around Pushkin.

Rann adds to this wealth of knowledge by questioning deeply rooted stereotypes of the allegedly irrevocable rejection of Pushkin and classicism by (the Hylea subgroup of) the Russian Futurists. The famous manifesto “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste” (1917), which demanded “to throw Pushkin, Dostoevskii, Tolstoi and so on…from the steamship of modernity” (4) serves as a starting point. Most of the book argues that this ostentatious aggression was only one aspect of the multi-faceted relationship the Futurists maintained with their eminent predecessor.

The book is divided into two general chapters on the Pushkin myth and Russian modernism and on Pushkin in the Futurist Manifestos, followed by three specific ones focusing on the particular relationships of three Hylea members with Pushkin. In each case, the author defines a point of reference, the prophet for Velimir Khlebnikov, the statue for Vladimir Maiakovskii, and the sacred text for Aleksei Kruchenykh, which serves to demonstrate by what means and to what degree the new texts are interwoven with Pushkin's works or his myth. This procedure results in a series of meticulous readings and re-readings of Futurist texts such as Khlebnikov's “The Lonely Player” or Maiakovskii's “Jubilee Poem” which reveal numerous hitherto unnoticed or underestimated pre- and sub-texts. Rann is certainly right to put a strong emphasis on a specifically Futurist preoccupation with (a)temporality and (im)mortality, with fugitiveness and eternity. As his textual analyses confirm a commitment to precise in-depth studies, it is only to be regretted that the author eschews a discussion of Khlebnikov's masterpiece “Zangezi,” which would have provided a pertinent example of a prophet threatened by failure, but acquiring a singular grandeur in this failure.

If, on the whole, Rann proves highly knowledgeable in the field of Russian Futurism and Pushkin studies, modernity/modernism and German criticism fare less well. A casual quote from Jürgen Habermas seems rather unconvincing and a prolonged excursion into Walter Benjamin's “Baudelaire” does not yield deeper insight.

Of greater relevance is a conceptual deficiency betrayed by the conspicuous absence of any entry on canon or canonization in Rann's meticulous index. When developing his arguments, Rann alludes several times to the Soviet canon (179), or to Maiakovskii's warning not to canonize Vladimir Lenin (157), and on the very last page he mentions the “process of canonization” of the anti-establishment poets of the late twentieth century. Nevertheless, there is no deeper theoretical discussion of the problem. Yet one has to bear in mind that the brunt of the Futurist attack was not directed exclusively against Pushkin, but against the classical canon and the process of canonization as such. A stronger emphasis on the making of a canon and of de- and re-canonization from the nineteenth century right up to the present would have provided a more consistent theoretical framework for answering the question why the Futurists wanted to overthrow the classics and ended up (some earlier, some later) as objects of re-canonization themselves.

These critical remarks are not meant to cast doubts on the overall qualities of the book. It achieves a sophisticated rapprochement, which works in both directions. On the one hand, Pushkin is viewed from the dynamic point of view of the three Futurists. On the other hand, the great poet himself seems to acquire Futurist characteristics in the process. This result feeds well into the ongoing reassessment of the epistemological status of modernity. A piece of solid scholarship, well written and easily readable, The Unlikely Futurist will be of relevance for anybody interested in Russian modernism, the Futurist movement, and the Pushkin-myth. It should attract the attention of scholars of comparative literature as well as scholars of the literary and cultural avant-gardes as part of contemporary world culture.