No Day Without a Line

Book excerpt: "First published in 1965 and reprinted many times in the Soviet Union and Russia, Yury Olesha's No Day without a Line is a series of thematically assembled journal entries which together form an unusual and extremely engaging personal memoir." "Ranging from Olesha's prerevolutionary childhood, to notable cultural figures, to Russian and Western literature, the entries are artfully composed units in which an image is developed, a memory precisely delineated, or an apercu elaborated. Occasionally, the units coalesce in a chain of reflections on a common theme, such as Olesha's memories of the 1905 Potyomkin mutiny, his recollections of the poet Mayakovsky, or his discussion of the writings of Tolstoy or Hemingway." --Book Jacket.