Kuzmin E

Introductory article to the collection of novels by E. S. Gardner

Evgeniy Kuzmin

Introductory article

to the collection of novels by E. S. Gardner

The work of the outstanding American master of the detective genre Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1971) has not yet been as well studied in our country as, say, the work of Agatha Christie or Georges Simenon. Meanwhile, Gardner's books, translated into more than 30 languages, are very popular in many countries around the world, and in Nicaragua, a postage stamp was even issued in honor of the main character of the novels, Perry Mason.

In his work, Gardner explored the principle of giving what is being described the appearance of maximum authenticity. And this often bore fruit. One of the newspapers once published a report about a case where reading Gardner’s novel pushed the prosecutor to the right idea, which subsequently allowed him to complete a complex murder case and expose the criminal.

Self-taught lawyer E.S. Gardner takes up his pen, already having extensive practice in the Californian court. Under various pseudonyms- Carlton Kanrek, Charles J. Henry, A.A. Fire - he creates many detective works, but his real success is brought to him by a series of books featuring the undefeated lawyer Perry Mason, whom he first introduced into detective history in 1933.

After more than twenty years of practice, Gardner interrupted his career as a lawyer and devoted himself entirely to literature. Thanks to good health and excellent physical endurance - in his youth, he played a lot of sports and was a good boxer. - Gardner could work 16 hours a day! Most often he dictated text onto tape. He was assisted in his work by six stenographer secretaries and several typists. Gardner prepared several books a year for publication and edited his magazine. From his pen came books on archaeology, natural history, criminology, penology (the science of punishment in prisons) and forensic photography. He had a good understanding of poisons and weapons. By the beginning of 1978, 82 of Gardner's novels had been published - more than 200 million copies of the books were sold. His books about lawyer Perry Mason, charming secretary Della Street and lanky detective agency chief Paul Drake top the author's bestseller list. In total, the popular writer wrote 120 novels and large number stories.

Gardner's detective story is subject to a strict logical design and is based not so much on search as on reasoning. The main character, lawyer Perry Mason, is not a superman, and many other characters are not, but by the will of a talented writer he is drawn into the orbit of exciting events and a web of intrigue. Gardner's works are very far from the traditional idea of ​​a Western detective with his countless chases and shootouts. Interest is heightened not only by the rapid development of events, but also by the brilliant actions of the famous lawyer, his ability to convey in court the subtlest nuances of the trial - to show the confrontation between the defense and the prosecution, the insight and even cunning of Perry Mason, his play to the public and, if circumstances required, lightning speed. change of tactics. And it's no coincidence main character works do all this with grace - after all, their author knew American legal proceedings very well and often used elements from his rich legal practice.

Gardner does not depict the crime itself, does not relish cruelty, does not immerse the reader in an atmosphere of fear and violence, as representatives of the “cool school” of detective work, for example R. Chandler or D. Hammett, do, but allows a person to trace the chain of logical calculations and original conclusions, build their own versions and, as a rule, only in the finale, at the trial, lifts the veil of the mystery of the crime.

But in Gardner’s works, it is important not only how Perry Mason comes to solve the crime, but what ideas he preaches. The general qualities of a famous lawyer are honesty and desire to help. to the common man, whose freedom is encroached upon and who often finds themselves on the edge of the abyss. Lawyer Perry Mason often has to correct the mistakes of the investigation, which, having strong evidence, tries not to establish the guilt of the accused, but to prove it at any cost, sometimes even to impute it, and therefore it is characteristic that the true criminal is found not by the investigative authorities, but by the protagonist of the works.

Mason is strikingly different from the logical detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, born of the imagination of Agatha Christie, he is not overwhelmed by brilliant ideas, like Sherlock Holmes or police inspector Maigret while smoking a pipe. Perry Mason is a practical detective and analyst. The efforts of his activities aimed at protecting the innocent are crowned by the court, where the talented lawyer has no equal in the debate of minds.

Gardner also has another hero - Lester Leite, the American modern analogue of Arsene Lupin. Lester Leite is a handsome gentleman criminal who takes pleasure in deceiving both bandits and... the police. Works with this hero constitute a humorous cycle in Gardner’s work.

The realism characteristic of Gardner brings him closer in his work to the direction of the “hard school”. This is felt in the books he published under the pseudonym A.A. Fire, “Mad Men Die on Friday,” “Traps Need Live Bait,” and “Cats Hunt at Night.” Gardner had 25 such books. The dashing private detective Donald Lamb and his no less dashing boss Bertha Cool are individualized examples, endowed with humor. For your consideration, dear reader, we bring to your attention the action-packed detective story “The Mystery of the Blonde.” The novel was written under the pseudonym A.A. Fire.

This collection includes almost the entire book of poems “Terroir of Loneliness” and a little from previous books: “Pure Female Lyrics”, “Properties of a Shell”, “I Create the Sky” and the next one, which is also written “And Together”.

Terroir of loneliness" is a place for the ripening of various loneliness - the loneliness of a poet, the loneliness of a woman, loneliness in love, loneliness in life, in time and place, in age and level of erudition. life, in time and place, in age and level

Poems are always an attempt at contact. Contact, for example, between the inner self and the outer bodily appearance. Or external environment with the inner world. Self-isolation is collapsing into a black hole.

In the poems, the external harmonic consonance found reveals and makes clear only the mystically discerned essence of the relationship between the elements of nature, man and things.

A person thinks with his whole body, and not just with logical constructs. The poet's feelings are always tragic. Their volume is so enormous that it is overwhelming. You can share the burden only with poetry, otherwise it is impossible to bear. And their endless polarity is the living pulsations of your flesh and the universe as a whole. This is always a relationship, any monologue is a dialogue with an internal interlocutor who is part of your inner world. And even nature, and history, and religion, and God enter the inner space and become an integral part of you. “But man is the world.” This is what I can say about “Terroir of Solitude”. And this image of attitude towards the world, the image of a possible position at some point changed.

Another book of poems, “And Together,” has begun. But the person saved from alienation, who puts his soul into his work, remains. I managed to save the “living soul” once again, as in other earlier books of poetry.

In those books, a person was saved by feeling from reification. We are not “ghosts loaded with knowledge”, we are made of flesh and blood, drowned in the material worries of this day, but not limited by them. The fight for Life and Death has to be in the realm of feelings (homeless people don’t commit suicide). Fight to rise to the senses. To write something sincerely, you need to have passion. And passion is not only eros, it is any emotion brought to a peak state. And then you need to step out of it and look at the work of your hands with a conscious concern for style. This is my philosophical approach.

A necessary poetic element can be the sound value of a word, the color pumped up by comparisons, the length of a line - the whole complex of sensations. But only the deep trembling of the spirit is the actual conversation with the animate world - there is an inner voice, there is individuality, there is our question to this world of people that enters you, and you cannot renounce them, for the world and you are the same thing. All that remains is to wait for an answer. All that remains is to wait for contact.

Introductory article to the collection of stories by A.P. Chekhov.

“Brevity is the sister of talent...” This phrase is on everyone’s lips. But not many people know that it belongs to the greatest artist of the word, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. This aphorism, which has become popular, can serve as a kind of epigraph to the writer’s work.

Undoubtedly, Chekhov's stories are distinguished by laconicism, brevity, and the absence of beautiful and pompous phrases, but this is one of the many features of his works.

What can interest the reader so much that he wants to read the story again and again? What attracts him so much to these often ordinary and vulgar stories? How can the most typical, ordinary heroes differ?

Chekhov himself spoke about his writing style: “You can cry and moan over stories, you can suffer along with your heroes, but I think you need to do this in such a way that the reader does not notice.” Chekhov's reticence and restraint affects the reader more powerfully than loud words. One of the critics of the early twentieth century rightly wrote: “And when he was silent so deeply and meaningfully, it was as if he spoke expressively.”

Indeed, the author's assessment is not clearly expressed; it is scattered throughout the text. The author avoids straightforward and unambiguous assessments of the characters. His heroes are living people, and not schematic carriers of some ideas. And the main idea of ​​the work is also always hidden, since for the writer the main thing is not the proclamation of any statement, but the search for truth, not the solution of the question, but its formulation. So, the feelings and thoughts of the characters are also guessed, they are not directly mentioned. And in expressive dialogues we can see the wisdom of the characters, although this is also hidden.

“Truth is born in dispute” (Socrates) And Chekhov allows the reader to independently draw any conclusions. The story becomes a reason to think about your life. And in the sometimes banal, ordinary plot there is a deep meaning hidden.

If you like comic short stories, satirical stories, and anecdotes, then you will be pleasantly surprised by Chekhov’s favorite techniques in his works: humor and irony, satire and sarcasm.

Chekhov's jokes are also based on generalizations. Drawing the image of a shopkeeper in the story “Requiem Service,” we can see how “Andrei Andreevich wore solid galoshes, those same huge, clumsy galoshes that only positive, sensible and religiously convinced people wear.” The writer's humor is based on raising every little thing and accident to a power. This is Chekhov's poetics of little things. The author moves from details to greater generalization.

In his stories, Chekhov focused on what is most ordinary in everyday life. From the first to the last act, the main event of the work “Ionych” is obscured by everyday events of life. How to explain this feature of Chekhov's stories? First of all, the writer seeks to understand what motivates the characters to take any action. Therefore, Chekhov emphasizes ordinary everyday episodes, at first glance completely insignificant, filled with trifles. This helps him reproduce the most characteristic features modern life, under which his heroes think, act, and suffer. Another characteristic feature of them is connected with this feature of Chekhov's stories. The source of conflict does not lie in contradiction and clash of passions. In The Man in the Case, for example, there are no guilty parties. Who is to blame for teacher Belikov’s lifestyle? There is no one subjectively to blame. Life develops outside the will of people, and suffering occurs by itself.

Who is to blame? This question is heard in every story. Thanks to these features, we understand that it is not individual people who are to blame, but the whole of life in the endless monotony of its everyday life.

All of Chekhov's work is a call for spiritual liberation and emancipation of man. M. Gorky told the writer: “You seem to be the first free person who worships nothing that I have ever seen.” Undoubtedly, this inner freedom as the main sign of Chekhov’s character is reflected in the stories presented in this collection.

Technology of the editorial and publishing process Ryabinina Nina Zakharovna

7.4. Preface, afterword, introductory article

A preface is a preface to inform readers of what they need to take into account when reading, or studying, or reviewing a book. The preface most often contains materials about the significance of the theme of the book, the features of the content and form of the work or publication, the sources of the work, information about the principles of selection of material and the principles of constructing the work, unresolved and unexplained problems (so that the reader does not count on what is in the book no) and differences from books on the same or similar topics.

The preface should not be confused with the introduction - the introductory part of the author’s work, where its theme begins to be revealed, i.e. non-official part.

The preface is often given the title “From the author”, “Editor”, “From the compiler”, etc. If it is impossible to determine from the title who the preface belongs to, it is advisable to indicate after its text: author, editor, translator, or put the name of the person who wrote the preface. Some books, most often reprints, have several prefaces. If they were written by the same person, they are placed in reverse chronological order (to latest edition, then – to the previous one, etc.). In translated books, the preface of the translator or editor of the translation precedes the author's preface.

The preface, if it was not written by the editor, is edited last, when the structure of the book and the logic of presentation of the main text become clear. In this case, special attention is paid to the connection of the preface with other elements of the publication - the annotation, the content of which may coincide with the preface, as well as with the introduction. In addition, you need to ensure that the foreword is reflected in the table of contents (contents) and auxiliary indexes, if any. Although the preface is not the most main part publication, it significantly influences its entire appearance, therefore the editor must consider his work on it an important stage in the preparation of the publication.

An introductory article is a relatively independent essay in which the author’s work or published work is widely interpreted in order to help the reader better, deeper, more subtly perceive the content of the book, understand its complexities, get acquainted with its history, the reader’s fate and changes in assessment. So an introductory article is especially necessary in complex books, the content of which is not easy to understand without additional information. It is most often featured in publications individual works or collected works of writers, scientists, public figures.

The introductory article should open the book. Her place is after title page, before the author's preface, if it is included in the publication. The introductory article can only be preceded by a preface from the publishing house, editorial office or editor, or a table of contents (contents) if it is decided to place it at the beginning of the publication.

Most often, the introductory article, like the preface, is typed in a font smaller in size than the font of the main text.

The afterword is close in purpose to the introductory article, but differs from it in that it is placed after the text of the book - either because the publishing house does not want to influence the reader’s perception of the work before he gets acquainted with it, or because the interpretation itself the author’s creativity and his work is impossible without a good knowledge of him by the reader.

PREFACE The path to the right skills is training, training, training... The guy who wrote this book has seen first-hand how hard the best racers work to get to the top and stay there. Nick mastered dirt track on my California ranch with the following