Metafolklore: The Surreal Diary of an Unwilling Spy, 2nd Edition

This book is a fictionalized diary. It is written in a very unconventional way and describes an unconventional experience. It is about the collision of cultures, which any new immigrant may experience. But it is also about the life of a particular kind of newcomer - a highly ideological, even idealistic, political refugee from a country that is the main geopolitical adversary of America. The narrative is a mixture brewed from the high-minded expectations of a former Soviet dissident contrasted with the world of "folklore" where insinuation is reality and with the daily prejudices and outright spy mania found in the various strata of American society. At the same time, this book has an aspect of a folklore study. Elements of folklore - folklore units - are analyzed both from the point of view of an immediate meaning and from the point of view of a broader meaning. The immediate and broader meaning is uncovered through interpretation in contexts. In the process of this interpretation the book navigates in contexts on two levels: (immediate) Contexts and (broader) Metacontexts. These Contexts and Metacontexts are built with the use of citations, which exemplify folklore in the world of ideas (hence the title of this work, Metafolklore). Books used as sources for these citations are primarily those of literature, philosophy, and law, but also of other areas of human knowledge. The Metacontexts are presented in three distinct perspectives: anthropological, psychological, and humanistic. Plus there are Metacontexts representing a dialogue of the author with his daughters who give the perspective of second generation immigrants. Strictly speaking, this book falls in between fiction and nonfiction; not accidently it is called "a fictionalized diary." But even so it leans towards nonfiction in the genre of ethnographic surrealism. The book covers the life of immigrants from the U.S.S.R. in the U.S., remembers life in Russia, describes personal experience of a diss