Emil
Draitser
The Supervisor of the Sea &
Other Stories
ISBN 1-879478-47-7 (paper)
149 pages, $15
Emil Draitser has been publishing both fiction and nonfiction since 1965.
Under his pen name "Emile Abramov," his work appeared in leading
Soviet Russian journals (Youth, Literary Gazette and Crocodile
among the best known). In 1974, blacklisted by the Soviet literary establishment
for a satire on one of its members, he took advantage of the Jewish immigration
and came to the US, where his short stories and collections of humor quickly
won him wide acclaim. Supervisor of the Sea presents his longer and
more serious stories in a sequence that moves from Russia to America to the
fantastic beyond. Professor Draitser teaches at Hunter College in New York
City.
Critical praise for Emil Draitser's work:
"What a cross-country flight I had reading Emil Draitser's collection of fourteen short stories! I forgot the stale pretzels and cuplet of 7-Up served by the airline for lunch. The writer lifts off simply, rides out the turbulence and soars to a higher altitude...
"His stories often have a mysterious figure, such as the boy "Immersed in the melancholy of childhood" in "Islands"; or the Postman of Odessa in "The Supervisor of the Sea," who advises a Muscovite anxious about the loss of his train ticket home, that he should go to the beach and "breathe the sea air." Losing something, he tells him, "means that happiness is waiting... somewhere and has already given a sign of its coming.
"Draitser mixes such messages of hope with cruelties of life in his stories."
~ Kaye Bache-Snyder, Small Press Review November-December 2003
"Russian literautre has never known such a book. In Draitser's stories, America and Russia are whimsically yet inseparably intertwined. Draitser's humor is so deeply philosophical that the reader doesn't notice at times where the comedy ends and the tragedy begins."~ World Literature Today
"Draitser transforms an event into a story, and his method, which he has brought to mastery, consists in taking a situation to the point of absurdity and then making this absurdity a reality... Draitser's language is precise and expansive, his storyline is meticulously designed, his colors are rich."~ Novoye Russkoye Slovo
(The New Russian Word), New York
Stories from Supervisor of the Sea:
Islands • Clouds • The Supervisor of the Sea •
The Little Thread • American Lady • Faithful Masha
Dvorkin • Wedding in Brighton Beach • Messages from Zoya •
Beginner's Luck • It's Not a Simple Thing
The Sun Was Shining • Zugzwang • Directions
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