Rearranging the Furniture

In the spring of 1920, on the banks of the Dnieper, the Formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky found himself commanding a demolition squad in the Red Army. With no dynamite, detonators or safety fuses at his disposal, Shklovsky, a lifelong admirer of Robinson Crusoe, turned his improvisatory genius to the field of military pyrotechnics. Gathering the materials at hand--a disassembled smoke bomb, "some little white cylinders of German origin" and a lit cigarette--he withdrew to a deserted ravine. As he recalled:

My arms were flung back; I was lifted, seared and turned head over heels. The air filled with explosions. The cylinder had blown up in my hands. I hardly had time for a fleeting thought about my book Plot as a Stylistic Phenomenon. Who would write it now?

The great Formalist, somewhat perforated and mangled, was rushed to the hospital in a cart normally reserved for "potato expeditions." Even here, the spirit of scientific endeavor did not desert him: "Take a report," Shklovsky directed, supine in the potato cart. "The object given to me for purposes of experimentation proved to be too powerful for use as a primer. The explosion took place prematurely.... use regular primers!"

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