Third Factory     by Viktor Shklovsky, Translated by Richard Sheldon Original title: Tret'ia fabrika Published by Dalkey Archive Press Pub. Date: October 2, 2002 Format: Paperback, 125 pages ISBN: 1564783170 List Price: $12.95 buy now directly from the publisher Free Shipping Worldwide

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Like many of Shklovsky's works, Third Factory cannot be neatly classified. In part it is a memoir of the three "Factories" that influenced his development as a human being and as a writer, yet the events depicted within the book are fict ionalized and conveyed with the poetic verve and playfulness of form that have made Shklovsky a major figure in twentieth-century world literature. In addition to its fictional and biographical elements, Third Factory includes anecdotes, rants, social satire, literary theory, and anything else that Shklovsky, with an artist's unerring confidence, chooses to include.

Viktor Shklovsky was an originator and leading theoretician of Russian Formalism in the early part of the twentieth century. Several of his books have been translated into English, including Sentimental Journey, Zoo, or Letters Not about Love, and Theory of Prose.

Original limited edition published by Ardis (1977).

"A rambling, digressive stylist, Shklovsky throws off brilliant aperus on every page. . . . Like an architect's blueprint, it lays bare the joists and studs that hold up the house of fiction."

—Michael Dirda, Washington Post

"A work of gossip, allusion and esoteric reference, with devices—some typographical—which Shklovsky borrowed from Sterne, whom he much admired."—John Bayley, Listener