Abstract

I share Kulagin's bewilderment over the term "work-situation theme." There is something unnatural in dividing literature - the study of human beings - into topics and headings. How many kinds of prose we have heard of in recent years: working class, rural, urban, youth, military, intellectual, personal, industrial. The eruptions and outbursts occurring in literary life tend largely to eliminate these lines of demarcation, and then the arguments rage not so much upon themes as about language, creative style, characters, and the degree to which the writer was successful in depicting the full richness and variety of life