In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

212Fourth Genre New York and weekends Boris flew up from the city to meet his family, landing on a nearby lake. The young Hochschüd was enamored by this uncle, by his "commanding physical presence. He loomed large above my childhood landscape, an elemental Ufe force." Yet this essay is far more than sentimental homage to his uncle. For juxtaposed with Boris is another Russian, Victor Serge, an anarchist who fought with the Bolsheviks in the Russian CivUWar. "A fine writer and a man ofluminous moral inteUigence, [Victor] spoke out for free speech and democracy, and was harassed, jailed, and exiled by StaUn. Suddenly, reading Serge's memoirs, I reaUzed that on one day in October 1919, at the site of an old observatory just outside Petrograd, Victor Serge and my beloved Russian uncle . . . had fought on opposite sides of the very same battle." In 1978 Hochschüd traveled to Russia to find the battlefield. His essay about these two men he admires, for vasdy different reasons, is the result. And the result teaches us a crucial lesson for our own time. Now, when the media thrives on sound bites and paints pictures in black and white, Hochschüd delves deep into his subjects and never provides the easy answer. And so we, his readers, also pause to understand, for example, the psyche of a lover of czarist Russia ... or that ofa poor white man embroüed in theAryan Nations. Thejourney, Hochschüd writes, "usuaUy changes the writer"; so, too, does the journey, because ofHochschfld's careful guidance, change the reader. In the tide essay Hochschüd describes, with self-deprecating humor, how, at the beginning of his career, he particularly wanted to be a novelist because he yearned to be, for the 1960s, what Fitzgerald and Hemingway were for the 1920s: "the voice of [his] generation." IronicaUy, Adam Hochschüd surpasses this youthful desire and becomes, because he writes nonfiction, a voice for the century. How lucky we are he never pubUshed that first novel. For our world is safer, more beautiful, more moral, better understood , with Hochschild, a muckraking angel, watching and reporting truth. Reviewed by Sue William Silverman Taking Retirement: A Beginner's Diary by Carl H. Klaus Beacon Press, 1999 256 pages, cloth, $25.00 Carl Klaus, who retired in 1997 after thirty-five years at the University of Iowa, founded the nonfiction writing program there and taught such Book Reviews213 courses as the personal essay and the art ofjournal keeping. His My Vegetable Love and Weathering Winter, Uke the current volume, employ the daybook format—a technique he has mastered. The Klaus touch—keen observation of the natural world, delightful descriptions of his garden and meals prepared at home, doses of humor and irony, talk of health concerns, some musings about mortaUty—is supplemented in this book by emotional depth. In 1992 Klaus, exhausted by a heavy teaching schedule, decided to start phased-in early retirement. When the diary begins in February 1997, he's teaching his last semester and feels conflicted; he intends the dafly writing to help him "cope with the impending loss." To a larger degree than he suspected , his self-identity is intertwined with his work, and he now agonizes over his pending retirement while recognizing the benefits of it. He experiences highs and lows almost dafly as if he "were on drugs or had somehow lost control" of himself. Despite a divorce in his thirties and a triple bypass in his fifties, this seems the biggest crisis of his life. Searching for answers, Klaus considers future activities: writing essays for pubUc radio; teaching his favorite course "gratis under my own auspices" in some cozy setting in Iowa City; and, briefly, even seUing real estate. He prods conversations about retirement from coUeagues, townspeople, and relatives who have retired or are about to and learns, among other things, that women especiaUy might not share his reasons to grieve their retirement. Too, it occurs to him that in retirement the financial benefits ofhis profession are superior. In the meantime, he turns down his department's plans to give him a party, agreeing simply to a tree planted in his honor in a park...

pdf