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from Part III - To the Pacific Ocean
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 January 2024
Chapter 20 analyzes “The Desert” installment of Ilf and Petrov’s photo essay. It argues that their rushed tour of natural wonders produced a fundamental insight: In contrast to Soviet technical marvels, always represented as heroic prospects or the fruits of epic battles with nature, the American scenic road was a mundane marvel that conquered space and time with nothing more spectacular than regular road maintenance, cheap motels, plentiful gas stations, and accurate signage. Like the scenic road itself, the photo essay is full of contrasts and contradictions: the sublime beauty of the desert, smooth highways, and unsightly “oases.” To draw out these contrasts, Ilf and Petrov relied on the ironic back and forth between texts and images. Like a good sidekick, Ilf’s photos fed the writers’ deadpan observations that occasioned all manner of ironic, critical, and whimsical rejoinders.
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