"One-Story America" ​​- travel essays by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, creators of the famous novels "The Twelve Chairs" and "The Golden Calf". In the fall of 1935, satirists were sent to the United States as correspondents for the Pravda newspaper. They traveled America from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back, and then, with their usual vivacity and sense of humor, told about this journey in a book. Ilf and Petrov spoke about the life of small and large cities, about the most beautiful landscapes: prairies, mountains and national parks, visited the White House and an Indian wigwam, told about American celebrities and film production in Hollywood, about rodeo, wrestling and American football, about the creation of a light bulb , phonograph and electric chair and much, much more.

01. Part I. "From the window of the twenty-seventh floor." Chapter One Normandy. (16:14)
02. Chapter two. First evening in New York. (18:52)
03. Chapter three. What can be seen from the window of the hotel. (15:08)
04. Chapter four. Appetite goes away while eating. (18:00)
05. Chapter five. We're looking for an angel without wings. (19:34)
06. Chapter six. Dad and mom. (15:09)
07. Chapter seven. Electric chair. (26:16)
08. Chapter eight. Big New York arena. (19:37)
09. Chapter nine. We buy a car and leave. (20:35)
10. Part II. "Across the Eastern States". Chapter ten. On the highway. (18:57)
11. Chapter Eleven. Small city. (18:23)
12. Chapter twelve. Big small city. (18:48)
13. Chapter thirteen. Mr. Ripley's Electric House. (21:40)
14. Chapter fourteen. America cannot be taken by surprise. (24:32)
15. Chapter fifteen. Dearborn. (18:47)
16. Chapter sixteen. Henry Ford. (24:02)
17. Chapter seventeen. Scary Chicago. (29:46)
18. Chapter eighteen. The best musicians in the world. (16:17)
19. Part III. "To the Pacific". Chapter nineteen. The birthplace of Mark Twain. (26:44)
20. Chapter Twenty. Marine Corps soldier. (16:05)
21. Chapter twenty-one. Roberts and his wife. (23:42)
22. Chapter twenty-two. Santa Fe. (15:46)
23. Chapter twenty-three. Meeting with the Indians. (23:30)
24. Chapter twenty-four. Day of misfortune. (22:14)
25. Chapter twenty-five. Desert. (20:04)
26. Chapter twenty-six. Grand Canyon. (14:44)
27. Chapter twenty-seven. Man in a red shirt. (28:14)
28. Chapter twenty-eight. Young Baptist. (15:07)
29. Chapter twenty-nine. On the crest of the dam. (19:12)
30. Part IV. "Golden State" Chapter Thirty. Mrs Adams record. (25:52)
31. Chapter thirty-one. San Francisco. (23:01)
32. Chapter thirty-two. American football. (21:18)
33. Chapter thirty-three. "Russian Hill". (15:56)
34. Chapter thirty-four. Captain X. (26:25)
35. Chapter thirty-five. four standards. (20:15)
36. Chapter thirty-six. God of bullshit. (28:28)
37. Chapter thirty-seven. Hollywood fortresses. (05:26)
38. Chapter thirty-eight. Pray, weigh and pay!. (16:26)
39. Chapter thirty-nine. God's country. (19:52)
40. Part V. "Back to the Atlantic". Chapter forty. Along the old Spanish trail. (22:12)
41. Chapter forty-one. Day in Mexico. (20:24)
42. Chapter forty-two. New Year in San Antonio. (22:13)
43. Chapter forty-three. We're moving into the southern states. (21:13)
44. Chapter forty-four. Black people. (23:34)
45. Chapter forty-five. American Democracy. (14:38)
46. ​​Chapter forty-six. Restless life. (21:05)

Vladimir Pozner, Brian Kahn, Ivan Urgant

"One Story America"

"One-story America" ​​by Vladimir Pozner

A few words about

It so happened that I came to the Russian language later than you, reader. I will not explain why: this story is long, and besides, it refers to bygone years.

While studying in the first year of the biology and soil faculty of Moscow State University, I became friends with Semyon Mileikovsky, a very well-read man, despite his seventeen years, who introduced me to Ilf and Petrov, more precisely, to The Twelve Chairs. He introduced me in a rather peculiar way, reading me page after page almost in a whisper, during the summer practice, when there was no one around. It was the year 1953, and although Ilf and Petrov were not among the banned writers, they were not especially allowed: after 1937, the works of Ilf and Petrov were not reprinted, apparently neither The Twelve Chairs nor The Golden Calf fit into the ideological canons of the country of the victorious workers and peasants.

This was all the more true for One-Story America, about which I would like to say a special word.

In 1935, Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov were seconded by the Pravda newspaper to the United States of America to write a book about this country. This in itself is surprising (especially since Ilf had relatives who once emigrated from Russia to America). In Pravda, the main printed organ of the CPSU(b), nothing appeared by accident. What were the reasons for the decision to send two satirical writers to America, in order to later publish their impressions on the pages of this ideological "bible" of the party? We are unlikely to know the answer to this question. Is it because just three years earlier Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been elected to the presidency of the United States, and diplomatic relations had been established between the USSR and the USA? Is it because they counted on the satirical talent of writers who would present American capitalism to the Soviet reader in an "appropriate" way? Anyway, they went.

Arriving in New York, Ilf and Petrov spent a month there making contacts and preparing for the trip. They, who did not know English and did not know how to drive a car, managed to find an American married couple who agreed to be their chauffeur-translators, bought a brand new Ford and set off. The journey lasted exactly sixty days. They traveled from New York, on the East Coast, to California, on the West Coast, and back again, visiting twenty-five states and hundreds of cities and settlements, they met with countless Americans and, after returning home, wrote a book. The book is absolutely amazing for several reasons.

It contains forty-seven chapters, and it is known that they wrote seven chapters together, and twenty - separately. However, only a textual expert is able to determine which chapters were written by Ilf and which by Petrov. This is first.

Secondly, neither Ilf nor Petrov had been to America before and did not know English, which has already been noted, but this did not in the least prevent them from feeling the spirit of the country and the people with an unusually subtle and accurate feel. I, who grew up in America and have read many books about it, believe that "One-Storied America" ​​is not only the best book written by foreigners about America (with the exception of de Tocqueville's study "On Democracy in America" ​​of the mid-19th century), but in general one one of the best "discoveries of America", which can only be compared with "Finding America with Charlie" by John Steinbeck.

How these two Odessans managed to figure out the most difficult country in just three months is a mystery to me. Today, re-reading One-Storied…, you understand that, in essence, they made very little mistake, except, of course, for some of their assessments regarding, for example, jazz and American cinema.

And one more thing: it was 1935, the hardest time of the Great Depression that swept America, which made millions of people unemployed, but at the same time neither Ilf nor Petrov doubted the ability of the American people to endure, to overcome the crisis. Perhaps they were mistaken in only one thing: comparing Soviet Union and the United States, they invariably emphasized the advantages of the first country of socialism over the main country of capitalism: the first five-year plan had just ended triumphantly in the USSR, the country was clearly on the rise, few knew about the horrors of forced collectivization, the mass repressions of 1937-1938 were still ahead. It seems to me that Ilf and Petrov sincerely believed in the advantages of Soviet socialism. Admiring the achievements of the Americans and America, they sincerely resented the social injustice of American society, and, while praising the USSR, they did not “work out the number”, but proudly emphasized the advantages of the country of which they were lucky to be citizens. Yes, they were wrong—well, they weren't the only ones wrong.

In 1961, when the five-volume collected works of Ilf and Petrov came out, I first read One-Story America.

Years have passed. I changed many jobs - I was the literary secretary of Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak, the executive secretary of the Soviet Life and Sputnik magazines, and the commentator for the Main Editorial Office of Radio Broadcasting in the USA and England of the State Radio and Television. It was there, in the late seventies, that I began to appear regularly on various American television channels (this was done via a communications satellite, since I was not allowed to travel abroad). Around this time, I re-read One-Story... and then I thought: how great it would be to repeat the journey of Ilf and Petrov, but this time for television.

This dream seemed completely unrealistic. I knew that they would never let me out of the country - at least, so some general rank with a bull's head told me to my face. As it turned out, the general was mistaken: there were no more travel restrictions, the "Iron Curtain" fell, and with it the main obstacle to the implementation of the plan. But many more years had to pass, fate had to write out intricate pretzels, a variety of circumstances had to coincide, stars and planets had to line up in a certain way so that everything came together.

It took twenty-five years, but the dream came true: we, our television group, repeated the journey of Ilf and Petrov, filmed documentary"One Story America". Despite everything, everything came true.

As my beloved Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol once wrote: “No matter what you say, such incidents happen in the world - rarely, but they do happen.”

Gogol was right. Right.

Necessary recognition and warning

The confession lies in the fact that Brian Kahn and Vladimir Pozner are not Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov. There is a certain similarity, of course, but only superficial: both they and we traveled across America, traveling sixteen thousand kilometers from East to West and from West to East. Both they and we wrote a book on this subject with the same title - One-Storied America. This is where the similarity ends.

They are primary, we are secondary. They inspired us, not the other way around. They are wonderful writers, one might say, classics, while we, if writers, are by no means classics. Finally, Ilf and Petrov wrote together, which cannot be said about Kahn and Posner. And the last thing: for Ilf and Petrov, the book One-Story America was the main and only result of their journey. Our book consists of observations and reflections that were not included in the documentary, it is still secondary: these are travel notes made, as they say, after.

For Russians who have not read or even heard about the book by Ilf and Petrov (and, as it turns out, there are surprisingly many of them), I want to say that by taking the name of Ilf and Petrov for our book, we only wanted to emphasize our admiration for them, and by putting the title of our book in quotation marks, we thereby make it clear that it was not invented by us and is actually a quote.

About how we came to New York and didn't end up in Cooperstown

We are in New York. We are our film crew, consisting of 12 people:

- Directed by Valery Spirin, a man who resembles a sleepy polar bear - firstly, with his dimensions, both in terms of height and weight, secondly, by color and thirdly, by habits: he is leisurely in movements and in speech, looks at you with a slightly distant blue gaze (blue-eyed polar bears are rare, but they are), but it is completely clear that you don’t need to wake him up, it’s more expensive for yourself.

– Operators Vlad Chernyaev and Mikhail Kozlov. Operators are a special people. They, as a rule, have seen everything and know everything. First of all, they know that the most important thing is the picture, that is, what they consider necessary to shoot. Everything else is just the entourage. During the entire trip, these gentlemen sported some half-shorts, tattered T-shirts and sandals that clearly saw better days. I cannot say that they looked like Arab terrorists, but it is a fact that they aroused a certain alertness among the American public.

- Sound engineer Ivan Nekhoroshev, a man with a languid look, who free time talked on a cell phone with some incredible number of Moscow, and, perhaps, not Moscow girlfriends and admirers. Apparently, this distracted him so much from what was happening that he often only at the last moment remembered that it was necessary to “microphone” one or another participant in the filming, and began fussily rushing between the equipment and the object, often dropping microphones and getting tangled in wires.

- Grip ("specialist" in technology) Vladimir Kononykhin, a man of amazing calmness, silent, from whom an unusually pleasant confidence emanated: everything he did was done accurately and reliably. Short, slightly overweight, Kononykhin was everyone's favorite. It was he who figured out how to mount the cameras on the body of our jeep on ingenious suction cups so that at any speed and under any weather and other conditions they stood as firmly and unshakably as Gibraltar.

– Executive producer Alena Sopina. Special mention must be made of her. She had to organize absolutely everything: negotiate with motels where we were to spend the night, establish contacts with all the subjects of filming, obtain all permits, conduct all financial calculations, settle car rental issues (and there were three of them), select all the newsreels of the thirties - nothing more. list. And still work as a translator. In a word, an absolutely exorbitant burden fell on the shoulders of this young and unusually fragile creature. When something did not work out, no matter what, all the complaints were addressed to her, Helena Sopina ...

One-Story America is a book created by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov in 1935-1936. Published in 1937 in the Soviet Union. The four of them (both authors and the Adams married couple from New York) crossed America from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean and back in the acquired brand new Ford "noble mouse color" within two months (late 1935 - early 1936).

On the pages of the book, the authors:

Deep and detailed reveal ordinary life Americans of that time;
. Acquainted with many American celebrities: Hemingway, Henry Ford, Morgan, Williams, Reed, Townsend, Steffens and others;
. They describe many cities and towns in America: New York, Chicago, Kansas, Oklahoma, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, El Paso, San Antonio, New Orleans and the US capital - Washington;
. Visit an Indian wigwam and a Mexican village;
. Periodically meet with Russian emigrants, including Molokans in San Francisco;
. They talk about some national sports: rodeo, wrestling, American football and Mexican bullfighting;
. Rise to the roof of the Empire State Building in New York and descend deep underground into the caves of Carlsbad;
. They describe in detail a unique American invention - the "electric chair" of Sing Sing prison and the creation of the first electric light bulb and phonograph by Edison;
. They represent the most beautiful landscapes of America, located in the prairies, mountains, national parks and even in deserts;
. They visit the White House, where the conversation between US President Roosevelt and reporters took place;
. They talk in detail about the production of films in Hollywood.

Henry Ford and "Tin Lizzie" 1921

A characteristic feature of the book is the minimum (more precisely, the practical absence) of ideological moments, which was simply an exceptional phenomenon for Stalin's time. Ilf and Petrov, being subtle, intelligent and insightful observers, made up a very objective picture of the United States and its inhabitants. Such unattractive features as general standardization and lack of spirituality, or rather, the intellectual passivity of Americans, especially young people, are repeatedly criticized.

At the same time, the authors admire American roads and excellent service, clear organization and pragmatism in everyday life and at work. It was from "One-Story America" ​​that the Soviet reader first learned about publicity, life on credit and the ideology of consumption (chapter "Mr. Ripley's Electric House").

History of creation

In September 1935, Pravda correspondents Ilf and Petrov left for the United States of America. In those days, the President of the United States was Franklin Roosevelt, who did a lot for rapprochement between the United States and the USSR. This allowed the authors to freely move around the country and get closely acquainted with the life of different strata of American society. In America, Ilf and Petrov lived for three and a half months.

During this time they crossed the country twice from end to end. Returning to Moscow in the first days of February 1936, Ilf and Petrov announced in a conversation with a Literaturnaya Gazeta correspondent that they would be writing a book about America. In fact, work on "One-Story America" ​​began in the United States. The essay “Normandy”, which opens the book, was written by Ilf and Petrov shortly after their arrival in America. Under the heading "The Road to New York," it appeared, with minor cuts, in Pravda on November 24, 1935.

“I would like to sign this picture like this:“ This is America! ”(photo by I. Ilf)

During the writers' stay in America, Pravda also published their essay "American Encounters" (January 5, 1936), which in the book concludes chapter twenty-five, "The Desert." Ilf and Petrov published the first brief notes about the trip in 1936 in the Ogonyok magazine under the title American Photographs. The text was accompanied by about 150 American photographs of Ilf, which captured the face of the country and portraits of people whom the writers met in America.

One-Story America was written fairly quickly, during the summer months of 1936. While the book was being written, Pravda published five more essays from it:

June 18 - "Journey to the Land of Bourgeois Democracy";
. July 4 - "New York";
. July 12 - "Electric Gentlemen";
. September 5 - Glorious City of Hollywood;
. October 18 - "In Carmel".

In 1936, the travel essays "One-story America" ​​were first published in the Znamya magazine. In 1937, they were published as a separate publication in Roman-gazeta, Goslitizdat and the Soviet Writer publishing house. In the same year the book was republished in Ivanov, Khabarovsk, Smolensk.

Heroes and prototypes

Under the surname Adams in the book, Solomon Abramovich Tron (1872-1969), an engineer of the General Electric company, who played an important role in the electrification of the USSR, and his wife Florence Tron are displayed in the book.

We met Tron at one of my public lectures on the Soviet Union. Then, in the thirtieth year, we met in Moscow. He has already managed to work at the Dneprostroy, in Stalingrad and Chelyabinsk. Together with him in Moscow was his son from his first marriage, also an electrical engineer. The throne was exactly as depicted in One-Storied America.

Before the Second World War, the beginning of which, as you probably remember from the book, he predicted with an error of only one year, this fidget managed to visit and work in China, India and Switzerland. Last time we met with him already at the end of the war. He was about to move from New York to Youngstown, Ohio, with relatives of his wife, bred in One-Story America under the name Becky. … He was already a rather sick man, old age made itself felt, but in his heart he remained the same “Mr. Adams” - an energetic, inquisitive, interesting conversationalist.

Having become acquainted with the manuscript of One-Storied America, Tron jokingly stated that from now on he and his wife were “ready to live under the name of the Adams.” The Thrones' daughter Sasha (b. 1933), mentioned several times in the book as "baby", subsequently studied in Switzerland.

Reissues

In Soviet times, the book was reprinted in 1947, 1961 and 1966, but in these editions its text was subjected to political censorship. So, references to Stalin and other political figures disappeared from the text. The text underwent an even greater number of edits when it was published in the Collected Works of Ilf and Petrov in 1961. For example, a sympathetic mention of Charles Lindrberg's move from America to Europe after the kidnapping and murder of his son disappeared from the text, which is probably due to Lindrberg's subsequent collaboration with the Nazis.

In 2003, a new edition of the book, restored from the original source, was published, including previously unknown materials from the personal archive of Alexandra Ilyinichna Ilf (daughter of I. Ilf). It published for the first time letters that Ilf sent to his wife and daughter during the trip, and photographs taken by him in the United States.

Together with Petrov's letters, they are a kind of travel diary and naturally complement the book. In the 2000s, exhibitions of Ilf's "American photographs" were successfully held at several American universities, and a translation of the "Ogonkovskaya" publication of 1936 was published in New York, with numerous Ilfov's photographs.

Hot dog vendor in New York, 1936

Translations

One-Storied America has been repeatedly published in Bulgarian, English, Spanish, Czech, Serbian, French, Italian and other languages. In the United States, One-Story America was published in 1937, after Ilf's death, by Farrar & Rinehart under the title Little Golden America. This name was invented by the publisher, despite the protest of the author - Evgeny Petrov and translator Charles Malamute. According to the publisher, such a title should have reminded readers of the previous book by Ilf and Petrov, The Golden Calf, previously published in the United States under the title The Little Golden Calf.

"One-Storied America" ​​was a success with American readers and caused a lot of responses in the metropolitan and provincial press.

Here is some of them:

This book should be marked as a very significant work.
Americans and America would benefit greatly if they thought about these
observations.
Allentown Morning Call

Not many of our foreign guests have traveled this far
from Broadway and the central streets of Chicago; not many could talk about their
impressions with such liveliness and humour.
New York Herald Tribune

This is one of best books written about America by foreigners.
Pleasant, but sometimes hectic, to rediscover America,
through the eyes of the authors of this book.
News Courier, North Carolina

Followers

In 1955, the writer B. Polevoy, as part of a delegation of Soviet journalists, made a trip to the United States. Travel notes created during this trip formed the basis of the book "American Diaries". According to the author, the attitude towards Soviet journalists in the United States changed for the worse and, although the delegation followed almost in the footsteps of Ilf and Petrov, they were deprived of the opportunity to see many aspects of American life.

In 1969, the journalists of the Pravda newspaper B. Strelnikov and I. Shatunovsky repeated the route of Ilf and Petrov in order to compare how much the United States has changed over the past third of a century. The result of the trip was the book "America on the Right and on the Left".

In the summer of 2006, Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner and TV presenter Ivan Urgant made a trip to the United States in the footsteps of Ilf and Petrov. In February 2008, Russian TV premiered their film "One-Story America", which presented the ordinary life of modern America. In 2011, their book One-Storied America was also published.

A Ford bought on credit in New York, in which the writers traveled all over America. Photo by Ilya Ilf

On September 19, 1935, Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, as correspondents for the newspaper Pravda, set off on a four-month trip to America. On the Ford bought in New York, the writers crossed the whole country, visited the factories of Henry Ford and the birthplace of Mark Twain, in the Indian villages of Santa Fe and Taos, examined the construction of the Hoover Dam (then Boulder Dam), drove through the Colorful Desert of Arizona, visited the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, spent two weeks in Hollywood and returned through the southern states back to New York. Ilf wrote down his impressions in a diary, sent detailed long letters, short postcards, telegrams and stacks of photographs to his wife Maria every day. Returning to Moscow, the writers published their travel notes under the title "One-story America". Translated to English language, the book was a great success in the United States, and then in other countries.

Envelope of Ilya Ilf from the Normandy on the way to New York. October 4, 1935

From the family archive of Ilya Ilf

The first letter from Ilya Ilf from the Normandy on the way to New York. October 4, 1935From the family archive of Ilya Ilf

The first letter from Ilya Ilf from the Normandy on the way to New York. October 4, 1935From the family archive of Ilya Ilf

Writers sailed to New York on. Ilf's letters are written on special paper with the logo of the liner, which was in abundance in a special room for writing and sending letters. The journey in the first-class cabin was described in detail by Ilf and Petrov in the book One-Storied America.

“In general, the amenities here are enormous, if you take the vibration calmly. Our cabin is huge (because we are lucky, in Paris, when we exchanged ship cards for tickets, they gave us a cabin not a tourist one, but a first class one. They do this because the season has already ended so that the first class is not empty ugly) , sheathed in light wood, the ceiling is like in the subway, luxurious, there are two wide wooden beds, wardrobes, armchairs, a washbasin, a shower, a toilet. In general, the ship is huge and very beautiful. But in the field of art, it is clearly unfavorable here. Art Nouveau in general is a bit nasty thing, but on the Normandy it is further enhanced by gold and mediocrity.

“A group of our engineers with the radio designer Shorin is riding on the Normandy. Everyone lay down like bones, showed up for a minute today and again hid in their cabins. I walk alone, mad admiral, insensitive to seasickness.

From the family archive of Ilya Ilf

Postcard from New York. October 9, 1935From the family archive of Ilya Ilf

Ilf and Petrov arrived in New York on October 7, 1935, and spent almost a month there. They saw a lot of people - from Ernest Hemingway to, visited the big Van Gogh exhibition, at one of the first performances of George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess, saw a boxing match in Madison Square Garden and the dark corners of Sing Sing prison.

"Dear daughter Ilya Ilf addresses his wife Maria., sent you a letter yesterday. I live in the building on the back. I will be writing to you tonight. Kiss our dear Sasha Sashenka - Alexandra, daughter of Ilya Ilf and Maria.,
Your Ilya.

“In the morning, waking up on our twenty-seventh floor and looking out the window, we saw New York in a transparent morning fog.”

"One Story America"

“It was what is called a peaceful village picture. A few white smokes rose into the sky, and an idyllic all-metal cockerel was even attached to the spire of a small twenty-story hut. The sixty-story skyscrapers that seemed so close last night were separated from us by at least a dozen red iron roofs and a hundred tall chimneys and dormer windows, among which laundry hung and ordinary cats roamed.

"One Story America"

Solomon Tron (1872-1969) - electrical engineer, often visited the Soviet Union, worked at Dneprostroy, Chelyabinsk and other places. Together with his wife Florence, the lively, energetic, curious and very sociable Solomon Throne accompanied the writers on their trip to America.

Dearborn envelope. November 14, 1935From the family archive of Ilya Ilf

The main impressions of Ilf and Petrov on the way from New York to Hollywood were the factories of Henry Ford in Dearborn, Chicago and advertising, especially light advertising.

“It was Mr. Henry Ford. He has wonderful eyes, sparkling, similar, apparently, to Tolstoy's, muzhik's. A very moving person. He sat down too. He moved his feet all the time. Then he rested them on the table, then he laid them one after another, then he put them on the floor again. We said what is called “for life”. The date lasted about 15 or 20 minutes. Of course, a person like Ford no longer thinks only about making money. He said that he was serving the community and that life was more than a car. In a letter, it's a pity, it's hard to tell, my daughter. In the book One-Storied America, a separate chapter is devoted to the meeting with Henry Ford. In general, I saw a wonderful person who greatly influenced people's lives. He himself, one must think, is not very pleased with the dominance of machines over man, because he said that he wanted to make small factories where people would work and at the same time be engaged in agriculture.

An envelope from the Stevens Hotel. Chicago, November 16, 1935From the family archive of Ilya Ilf

Letter from the Stevens Hotel. Chicago, November 16, 1935From the family archive of Ilya Ilf

In his diary, Ilya Ilf complained that it was impossible to shoot in Chicago:

"15th of November
<…>Brilliant car light. Embankment and slums. The Stevens Hotel has three thousand rooms. Patronage to single traveling women, and next to Gehry 30 miles from Chicago, in the city of Gary, there is a large smelter U.S. Steel.. Everything is clear with them, as in a copper basin.
It would be nice to film it, but it’s a terrible, dark day, nothing can be done, it’s a disgrace.”

From the family archive of Ilya Ilf

Postcard from Albuquerque. November 25, 1935From the family archive of Ilya Ilf

“Dear Marusik, if an Indian has an apartment on the third tier of a house, then he climbs these stairs from roof to roof. Dogs also walk up these stairs. Goodbye, my daughter.
Your Ilya.

Dogs walking on the roofs of Indian dwellings later appeared in One-Story America:

“The dogs ran to their homes without touching us, quickly climbed the stairs and disappeared at the door.”

From the family archive of Ilya Ilf

Postcard from the Navajo Bridge. November 28, 1935From the family archive of Ilya Ilf

The desert made a huge impression on Ilf - he shot a lot in Arizona and sent his wife several postcards from the Grand Canyon.

“Dear Marusik, I left Grand Kenyon in the morning and drove through the mountainous desert all day. So good in this colorful desert, like nowhere else. The best I have ever seen.
Yours and Sashenkin Ilya.

The colorful desert of Arizona. Photo by Ilya IlfRussian State Archive of Literature and Art

The stamp on the envelope was cut off for Evgeny Petrov's stamp collection.

From the family archive of Ilya Ilf

Letter from San Francisco. December 5, 1935From the family archive of Ilya Ilf

Before Hollywood, the writers stopped for a few days in San Francisco (“the city of fogs, very light and bright”) - to look at the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, walk around the city, go to American football and take a break from the endless road.

“Dear, tender daughter, I’m already very bored. Neither you are gone for a very long time, nor our little Pig Nickname of Ilf's daughter Alexandra.. My children are dear, it seems to me that I will never part with you again. I'm bored without you.
Here Indians, Japanese, Dutch, anyone walk through the streets, and the Pacific Ocean is here, and the whole city is on falling slopes, on cliffs, and I already have too much, I need to see with you how our girl sleeping in bed."

Russian State Archive of Literature and Art

San Francisco. Photo by Ilya IlfRussian State Archive of Literature and Art

Descriptions of these photographs were included in the book One-Storied America:

“It is not clear how and why we ended up in the Tropical Swimming Pool, that is, the winter pool. We stood, without taking off our coats, in a huge, rather old wooden room, where there was a heavy orange-rhine air, some kind of bamboo poles stuck out and curtains hung, admired a young couple in bathing suits, busily playing ping-pong, and on the fat man who was floundering in a large box filled with water ... "

The travel notes of Ilf and Petrov "One-storied America" ​​were published in 1937, more than seventy years ago. In the fall of 1935, Ilf and Petrov were sent to the United States as correspondents for the Pravda newspaper.

It is difficult to say what exactly the top authorities were guided by when they sent satirists into the very thick of capitalism. Most likely, they expected a vicious, destroying satire on the "country of Coca-Cola", but it turned out to be a smart, fair, benevolent book. It aroused keen interest among Soviet readers, who up to that time had not even a rough idea of ​​the North American United States.

The further history of the book cannot be called simple: it was either published, then banned, then removed from libraries, then parts of the text were cut off.

As a rule, "One-story America" ​​was included in a few collected works of Ilf and Petrov, separate editions rarely appeared ("no matter how it happened!"). There are only two editions with Ilfov's photo illustrations.

It is remarkable that the time has come when the desire to repeat the journey of Ilf and Petrov brought to life the documentary television series “One-story America” by Vladimir Pozner (he conceived this project thirty years ago). In addition to the series, we received a book of travel notes by Posner and the American writer, radio journalist Brian Kahn, with photographs by Ivan Urgant.

In a series worthy of all praise, one feels respect for the original. Vladimir Pozner constantly refers to Ilf and Petrov, keenly noting the similarities and differences in the life of America then and now. Posner's television series is known to have aroused great interest in the United States. And I was pleased to discover that many of my compatriot acquaintances, under the influence of the series, are re-reading the old One-Story America.

Today's America is very interested in its history, including the time reflected in the book of Ilf and Petrov. More recently, exhibitions of Ilf's "American photographs" have been successfully held at several American universities. And in New York, an edition was published: Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip. The 1935 Travelogue of Two Soviet Writers Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov(2007). This is a translation of the Ogonkovskaya publication of 1936, with numerous Ilfov photographs.

Good mutual interest benefits everyone.

However, modern America continues to be "one-story".

Alexandra Ilf

A number of surnames and geographical names given according to modern spelling.

At nine o'clock a special train leaves Paris, taking passengers of the Normandie to Le Havre. The train goes non-stop and after three hours rolls into the building of the Havre maritime station. Passengers go to the closed platform, go up to the top floor of the station on the escalator, go through several halls, go along the gangways closed on all sides and find themselves in a large lobby. Here they sit in the elevators and disperse to their floors. This is the Normandy. What is her appearance- the passengers do not know, because they never saw the ship.

We entered the elevator, and a boy in a red jacket with gold buttons pressed a beautiful button with a graceful movement. The shiny new elevator rose a little, got stuck between floors and suddenly moved down, ignoring the boy who was desperately pressing the buttons. Having gone down three floors, instead of going up two, we heard a painfully familiar phrase, uttered, however, on French: "The elevator is not working."

We climbed the stairs to our cabin, entirely covered with a fireproof light green rubber carpet. Corridors and vestibules of the ship are covered with the same material. The step is soft and inaudible. It's nice. But you really begin to appreciate the advantages of rubber flooring during pitching: the soles seem to stick to it. This, however, does not save you from seasickness, but it prevents you from falling.

The staircase was not at all like a steamboat - wide and sloping, with flights and landings, the dimensions of which are quite acceptable for any home.

The cabin was also some kind of non-ship. A spacious room with two windows, two wide wooden beds, armchairs, closets, tables, mirrors, and all amenities, down to the telephone. In general, the Normandy looks like a steamship only in a storm - then it shakes at least a little. And in calm weather, it is a colossal hotel with a magnificent view of the sea, which suddenly broke off the embankment of a fashionable resort and sailed at a speed of thirty miles an hour to America.

Deep below, from the platforms of all the floors of the station, the mourners shouted out their last greetings and wishes. They shouted in French, in English, in Spanish. They also shouted in Russian. A strange man in a black naval uniform with a silver anchor and a shield of David on his sleeve, in a beret and with a sad beard was shouting something in Hebrew. Later it turned out that this was a steamship rabbi, whom the General Transatlantic Company maintains in the service to meet the spiritual needs of a certain part of the passengers. For the other part, there are Catholic and Protestant priests at the ready. Muslims, fire worshipers and Soviet engineers are deprived of spiritual service. In this respect, the General Transatlantic Company has left them to their own devices. There is a fairly large Catholic church on the Normandy, illuminated by an extremely convenient electric demi-light for prayer. The altar and religious images can be covered with special shields, and then the church automatically turns into a Protestant one. As for the rabbi with the sad beard, he is not given a separate room, and he performs his services in the children's room. For this purpose, the company gives him a tales and a special drapery, with which he closes for a while the vain images of bunnies and cats.

The ship left the harbour. There were crowds of people on the embankment and on the pier. The Normandie is still unaccustomed to, and every voyage of the transatlantic colossus attracts everyone's attention in Le Havre. The French coast disappeared in the smoke of a cloudy day. By evening, the lights of Southampton shone. For an hour and a half, the Normandy stood in the roadstead, taking passengers from England, surrounded on three sides by the distant mysterious light of an unfamiliar city. And then she went out into the ocean, where the noisy fuss of invisible waves, raised by a storm wind, was already beginning.

Everything trembled in the stern, where we were placed. The decks, the walls, the portholes, the deck chairs, the glasses over the washbasin, the washbasin itself were trembling. The vibration of the ship was so strong that even such objects from which this could not be expected began to make sounds. For the first time in our lives, we heard the sound of a towel, soap, carpet on the floor, paper on the table, curtains, a collar thrown on the bed. Everything that was in the cabin sounded and rattled. It was enough for the passenger to think for a second and weaken the muscles of his face, as his teeth began to chatter. All night long it seemed that someone was breaking at the door, knocking on the windows, laughing heavily. We counted a hundred different sounds that our cabin made.

The Normandy was making its tenth voyage between Europe and America. After the eleventh voyage, she will go to the dock, her stern will be dismantled, and the design flaws that cause vibration will be eliminated.

In the morning a sailor came and tightly closed the portholes with metal shields. The storm intensified. The small cargo steamer struggled its way to the French shores. Sometimes he disappeared behind the wave, and only the tips of his masts were visible.

For some reason, it always seemed that the ocean road between the Old and New Worlds was very busy, that every now and then funny steamships came across, with music and flags. In fact, the ocean is a majestic and desolate thing, and the steamer, which was stormy four hundred miles from Europe, was the only ship that we met in five days of travel. The Normandie rocked slowly and importantly. She walked, almost without slowing down, confidently throwing high waves that climbed on her from all sides, and only occasionally gave uniform bows to the ocean. It was not a struggle of a meager creation of human hands with a raging element. It was a fight of equals.