Cultural Influence
To the Editor:
While admiring Terry Teachout’s brilliant dissection of my book, The Magical Chorus, I feel compelled to add a few names to his list of Russian artists of the 20th century who influenced American culture. Mr. Teachout rightly mentions the émigré poet Joseph Brodsky, who, while certainly not a household name (and which representative of a foreign-language highbrow culture is nowadays?), was a strong presence among New York literati. I would also make a case for the composer Alfred Schnittke, the most-recorded representative of a postmodern classical music, and the filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky—witness Steven Soderbergh’s affectionate 2002 remake of Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972).
Solomon Volkov
New York City
