SOURCE: "Myth and Reality: Points of Contact," in Soviet Literature, No. 1, 1979, pp. 160-66.

In the following essay, Sofinskaya considers the interaction among mysterious, symbolic aspects and ordinary, realistic events in Fowles's short fiction, assessing his contribution to the development of the short story genre.

The sixties and seventies saw a marked growth of interest by Soviet literary scholars in the "minor genres". Studies of classic examples of the Russian short story (Chekhov's stories) appeared, and monographs and joint studies of modern Russian and Western, particularly American, short stories were published. It was natural for analogies, coincidences and contrasts to emerge in any analysis of Russian, West European and American stories. A wealth of material for such juxtaposition is afforded by stories of John Fowles, which add up to only a small volume of writing (just one collection, The Ebony Tower, 1974) but constitute work of signifícance and substance...