Sabotaging utopia: Politics and self-parody in A. M. Klein's short fiction

In the years immediately preceding his emotional breakdown and complete abandonment of writing, A. M. Klein ceased to write poetry and redirected his literary energy into other projects. One such endeavour was a number of short stories, and these texts are among the most interesting and under-examined of Klein's career. In his late stories he parodies resolutions reached in his earlier work and negates the consolatory beliefs that sustained him throughout his life. In "And The Mome Raths Outgrabe," Klein reveals an alienation from his readership. By exploring various ways that texts can be misread, he casts doubt upon important aspects of his aesthetic philosophy. Klein betrays his anxiety as both a Diaspora Jew and a poet in "Letter From Afar" and "The Bells of Sobor Spasitula," in which he draws an analogy between political oppression in Stalinist Russia and negationist Zionism in the state of Israel. These texts conflate Klein's alienation as an artist with the persecution suffered by political dissidents, thus suggesting coded criticisms of his community. "The Bells" also parodies tropes in "Portrait of the Poet as Landscape" and The Second Scroll in order to subvert Klein's ideal of the role of the artist in society. Furthermore, in "And the Mome Raths Outgrabe" and "The Bells of Sobor Spasitula," Klein writes himself into his texts in multiple and contradictory ways. Ultimately, Klein criticises his own artistic stance in a way that indicates the fragmentation of his sense of self.