Among the writers long classified as "Realists," Fedor Mikhailovich Reshetnikov occupies a special place, even though only one of his books, Podlipovtsy (The Inhabitants of Podlipnaia, 1864), achieved renown. This privileged position is linked primarily to the fact that in any discussion of realism and naturalism in nineteenth-century Russian literature Reshetnikov is acknowledged as exhibiting the highest degree of correspondence between literature and reality, text and biography. Some critics saw this characteristic as the main deficiency in Reshetnikov's prose, noting the writer's striking inability to manage his material, to transform life experiences into a literary text, and to separate out the unnecessary and add in what was lacking. Others saw in this tendency the most worthwhile element of his work: for example, Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov (N. Shchedrin) wrote of Reshetnikov, "He feels the truth, he writes the truth, and from this truth (pravda) the tragic deeper truth (istina) of...