"Maxim Gorky's Twenty-six Men and a Girl': The Destruction of an Illusion," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. X, No. 3, Summer, 1973, pp. 287-88.

In the following essay, Bartkovich briefly observes the themes of idealization and disillusionment in Gorky's "Twenty-six Men and a Girl."

The predisposition for some people to view Gorky as a true humanitarian, a defender of the dregs of society, a moral protestor against the ugly side of reality, and as an artist whose characters depicted the loathsome and filthy, whose major themes exhibited the urge of degraded human beings to find in the world of existence some ray of sunlight and hope, and whose didacticism stressed the feeling that even the hearts of "ex-humans" retain sparks of true humanitarianism that may flare up if given the chance, may have been projecting their own idealistic thoughts upon a basically nihilistic writer. We can legitimize this view...