A Window on Russia uses the very language of the Russian classics as a mirror of the national character, one Wilson finds both attractive and impractical. He combines the assumptions of Michelet and Taine about national cultures with the role of gentleman-amateur guide. No master of Russian—as the Nabokov-Wilson controversy showed—he can make learning the verbs and intellectual pleasure, from the time sense involved in their irregularities to the weakness of the verbs for "get" to the expressions for the way Russian women narrow their eyes. In New York in the 'twenties Wilson collected words for the varieties of drunkenness. Now, with an aside on Soviet propaganda,—he discriminates among Russian words for fantasy and lying. His consciously Western point of view is supported by the Russian writers. Thus Dostoevsky and Turgenev agree on lying as the national vice, and Tolstoy acknowledges the latter's exceptional truthfulness...