SOURCE: Peppard, Victor. “The Poetics of Dialogue.” In The Poetics of Yury Olesha, pp. 96-124. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1989.

In the following chapter from his book-length study of Olesha's poetic artistry, Peppard points out the ways in which Olesha uses dialogic structures in his work.

Olesha's best works are so thoroughly dialogical because dialogue takes place in them on a number of different levels. One of the most important of these is the level of narrative structure. For the word in an artistic text to be perceived as dialogical rather than monological, it must, of course, be addressed to another person, either implicitly or explicitly. Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground (Zapiski iz-pod polia) (1864) is certainly one of the most graphic examples of a dialogical narrative. Here virtually every word of the underground man is addressed to an imaginary listener so as to rebut in advance all possible objections...