Lazar Lazarev is a literary critic of the “Novomirsky” series, one of the elders of modern literary criticism and journalism, the editor-in-chief of the journal “Problems of Literature,” which enjoys constant authority in the literary and scientific world, where he has worked for more than four decades. The book “Notes of an Elderly Man” incorporates the experience of the author, who for a long time was in the thick of remarkable events in social and literary life. His observations are insightful, the evidence is accurate. The names of the heroes of the essays are widely known: V. Nekrasov, K. Simonov, A. Agranovsky, B. Slutsky, B. Okudzhava, I. Erenburg, V. Grossman, A. Tvardovsky, M. Gallai, A Adamovich, V. Bykov, D. Ortenberg, A. Tarkovsky.