The famous Russian-American philologist Alexander Zholkovsky, in the book “Vain Perfections,” analyzes his life - using the same techniques that he previously used to analyze other people’s works. The same merciless kindness, narcissism and self-criticism, brilliance and risk. Boris Pasternak, Ernest Hemingway, Dmitry Shostakovich, Lev Gumilev, Alexander Kushner, Sergei Gandlevsky, Mikhail Gasparov, Yuri Shcheglov and many others are the author’s interlocutors and the heroes of his memoirs, enthusiastic, cynical and always impeccably presented. This prose is fascinating, unpredictable and, in the words of his absentee opponent Akhmatova, just shameless enough to approach poetry. (D. Bykov)