M. Gorky. "Stories of 1922-1924": problems of modern reading ("A story about a novel")

The article comprehensively examines the "Story of a novel" - one of the most read and underestimated in the stage cycle of M. Gorky "Stories of 1822-1924" - on the writer's way to the final book "The Life of Klim Samgin". At first glance, a humorously ironic story reveals a complex of conceptual problems, helps to identify the features of the writer's creative laboratory in his attitude to historical reality, to the laws of artistic creativity, the peculiarities of revealing the inner world of a person, his gender component, and socio-cultural status.