The Hamburg Score (Gamburgsky schyot) is a very important concept,
wrote Viktor Shklovsky, the famous Russian literary critic and founder
of Russian formalism, in 1928. All wrestlers cheat in performance and
allow themselves to lose a fight at the behest of the organizers. But
once a year wrestlers gather in Hamburg and fight in private among
themselves. It is a long, hard, ugly competition. But this is the only
way that they can reveal their real class. It is in this way that
Shklovsky has the leading literary come to a reckoning of their real
worth. This collection of essays and memoirs published in 1928
represents one of the last of the great critic's works to be translated
into English and will be a treasure for both Shklovsky scholars and
lovers of literature alike.