Like many of Shklovsky's works, Third Factory is not easily classified.
In part it is a memoir of the three Factories that influenced his
development as a human being and as a writer, yet the events depicted
within the book are fictionalised and conveyed with the poetic verve and
playfulness of form that have made Shklovsky a major figure in
twentieth-century world literature. In addition to its fictional and
biographical elements, Third Factory includes anecdotes, rants, social
satire, literary theory, and anything else that Shklovsky, with an
artist's unerring confidence, chooses to include.