Dovlatov is similar to the dreams and nightmares of Sergei. The nightmares that its people are real, but no healthy mind accepts such things to happen. . In one of these nightmares, Sergei is dreaming that he is accepted by Brezhnev, and as he grabbed his daughter’s hand, they will go to him, standing near a bench next to the water. The first Brezhnev question from him is whether to send troops to Pakistan or not? And after he talks about not publishing his books and call the name of Ernest Hemingway, the man sitting on the bench and apparently Fidel Castro tells about his love to Hemingway, because he is a straight and honest writer.
To see such a nightmare comes only from a writer and poet like Dovlatov, whose years of youth is wasted in yearning of publishing a book or poetry, and as he can he mocks the situation of Soviet Union; Just like his friend, Joseph Brodsky, who says they are the last generation who can save Russian literature.
Dovlatov is inspired by 8½. Reality and imagination are united, in a land where reality is more similar to imagination, and at times when young poets and young writers have no hope. Once upon a time Prince Myshkin told in the novel “The Idiot” that “beauty will save the world”.