Andrey Andreyevich Sidorov

The protagonist of "The Story of a Commercial Venture," a young provincial who inherits four thousand roubles from his mother and opens a bookshop meant to bring enlightenment to his benighted town; over the story's thirty-two sections he accedes to one customer request after another -- slate pencils, revenue stamps, toys, bicycles, filters, china -- until his serious authors are bundled up and sold off by weight and he presides over a general store, mocking his old bookish friends as "the Americans" and waving off talk of literature as none of his business.