The review contains a general characterization of A. I. Vanyukov’s new book “The literary 20th century – 2: journals, books, genres”, its content, structure, logic of selecting the material for analysis, as well as the peculiarities of the author’s research style: a strong reliance on historical, literary and literary-critical material and context, attention to poetic detail, poetics of titles, numerical symbolism, composition of the work, active use of various biographical, literary-critical, epistolary sources. It is noted that the author of the reviewed book makes full use of the broad possibilities of integral, multidimensional, multi-genre study of the literary process of the 20th century, laid down in the works of his predecessors, in particular, Prof. S. A. Vengerov. The structure and content of the researcher’s new book reflect the diversity of genres, names, thematic layers, stages of formation of the Russian literature of the 20th century. A special emphasis is placed on the fragments of A. I. Vanyukov’s book devoted to K. Fedin’s story Silence, The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon by B. Pilnyak, The Foundation Pin by A. Platonov, B. Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago. A. I. Vanyukov’s analysis of B. Pilniak’s The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon is characterized as multidimensional and containing different vectors of interpretation of this “scandalous” work of the 1920s: psychological, moral, political, metaphorical, which makes it possible to understand more deeply the figurative structure of the work, to understand the double code of interpretation embedded in it. In the article by A. I. Vanyukov “Part seventeenth “Poems of Yuri Zhivago” in the structure of the novel Doctor Zhivago” the active use of the structural method is noted – the connection of poems by Yuri Zhivago / Pasternak with various chapters / fragments of the main body of the novel. The conclusion is drawn about the prospects for the development of Russian literature in the 21st century.