Manic Bookstore Cafe

This morning I find myself singing that old song: "Feelings, nothing more than feelings..."  According to the Medusa Project , a Russian news site, President Vladimir Putin accused the U.S. of deliberately and gratuitously worsening Russian-American relations: американская сторона «предприняла ничем не спровоцированный шаг по ухудшению российско-американских отношений» The American side "took an absolutely unprovoked step toward worsening Russian-American relations." Fascinating. Unprovoked? But what caught my eye in the news this morning was the English translation of Putin's characterization of his cuts to embassy and consulate personnel. In English he was reported in the New York Times to have said: "It is biting." CNN was a little more clear, saying that Putin called the cuts  "biting" measures . But the Russian says something different: chuvstvitel'ny . The measures should be sensed, noticeable, possibly emphatic . But ...

So this week President Vladimir Putin of Russia was quoted in the New York Times as complaining about "boorishness." Photo credit: Mauri Ratilainen/ European Pressphoto Agency for the NYT This was not the  most  noteworthy quote in the NYT this week (I am striving not to use profanity since reading about J.D. Vance's Mamaw in his  Hillbilly Elegy , so I won't repeat the other quote). It was, however, named the " Quotation of the Day ." Not many Americans use the word "boorishness." In fact, I may never have heard it spoken aloud in my entire life. Nonetheless, as often happens when reading translations, I had to back-translate and realized immediately what Putin must have said in Russian. I checked on the Russian internet, and I was right: Putin called the new sanctions being imposed on Russia by the U.S. Senate "boorishness and cynicism" -- or khamstvo i tsinizm . The word khamstvo , or boorishness, seems like the kind of t...

In Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novella of life in a Soviet labor camp--the 1962 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich , ushered into print by none other than Nikita Khrushchev--his protagonist has one particularly treasured possession. His spoon. The reader notices right away that Ivan Denisovich cherishes the spoon, though it may take a while to understand. Early in the text, instructed to wash the floors in the guardroom but not wanting to spend his own precious pre-work time to do the extra task, Ivan Denisovich removes his felt boots and sloshes a full bucket of water on the floor, annoying the guards. "Who washes the floor like that?!" they complain, and eventually agree that he should just sop up the water he has spilled and go back to his bunk. The perspicacious reader (Nabokov's favorite reader -- but that's a different post) noticed something other than the relations between guards and prisoner, than the argument over how best to wash a mud-encrust...

Chekhov loved to travel, and he travelled a lot. I have to admit that I too love a peripatetic life. In this, I want to be like Chekhov. The view from our window, with the shadow of the church's dome. And last week I finally made it to Genoa, Italy. I hadn't even considered going to Italy, really, until I started writing about Chekhov and cemeteries. (Gratuitous promo: my piece on cemeteries in Chekhov's fiction comes out this spring in The Antioch Review .) In Genoa, we stayed in an apartment next to a 12th century bell tower, and when the bells tolled out, I felt transported to another time. Or no, that's not quite right. Even though the bells were marking the time, they connected me to all times, to a timelessness that reached back to Chekhov and beyond. The sound connects the listener not only to ages long past, but to the city itself, and the natural surroundings. In one recording I made the birds sing out as if in answer to the bells: nature and the b...

My review of the film version of Moscow's Vakhtangov Theater's production of  Eugene Onegin  pales in comparison to my friend's reaction to the live version, which she saw last night. Starting with the elegant program -- a kind of invitation that also included the full text of Tatiana's letter to Eugene -- and continuing with the magic on stage, the production really was something to write home about (or at least write Ohio about). Анжела, я в восторге от спектакля! Очень необычная постановка. Сочетание классической драмы, хореографии, откровенного сюреализма.   Актерская игра тоже выше всяких похвал! Но главное, впервые как-то по-новому  услышала Пушкина.  Angela--she wrote--the play was fantastic! A very unusual production. A combination of classical drama, choreography, straight-out surrealism. The actors' performances were also beyond all praise! But most importantly, for the first time I head Pushkin in a new way. For those of us in the business, this...