Manic Bookstore Cafe

Activity on this blog tends to surge when I'm on leave (a relatively rare occurrence), and yes, this year I do have a sabbatical. My research topics are related to health and Chekhov, which is part of why Yuri Corrigan's little book, Chekhov's Antidotes: Prescriptions for an Age of Unrest  really hit home. Also, the book is brilliant. In thoughtful, perfectly paced prose Corrigan takes us through four ideas he synthesized from across Chekhov's career. And though he never says LOOK HERE, FRIENDS AND COMRADES! THIS IS ABOUT OUR SOCIETY! that is kind of what he means. Let me give you the subtitles to each of four chapters: "On responding to the pain of others"; "on healing and resisting culture war"; "on mitigating modern loneliness"; "on discerning the meanings of life." Each of these topics feels phenomenally current. The argument--laid out with the elegant reasoning of a philosopher who wants to speak to a broad audience--unfolds ...

My neighbor has Parkinson's. He now spends all of his time in a hospital bed, with caregivers on site and on call. A former librarian, he is one of the kindest, gentlest people I know. With cats coming in and out of his room and hopping on the bed at will, he is settling into his hospice regime. But that doesn't mean he is in any way out of it. On Boxing Day I came by with my traditional offering--a coffee cake my mother used to bake for every major holiday. The recipe makes enough for two coffee cakes, and while of course one could simply cut the recipe in half, it's more fun (and neighborly) to make an extra. Tom looked fairly comfortable and was glad to see me. (As was his black cat, who appreciated the visit and got some nice pets and scritches while I was there.) We got to talking--he is looking for someone to come and read to him aloud. In the old days, we would see him walking to his job at the library, often balancing several books on his head just for fun. He's...

UPDATE: Evan Gershkovich, with other American and Russian political prisoners, was freed on August 1. As someone posted somewhere, we can rejoice that our people are out and the Russians have received murderers and spies in return. The optics of Evan's (and Alsu's) rushed trials to make sure to convict before the trade deal went through are bad... but then, what is good out of Russia these days? Trying not to despair. This good news is something anyway. Just over five years ago, I found myself with ten days on my hands in Europe. I had taken a group of 20+ students to Hungary and Poland, and I was due to participate in a conference in Croatia. There was a window. Any normal person would head straight to the beaches of the Dalmatian Coast. Instead, I went to Rome, to John Cabot's Guarini Institute , where we held a panel on the topic of  30 years after 1989 ... and then I went to Russia.  Musing on the former Soviet Union and my time there as a student--especially after wat...

A journalist was interviewing me Monday in Rome about my new book, Why We (Still) Need Russian Literature . It's fascinating to get new  questions, unexpected questions, and I should keep a log of them so that I'm prepared for the next talk or interview. Her question was: what is the one line from Russian literature that you like to quote over and over again? I found myself thinking back to graduate school, when we read all of Anton Chekhov in the original. The hapless heroine of Chekhov's play The Seagull  at one point in act IV says: "Я чайка ... нет ... не то." "I'm a seagull. No, that's not right." What does Nina mean? She goes on to assert "I am an actress," and it's true. [Spoiler alert] In the two years since the start of the play's action she has indeed become a provincial actress--after running away from her parents, engaging in an illicit love affair, having her lover's child who tragically perishes. No wonder she...

When I was preparing for a month-long study abroad trip to Hungary and Poland, taking first and second year college students to places they might not visit on their own, I decided to frame the course in terms of empire. For U.S. students even Austro-Hungary may be unknown, but in Budapest there are still physical and architectural traces of that empire, the Ottoman Empire and even the Roman empire. Heading to Warsaw gives me a chance to talk with them about partitioned Poland (1772 through 1918) and to discuss three empires: Russian, Prussian, and Austro-Hungarian. Plenty of fodder for conversation, especially in the context of today's European Union. What did it feel like to be a Polish subject in the Russian empire? A Jew in Austro-Hungary? A Ukrainian living in Warsaw or Budapest today? Aquincum, an ancient Roman city now  on the outskirts of Budapest, photo 2019 The framing is related to my university's general education program, where students are required to take courses...

On Thursday I fled Denver in the face of what was promising to be an epic snowstorm. (My AirBnB host, who grew up in Michigan, advised that Denver is quick to hit the panic button, but I didn't dare stick around to find out. I needed to be home before Monday!) In the plane, waiting for de-icing, I checked my e-mail and learned that I had been added to a so-called "stop-list" of U.S. citizens who are being personally sanctioned for our attitudes toward the Russian government and its internal and foreign affairs. It's not often that you end up on a list with the head of Lockheed Martin--certainly nothing I ever expected. But then, I also had never thought of myself as a Russophobe, and now that's the label that has been affixed to me by the Russian Federation. I had just been upgraded to first class--apparently not a lot of people were fleeing Denver that morning!--so I did what any Russophobe would do: I ordered a vodka from the flight attendant. An American vodka,...