Manic Bookstore Cafe

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...

About a month ago I saw a Moscow theater production , projected on a screen in suburban Cincinnati. It was breathtaking -- the scope and creativity of the theatrical version of Pushkin's classic novel-in-verse from 1831 had me rapt. Then I went to Moscow. The Moscow theater scene is all about the classics these days. There's a new musical based on Tolstoy's Anna Karenina ; the Vakhtangov is showing that Eugene Onegin , and Chekhov's plays never leave the repertoire: Uncle Vanya , Three Sisters , Cherry Orchard  etc. I was in town all of two evenings, but that didn't stop me. I got to two productions based on classic 19th century fiction, and both were utterly amazing. Opening Scene of R.R.R., featuring Raskolnikov on the typewriter At the Mossovet Theater I attended R. R. R. , a play based on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.  Porfiry Petrovich shows Raskolnikov his article, published under the pseudonym "R.R.R." -- Rodion Romanovich...

Today we spent the afternoon at Eastern State Penitentiary . Haven't been there in years, in fact since before becoming parents. (First the children were too young to go, then they were old enough to enter according to the rules, but too impressionable...) And this amazing institution on the heights above downtown Philadelphia has changed. For those who don't know, Eastern State was the first  penitentiary and gave the meaning to the word. It was imagined and designed (as far back as 1829) as a place where criminals would be isolated and able to contemplate their offenses. In the process, they were to become penitent, and then leave the place ready to recommit to society. In those early days, there weren't a lot of tracking options -- no fingerprints, no electronic databases -- and so no one really knows how many people were able to reform.  What we do know is that initially the prisoners were given fairly short sentences and were left alone, with their bibl...