Manic Bookstore Cafe

It's late May, which in the U.S. means that we are in the midst of Memorial Day Weekend. Like many holidays, and many American holidays, there is a political and nationalistic cast to this holiday: on Memorial Day, the last Monday of May, we are supposed to think of our dead, especially our war dead. When I was a child we had a Memorial Day Parade, and we always ended up at the cemetery. Union Memorial, Evergreen Cemetery, Barrington, IL Often it was hot, really hot, and we would stand around the Union Memorial at Evergreen Cemetery. There were actual veterans in the parade, of course, and an honor salute. My most vivid memory was when a fellow member of the trombone section fainted on me from heat and dehydration in about the eighth grade or so. I knew how important the holiday was, really I did. It's just that it can be awfully hot at the end of May. That sense of patriotism is missing in a lot of holiday celebrations these days. For most Americans, Memorial Day wee...

Lots of people feel they resemble the underground man, as this blog post attests. When I was in graduate school, my friend and I used to laugh about one of her high school classmates, a kind of black-wearing, photography-loving poseur who came to her h.s. graduation party, looked at her bookshelf, and declared: "Oh, Dostoevsky's Underground Man . I'm just like that character." An odd thing to declare, given that the "underground man" (whose name we never learn) is spiteful, vindictive, and lives in a dank basement room where he obsesses about his lack of social status. But maybe if you're a Goth-wannabe 17-year-old boy, it makes sense. In fact, of course, we are sometimes surprised at how spot on a literary description of a person or an experience can be. This week I taught Chekhov's classic short story "Let Me Sleep" about a 14-year-old nanny who works as a servant all day and desperately tries not to fall asleep all night while...

One of the things that is hardest to get used to when you lose someone, even temporarily -- whether a child to summer camp, a boyfriend you've broken up with -- or more permanently, a friend or parent who has died, is the hole it leaves in your life. Suddenly the time you were devoting to feeding the child, calling the parent, taking time with your friend or lover, is available just for you. In some cases this can be great -- when my children went off on their own this summer, the days became really long. When I go away for work, and I no longer need to do laundry, the dishes, the shopping, I suddenly can read for hours, or go for long walks, or attend the theater every night. But the important losses -- the loved one, whether to breakup or death -- create a void that looms from morning to night, and sometimes all night long. Time does not open up horizons, but instead can gape in empty and horrifying ways. Preparing my new courses for the fall, I've had several things...

Yesterday evening we ran into a friend whom we haven't seen in a while. "You look fantastic!" I told her. "Really?" she replied -- and I thought she might dissolve into laughter. Apparently, the idea was utterly absurd to her. It turns out that her father died a week ago. Not entirely unexpected, she said, as he had been ill for some time. But somehow he kept rallying, so when it finally happened it was still a shock. I never met him, but I was able to go home and read about him that evening: he was eulogized in the New York Times. Weird issue to bond over. My mother died five weeks ago today. But as Anna pointed out, there is something about death that resembles other issues we've bonded over in the past. "When you are pregnant," she noted, "you get all kinds of clues that things will be changing. The baby kicks and moves, and you can't wait to meet it. Someone throws you a baby shower, you prepare a crib and buy a car seat, a...

Death is funny. Not "ha-ha" funny, as we used to say when I was a kid, but funny odd, strange. I spend a lot of time thinking about death. That seems like a fairly obvious statement. After all, I teach Russian literature. When my now-sister-in-law heard that her brother was dating a Russian lit specialist, she famously asked: "Is she deep, or just depressed?" The answer is: neither. But even so, death is a big part of my life. Felix Lembersky, "Dusk: Matryona's House" Staraya Ladoga 1960-63 Writing my final exam bonus questions for my intro "Masterpieces of Russian Lit" course this spring -- questions about works we hadn't gotten to in class, but which I'd encouraged students to read anyway -- I began to wonder about my syllabus and the readings I choose. Here are the questions. Extra credit points:     1.      How and why does Mitya die in the story “Mitya’s Love”? (1+2)   2.      How and why does Matryona die in ...