Manic Bookstore Cafe

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 ...

Being affiliated with a major university -- and knowing the right people who point you to cool events -- has its advantages. Yesterday I attended the Ohio State Theatre Research Institute lecture featuring Pamela Howard. This woman -- a "director, scenographer, visual theatre artist and educator" -- was amazingly smart, thoughtful, funny, generous, intelligent, talented. What can I say -- I was honored to be in her presence. Many people were there to find out about her current work-in-progress, a production based on Charlotte Salomon's graphic memoirs Life? or Theatre?  If you haven't heard of her, Charlotte Salomon was a 23-year-old Jewish refugee sheltering with her grandparents in Vichy France in 1940 when she learned of a strange fate that surely awaited her -- she learned that eight members of her family in the matrilineal line had committed suicide, a fact that had been hidden from her when her mother threw herself out a window in 1926 and only came to ligh...