What are you currently reading?

[JBS]

For reference, the covers of the English language editions
Hardback:

Paperback:

[Florestan]

Guy de Maupassant - Mon oncle Sosthène

To tell in five pages what others need a whole volume to tell, that's genius --- which Maupassant shares with Chekhov.

[owlice]

I've just started "The Island Of Sea Women" by Lisa See. About 25% into it, and finding it very good.

I recently reread "Yellowface" by R. F. Kuang, and before that, read "An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s" by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

The Tale of Prince Genji. Lady Purple.

[JBS]

The Tale of Prince Genji. Lady Purple.

I've never seen it described as a "sequence of novels" before.  I have Royall Tyler's translation but I don't think I've read more than a couple of chapters.
How is Waley as a translator? I have his translations of Chinese poetry, and read his version of Journey to the West as a teenager.  It's probably fair to say he was my introduction to Chinese literature.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I've never seen it described as a "sequence of novels" before.  I have Royall Tyler's translation but I don't think I've read more than a couple of chapters.
How is Waley as a translator? I have his translations of Chinese poetry, and read his version of Journey to the West as a teenager.  It's probably fair to say he was my introduction to Chinese literature.

Good morning. I'm reading a modern Japanese edition of Genji. I just pick the pic on the web because it's pretty and having an English title. I haven't read an English translation, but I heard that Seidensticker and Washburn are good and readers disagree as to which is better. Also, Tyler is probably better than Waley.


I like reading science and philosophy in English, but literature and history in Japanese- my primary language.

[KevinP]

[AnotherSpin]

The Wizard of the Kremlin by Giuliano da Empoli turned out to be a surprisingly fascinating read. I didn't expect it, but I was genuinely impressed by how deeply and accurately the author grasps Russian political and cultural realities. That level of insight is rare among Western writers, who more often than not skate over the surface without grasping the subtleties. But this book is different.

At its core, it's a fictionalised account of the career of Vladislav Surkov, who was widely seen as the mastermind behind the political theatre of the Putin era. The characters and events are closely based on reality: from Yeltsin's declining years to Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky, and of course, Putin.

What the novel captures particularly well is the world of Russian postmodernism, where politics becomes spectacle and truth gives way to calculated confusion. The main character, a former theatre student turned Kremlin strategist, applies his creative talents to shaping public perception. He deals not in policy but in myth-making, spinning abstract concepts into tools for mass manipulation.

There's also a romantic subplot, though it's more symbolic than emotional. The protagonist falls for the beautiful and ruthless Ksenia, a figure who clearly represents Russia itself: enigmatic, seductive, and ultimately unattainable. After losing her, he turns away from art and plunges into politics, first with Berezovsky, then as a close confidant of Putin. His path mirrors the country's descent from chaotic, quasi-democratic hopes into a system where power depends not on order, but on chaos and disorientation.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in Putin and the inner logic - if such a thing exists - behind his madness.

[Florestan]

Puțin is not an aberration of Russian history but its logical culmination. The best hope for Russia and the whole world is the restoration of a relatively moderate tsarist regime. For all their faults and crimes, no modern era tsar has ever achieved or aspired to the grim and bloody record of Lenin, Stalin and Putin. 

[Daverz]

Puțin is not an aberration of Russian history but its logical culmination. The best hope for Russia and the whole world is the restoration of a relatively moderate tsarist regime. For all their faults and crimes, no modern era tsar has ever achieved or aspired to the grim and bloody record of Lenin, Stalin and Putin. 

It wasn't for lack of trying.  The Tsars just did not have the resources that the later regimes had.  My own grandparents were lucky to get out of Kishinev before the pogroms there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kishinev_pogrom

They also fabricated The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 

[Florestan]

It wasn't for lack of trying.  The Tsars just did not have the resources that the later regimes had.  My own grandparents were lucky to get out of Kishinev before the pogroms there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kishinev_pogrom

They also fabricated The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 

With all due respect and deepest sympathy for the victims, there is no hint in that Wikipedia article that Nicholas II ordered, approved or was instantly aware of the pogrom.

Look, I don't claim that Tsarist Russia was any sort of liberal regime, let alone liberal democracy - - - just that it compares favourably with Putinist Russia.

If you ask me, the ideal political regime is Switzerland's.

[Daverz]

With all due respect and deepest sympathy for the victims, there is no hint in that Wikipedia article that Nicholas II ordered, approved or was instantly aware of the pogrom.

Ah, if Dear Father only know how we suffer he'd surely save us from the Cossacks. 

<narrator> The Cossacks in fact work for the Tsar.

I think I've heard this symphony before.

[Florestan]

<narrator> The Cossacks in fact work for the Tsar.

What other evidence is for that, except anecdotical?

Look, once again: I am no Tsarist apologist. In fact I'm a Russophobe. I just believe that Tsarist Russia was less of a menace to world's peace than Putinist Russia.

[AnotherSpin]

It wasn't for lack of trying.  The Tsars just did not have the resources that the later regimes had.  My own grandparents were lucky to get out of Kishinev before the pogroms there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kishinev_pogrom

They also fabricated The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 

Quite so. Putin models himself on Stalin, Stalin fancied himself a bit of an Ivan the Terrible or perhaps a Peter the Great. Trying to distinguish the "bad" and "not-so-bad" periods of Russian history is rather like attempting to find the healthy bits in a malignant tumour.

[Karl Henning]

Not actually reading it (yet?) but another library in the Minuteman Network is hosting a Zoom interview with Samuel Marquis, author of Captain Kidd: A True Story of Treasure and Betrayal. Tomorrow at 7PM.

[JBS]

With all due respect and deepest sympathy for the victims, there is no hint in that Wikipedia article that Nicholas II ordered, approved or was instantly aware of the pogrom.

Look, I don't claim that Tsarist Russia was any sort of liberal regime, let alone liberal democracy - - - just that it compares favourably with Putinist Russia.

If you ask me, the ideal political regime is Switzerland's.

There were roughly two decades worth of pogroms before Kishinev and at least in cultural history, they are associated with Cossacks more than regular peasants and townspeople. It might be a hangover from the massacres/pogroms which occurred in the Khmelnytsky Revolt during 1648-49. Traditional figures cited even in modern histories say at least 100,000 Jews were massacred, but current scholarship has revised that downward by about 90%. But Jewish cultural memory puts the Khmelnytsky Massacres as the most traumatic episode in Jewish history between the Spanish Expulsion and the Holocaust.

[AnotherSpin]

There were roughly two decades worth of pogroms before Kishinev and at least in cultural history, they are associated with Cossacks more than regular peasants and townspeople. It might be a hangover from the massacres/pogroms which occurred in the Khmelnytsky Revolt during 1648-49. Traditional figures cited even in modern histories say at least 100,000 Jews were massacred, but current scholarship has revised that downward by about 90%. But Jewish cultural memory puts the Khmelnytsky Massacres as the most traumatic episode in Jewish history between the Spanish Expulsion and the Holocaust.

The first pogrom in Odesa took place in June 1821, sparked by rumours that Jews had somehow desecrated the funeral of Patriarch Gregory V in Constantinople. A Greek mob (there was a large Greek community in Odesa prior to the Bolshevik revolution), joined by members of the local Russian-speaking population, attacked, looted shops and a synagogue, killed more than a dozen people, and injured many more.

Added: During the national liberation uprising led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky, between 10,000 and 20,000 Jews were killed, as they were associated with the Polish nobility and often held administrative and financial roles, which made them targets of hatred among the rebelling Cossacks and peasants. After Ukraine was incorporated into the Russian Empire, Jews were permitted to live within the boundaries of the Pale of Settlement, and the history of oppression of both Ukrainians and Jews by the imperial regime became closely intertwined. But not always. For example, during the Soviet era, in the time of the Holodomor, Jewish casualties were relatively low. Some researchers in Ukraine argue that certain Jews, serving as commissars and activists, bore responsibility for organizing that tragedy.

[ritter]

An interesting but absurdly timed exhibition on the author at the National Library here in Madrid (it opened last month to commentate the centennial of his birth...in 1923!  ) has led me to finally read Jorge Semprún's L'Écriture ou la vie ("Literature or Life"), which has been in my library since it was first published in 1994.



Semprún was one of the leading left-wing Spanish intellectuals of the 20th century. Born into a prominent upper-class family in Madrid (his maternal grandfather had been prime minister on several occasions), his family lived in exile after the fall of the Republic in 1939 (his father was the Spanish envoi to the Netherlands during the Civil War). Semprún studied and lived in France, and was deported to Germany for his participation in the French resistance (despite efforts by the ambassador of Franco's regime vis-à-vis the infamous Otto Abetz to free him). This book deals with his experience in Buchenwald but, as the English language Wikipedia puts it, "... the focus is on living with the memory of the experience and how to write about it. Semprún revisits scenes from previous works and gives rationales for his literary choices". It's considered one of his most accomplished works (originally written, as a good portion of his output, in French).

After WW2, Semprún became a staunch communist, and came often to Spain incognito to work for the underground party. He later became disenchanted, and was expelled from the Spanish Coomunist Party in 1963.

He was quite prominent as a writer of screenplays (for Alain Resnais and Costa Gavras), novels and memoirs, and in the late 80s became Minister of Culture for 3 years under Socialist PM Felipe González.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Notes of seven decades, Antal Doráti.