![]() She's also good at fitting writers' autobiographies into a wider context of how life reflects art. Her experience of Russian funerals and unsuitable Russian men. How as a teenager she tried to emulate the long lashes of Tolstoy's Anna with an ill-deployed eyelash curler. (This led to the romantic assumption that her own name was Russian). ![]() How, growing up, she found kinship with Russian characters because their names were difficult to say, as she believed hers to be. Since people first found War and Peace too cumbersome (ie immediately) there have been elegant pocket books which sought to cull the "wisdom" from it – assuming that a book is a divisible unit, and that its wisdom can flourish outside its intended medium.īut the wisest and most engaging parts of The Anna Karenina Fix are culled from the author's own life in relation to the texts. Leo Tolstoy in particular has a history of being filleted for wisdom. From specific works by Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoevsky et al she has filleted “clues left in these great classics” to living a good life, and matched incident to her own personal experience. ![]() Groskop, no idiot but someone who has lived in Russia, studied and loved Russian literature, believes that enjoying these classics shouldn’t require an immersion in the historical context or knowledge of the “best” translation. “For too long it has belonged to very clever people who want to keep it to themselves.” “Russian literature deserves more love letters written by total idiots,” says stand-up comedian and journalist Viv Groskop near the beginning of her new book, which is part literary primer, part memoir, part self-help manual.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |