Wednesday poem

In loving memory of my father (9.11.1958 - 6.15.2012) and my grandfather (2.07.1934 - 12.11.2012).

The dead are always looking down on us, they say,
while we are putting on our shoes, or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.

They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down on a couch or in a field,
drugged, perhaps, by the hum of a long afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them

which makes them lift their oars, and fall silent,
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.

Billy Collins

Pruning the classics

Here in the US, Russian writers seem to hold an undisputed pedestal among the ranks of world literary giants. But students in Russia would apparently beg to differ.  As experts in the country compile a list of the top 100 books that they consider required reading, the magazine Bolshoi Gorod ran an article where it polled 600 upperclassmen about their most unloved works of Russian literature. Stunned by the results--and by the audacity of the responses--I decided to post the poll's findings and translate the more memorable things that Russian students had to say about their supposed literary heroes.

Top Russian writers that students would exclude from the reading program


1. Leo Tolstoy

Main works: War and Peace; Anna Karenina; The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

"They should exclude Leo Tolstoy with his novel War and Peace. His chauvinistic views are a serious cause for concern. The novel is simply saturated with condescension towards women. And the saddest part is that Tolstoy portrays it as the right attitude to have: like, yeah, I'm a patriarchal bore, but such is life, and women's fates are already determined."

"I would take out Leo Tolstoy because I didn't read his novel War and Peace, and reading it was really important in order to write a good essay on the Russian-language section of the EGE [Russian equivalent to the SAT]. No novel, no problem."

"I would gladly take out L.N. Tolstoy and all writers like him from the school program. It's like he did it on purpose: sat down and wrote a thousand pages just for his own pleasure, and for the pain of millions of today's students."


2. Fyodor Dostoevsky

Main works: Crime and Punishment; The Brothers Karamazov; Demons; The Idiot.

"They need to take out the dreary Dostoevsky, because he's a completely unintelligible schizophrenic."

"I would exclude Dostoevsky, because he's depressive, maniacal and absolutely awful. When you're a teenager and everything already kind of sucks, and you get Dostoevsky in your reading program, it makes life miserable beyond belief."

"As wrong as this may sound, I would exclude Dostoevsky. I think his works are too heavy. People have to find their way to them on their own."


3. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Main works: The Gulag Archipelago; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; The Cancer Ward.

"I'm voting to exclude Solzhenitsyn--he's a blue-collar writer, not an artist."

"He's whiny, tedious and boring. It's like he's asking people to feel sorry for him."

"I suggest we exclude Solzhenitsyn. He doesn't add any literary or artistic value. It's bad for you to read so many lies, especially when they're presented in such crude language."


4. Mikhail Sholokhov

Main works: And Quiet Flows the Don; The Fate of a Man.

"Reading Sholokhov is impossible."

"Sholokhov should be excluded. I can't think of a single person who managed to get through him. And Cossaks aren't Russians, so it's not interesting to read about them."

"They should take out Sholokhov. I really don't think his works have any artistic value, and his Nobel prize should have gone to Bulgakov."


5. Alexander Pushkin

Main works: Eugene Onegin; Boris Godunov; pretty much all of Russia's most famous poems, fairy tales and plays.

"After 11 years of schooling, everybody's had it with Pushkin. They should cut him down by about a factor of three. After such intensive studying, you don't even want to hold one of his books in your hands."

"Take out A.S. Pushkin. His works are considered classics of Russian literature because he wrote badly when those before him wrote even worse."

"Take Pushkin out of the program. His works no longer make sense to most representatives of contemporary youth."


6. Nikolai Gogol

 Main works: Dead Souls; The Government Inspector; "The Overcoat;" "The Nose."

"Dead Souls is like personal torture."

"The program should get rid of Gogol, because he despises Jews."

"Gogol. His delivery is too particular. Teachers who follow the syllabus and stick to the standards of teaching are like death for Gogol. And he didn't die in order to have to repeat himself every time."

______________________________________________________

For those not familiar with Russian literature, this list just about covered the country's most well-known writers. On the other hand, the students listed great Russian writers whom they would include in the reading program instead. These include the sci-fi Strugatsky brothers, along with Vladimir Nabokov and Sergei Dovlatov--with the first being prominent Soviet-era dissidents, and the latter two emigrating from the Soviet Union altogether. Among foreign writers, Russian students preferred Dante, Ayn Rand, Chuck Palahniuk, Roberto Coelho, James Joyce and... J.K. Rowling. I guess some things are the same, no matter what country you're in.

Story time: David Sedaris reads Miranda July

One of my favorite podcasts is The New Yorker Fiction Podcast, a monthly gem in which a well-known writer reads a short piece by another, often lesser-known writer. In this month’s fiction podcast, David Sedaris reads “Roy Spivey,” by the writer and filmmaker Miranda July. You may have seen her in the film she wrote and starred in, "You and Me and Everyone we Know," or the more recent "The Future." She's also published multiple short story collections, produced music videos and staged performances, and curated exhibits of her own work at  the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim. She even designed a set of pillowcases. And all this from someone who dropped out of college her sophomore year. Most people either worship or hate her, but the latter, as Sedaris says, are probably just jealous.

Miranda July: writer, filmmaker, performance artist.

I listened to this story during a leafy walk home from the grocery store. It made me smile to myself, causing passersby to give me curious looks. To quote the podcast website, "the story, which appeared in the The New Yorker in 2007, is about a young woman’s encounter with a famous actor aboard an airplane and the reverberations of their exchange throughout her life."

He slept for the first hour, and it was startling to see such a famous face look so vulnerable and empty. He had the window seat and I had the aisle, but I felt as though I were watching over him, protecting him from the bright lights and the paparazzi. Sleep, little spy, sleep. He was actually not little, but we're all children when we sleep. For this reason, I always let men see me asleep early on in the relationship. It makes them realize that even though I am 5 feet 11, I am fragile and need to be taken care of. A man who can see the weakness of a giant knows that he is a man indeed...

 This story is wonderfully written and wonderfully read. A meeting through words of two great contemporary American writers. Take a listen.