MY LIFE AND THOUGHTS

Thanks to Kaya Genç, who recently sent along Sam Leith’s review of Michael Moore’s new book, with the following note:

Look at the last sentence of the essay! That’s even stronger than ”douchebag“, right?

I think it is!

I quite enjoyed Leith’s review, which includes both bumf and a put-down of the Vietnam short-story in favor of Hegelianism:

Like a short-story writer (rather than, say, a left-wing historian), Moore sees history advancing through personal epiphanies and turning points. Nixon’s behaviour in Vietnam, for instance, acts on the nation like original sin: “We lost our moral compass with him and we’ve never gotten it back … Before Nixon there was so much hope. Since Nixon we have known only the Permanent War.”

When I checked out some more of Leith’s work, I was really pleased to learn yet another new word: wilfing. Desultory reader! may this not be how you reached these pages!

THE MAGIC OF LANGUAGE

A new gem in the series of spooky reader dreams, courtesy of Laura from Argentina(?):

I dreamt that my boyfriend was Anna Ioannovna’s sex slave.

Honi soit qui mal y pense!

A shout-out to Sabri Gürses, Turkish translator of The Possessed, who found some time during a translation conference at Tolstoy’s ancestral estate to take these beautiful pictures!

Volkonsky House, where I too spent many interesting hours…

…

WHAT’S THAT INTRIGUING OBJECT ON THE LAWN?

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Because of my great love of monuments, I was really touched to read about the Isaac Babel monument unveiled last week in Odessa.  It represents Babel seated on some steps, a moderate distance away from a large enigmatic wheel.

According to sculptor Georgii Frangulyan, the steps represent Babel’s front stoop, and also the famous Potemkin stairs.

The wheel represents the tachanka wheels in Red Cavalry, the wheels of Mendel Krik’s horse cart in the Odessa Stories, the wheel of fate, the Red Wheel, and the wheel of history that ran off the track and crushed the writer.

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Esteemed readers! I just returned to Istanbul yesterday, after some sorely needed downtime. The weather is beautiful, the three-inch-long locusts seem to have gone back wherever they came from, Ramadan is over, and I’m happy to be back!

If you’re also in Istanbul these days, please come to the super-cool SALT gallery this Wednesday, where I will be participating in a program called 90, consisting of “lectures, tours, and presentations seeking to answer questions about contemporary Istanbul.” I personally will be seeking to answer the important question of how Istanbul is shaped by football fanaticism.

In other news, I have a couple of short new publications out: a Talk of the Town item on 9/11, in this week’s New Yorker, and a blog post on Solzhenitsyn at Salon. Also, I don’t remember if I posted already this writerly musing about my workplace, but can anyone ever get enough about interior decoration?

There is also some nice news about The Possessed, which has not only been named a runner-up for a PEN/ Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award (for exemplifying the dignity and esteem of the essay form!), but was also recently longlisted for the Guardian First Book award.

Lastly, I’m honored to relate to Swiss and other readers that I will appear next month in Zurich’s Salongespräche series, which my publisher charmingly translated as “Saloon Talks,” and which I imagine going down like this:

OK compadres, that’s all for now… hope to see some of you soon!