My Life and Thoughts

Democratic readers!  Thanks to all who voted in the epic Google/ Gogol pun contest, which, due to technical problems, raged on for a full week longer than I had intended (sorry, Bibliomosquito).  But the results are finally in: Gogol documents (Kate Romatowski) came in first with 54 votes, just one vote ahead of Gogol maps (Peli Grietzer); Gogolplex (Isabel Brown) placed in a respectable, Nader-like third, with 15 votes.  In recognition of the very close outcome, book prizes will be sent to both Kate and Peli, and I salute all three finalists for their hard work and ingenuity!

I’m just back in San Francisco from a particularly strenuous trip to the East Coast, where I attended, among other more-or-less Dostoevskian social functions, a twelve-hour Italian-language performance of The Demons on Governor’s Island.  I urge you all to check out the riveting minute-by-minute account, “My Twelve-Hour Blind Date, With Dostoevsky,” on the Paris Review blog.

Forthright readers!  I’m not going to sit here and tell you all that those twelve hours (actually fifteen hours, if you count transit time) were one unmitigated whirlwind of delight, because they weren’t.  Nonetheless, perhaps Dostoevsky put it best when he wrote the epigraph to The Brothers Karamazov: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24).  By which I mean to say that, even though something in me died during that performance, slowly, over the course of 12-15 hours, my cultural martyrdom did subsequently yield several non-negligible benefits, three of which I would like to share with you today.

1.  My fellow-sufferer Paul Roossin (the one who observed that the fat man had no decorum) sent along a really great photograph of The Possessed in an exotic location:

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Valued readers!  I am just back from a visit to our nation’s publishing capital, where I had a fabulous time representing Tolstoy at the Strand.  In one week I managed to see three rats, and also to purchase and lose two umbrellas.  Satisfying as these canonical New York experiences were, I’m still really happy to be back in San Francisco and reunited with my loyal intern, who has spent the past month crashing with my webmaster—I believe, mostly eating cold pizza and occasionally helping out with some coding.

I will be making a brief trip to Seattle next week.  If you happen to be in Seattle, or perhaps embedded in the floor of the Puget Sound, living the long, slow, decadent life with my new role model, the geoduck clam, I warmly encourage you and your friends to stop by the University Bookstore, where I will be reading this upcoming Monday.

I’m also happy to report that, as my poor body shuttles between SF and Seattle, my book is apparently having a great time in Sydney and Stockholm.  Thanks to Mike Wong for these beautiful pictures of The Possessed enjoying a view of the Sydney Harbor Bridge (left), and then unwinding at high tea with Wong’s mother and great-aunt (right; the tea pictured is Russian Caravan blend).

A shout-out is also due to Nancy Miller who sent the following beautiful images from Stockholm, which show The Possessed teetering perilously between a municipal garbage can (left) and what looks like the Stockholm City Hall, where they hold the Nobel Prize banquets (right)… a poignant metaphor for the uncertain destiny of all literary production.

Dear readers!  I am just back from Tel Aviv, where I went to interview some important world literary-historical cats.  They are literally sitting on some invaluable manuscripts!  Neither they nor their caretakers (the daughters of Max Brod’s late secretary) have been especially forthcoming to the press.  But that didn’t stop me and my colleague Avi Steinberg from creepily lurking around their front yard for like an hour.

Because I am a professional and think of everything, I had an artificial mouse in my pocket, with which I was able to attract the attention of one of the archival interns:

Although this “opening gambit” of the mouse enjoyed a certain self-contained success, it failed to spark the lively debate I had been anticipating about the legal and cultural battle surrounding Kafka’s legacy. Rather, the intern seemed somehow unable to move beyond what one might call the pourparlers, so that really all I learned from our encounter was his position on artificial mice.  (pro)

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