My Life and Thoughts

Arghh, dear readers—I can’t keep up with you guys! I did finally reply to the comments. But I keep receiving such amazing additions to the beard bibliography! All Russian readers with an interest in beard semiotics to consult Gregory Freidin’s 1993 article about his own beard, in the context of Gogol’s Overcoat, and the larger question of cultures and subcultures in Russia during the late ’80s and early ’90s (“Dve shineli, ili anekdot s borodoi,” Znamia 2 (1993)). The footnotes alone include many promising additions to the field of beardobibliography… I will mention here only A. D. Leach’s “Magical Hair (Curl Bequest Prize Essay, 1957),” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 80.2 (1958).

“My beard is a part of nature—and yet, it is also a sign,” writes Freidin, who grew a beard at the end of the ’60s, with the intention of embracing a Bohemian subculture. But there remained the problem of all the famous non-subcultural beards, like those of Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, Engels, Marx, the Academician Timiryazev, and nearly all the "classic" Russian writers. (“On the symbolic map crossed by the demarcation line between Russian and Soviet literature, the surname Tolstoy was an invariant sign, while the beard was a sign of differentiation”: Alexei Tolstoy has a zero-value beard, but Lev Tolstoy has a “beard approaching infinity.”)

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Today I would like to salute some of the diverse and accomplished commenters to My Life and Thoughts, for example Michelle of The Maltese Bacon (a recipe blog—check out this beautiful tomato confit); as well as Gregory Freidin of the Stanford Slavic department (who, in his latest blog entry, shrewdly observes that, even if you live in Gori, you probably don’t hang your portrait of George W. Bush over a sliding glass door). 

In this recent, admirably concise comment, Freidin expresses solidarity with my father on the subject of creeping desecularization. Those of you who were disappointed by the Times’s decision not to air my father’s thoughts about creeping desecularization will be relieved to learn that they did publish the very next letter he wrote them, the following week.  This letter was in response to “My Literary Malady,” in which novelist Geoff Nicholson mulls over his recent gout diagnosis.  

James Gillray, The GOUT (1799)

But I would like to pause here to share with you my all-time favorite gout anecdote…

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Dear readers, thank you for your kind and interesting comments about Gremlins, and please forgive my boorish silence, which does not reflect any lack of enthusiasm on my part vis-a-vis the firsthand Gremlin stories of all your pilot friends and relatives.  

My boorish silence does, however, reflect that I recently adopted a “desocialized” kitten (the San Francisco SPCA is having a month-long special on kittens).  So I spent pretty much all week socializing this kitten:

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This story begins last Friday, when I went to the Stanford library to check out some books about the Musin-Pushkin family.  (I think I might write a novel about someone who is obsessed with the Musin-Pushkins.)  And let me tell you, it took a long time to round up all those books.  My webmaster can confirm this since he was waiting for me outside, drinking espressos and getting really bored. 

Then when I finally got to the check-out desk, I got stuck behind a crazy old lady in a bright red Chanel suit and matching lipstick, who not only checked out like a million books but also prolonged the transaction with a 10-minute commentary about how she will only read books whose call numbers start with PR, because they “come from the Commonwealth.”  “Forbearance,” I counseled myself: “Someday you, too, may be a crazy old lady who is obsessed with call numbers.”

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As I was scrolling through headlines about the Istanbul bombing, I came across one potentially less depressing Turkish news item, from Sabah: “Mental Patient Beats Doctor in Elevator for Six Floors.” Tor the first time in ages, I found myself thinking of Grey’s Anatomy, a show I used to watch while I was supposed to be writing my dissertation. Grey’s Anatomy is so famous for its use of elevators that, even in the homeland of Genette, young girls are making video montages about it: in the words of Youtube user piluka6: “all happens in that elevator!”

The elevator in Grey’s Anatomy functions much like the inn in Part I of Don Quijote: all plot problems are resolved by dumping the relevant characters in there and letting them sort it out. The characters themselves openly acknowledge this formal property of the elevator, in metatextual remarks such as: “I don’t want any drama today, I’m taking the stairs”; or (meaningfully): “Anything can happen in the elevator.” This is an example of what Viktor Shklovsky called “laying bare the device,” and it always struck me as rather daring because, when you take a cold hard look at the formal narrative possibilities afforded by the device of the hospital elevator, “inexhaustible” isn’t the first word that comes to mind.

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