MY LIFE AND THOUGHTS

Busy readers!  This is just a quick dispatch from Kars, where I am hanging out with some very admirable conservationists. Because of my increased appreciation for biodiversity, I was really happy to learn that the audience of The Possessed has spread from Labradoodles to Goldendoodles.

This is Honeysuckle, from Nashville, TN:

Thanks to Marie for the beautiful picture!

Having, in a recent post, expressed some concern regarding the global Possessed-to-Labradoodle ratio, I was thrilled to receive the following images of Boswell, Adelaide-based Labradoodle:

A big thanks to James for the moving and inspirational pictures – which, to be totally honest, filled me not only with delight at my widening empire, but also with an inexplicable melancholy.  I so much wished I had a Labradoodle called Boswell!  I think I just really miss my intern, who has been on the other side of the planet for several months now, holding down the US side of business…

Speaking of business, latest 5-star review is up here.

This one goes out to contemporary Canadian nonfiction writer Tom Jokinen, from whom I recently received the following word-picture of The Possessed in an exotic location:

In Grange Park, Toronto. Arctic snap over. Trees pushing green. Labradoodle to small dog ratio about even. Old Chinese couple with styrofoam cooler in a bundle buggy because they bought fish. Young Indian gentleman carrying a tuba. Hipsters with oversized headphones. Didn’t know this was a thing. Man in tweed reading The Possessed. Thought you should know.

I was so happy to hear this, although not as happy as I will be the day the Labradoodle-to-Possessed ratio finally reaches parity.  Still, big thanks to the man in tweed, for doing his part!

Jokinen, whom I had the privilege of meeting in an elevator in Melbourne, is the author of the fascinating and creepy Curtains: Adventures of an Undertaker-in-Training, which I am currently reading as part of an intensive program of Gothic research. I think it is a great public service for a super-smart, funny, and talented writer to spend a year examining what actually happens to dead people in our culture, what befalls their mustaches and teeth, how and under whose stewardship they get in and out of their clothes.

Frequently, while reading Curtains, I am brought to mind of a conversation between Osip Mandelstam and Isaac Babel, regarding Babel’s persistent socializing with members of the Soviet secret police:

Was it a desire to see what it was like in the exclusive store where the merchandise was death? Did he just want to touch it with his fingers? “No,” Babel replied. “I don’t want to touch it with my fingers—I just want to have a sniff and see what it smells like.” (From Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope)

I may add that Curtains looked really great the other day against the view from my bedroom window (the forest near the Black Sea), back when it was actually sunny and people thought spring had finally reached Istanbul.

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Today the skies are again Kindle-gray…

Which would you rather be – endemoniado or poseído? I saw both of these Spanish covers on separate occasions, before I knew which was being used.

I am so happy and excited to share with you the result…

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Immanent readers!  I address you now, free of worldly belongings, untethered to worldly concerns, divested of my bed and other housewares, separated indefinitely from my loyal intern…

I was really happy to spend part of these disembodied days making a tour of some of the East Coast’s most venerable educational institutions.  A huge thanks to Carlo Rotella at Boston College, Natalie Rouland and Tom Hodge at Wellesley, and Cris Martin and Svetlana Boym at Harvard, among the many others who made this possible.

Special thanks are also due to undergraduates Madeleine Schwartz, who invited me to the Harvard Advocate, and Alexandra Dennett, who brought me to Yale’s Saint Anthony Hall. Ms. Dennett and a classmate can be seen below reading The Possessed on the shores of Lake Lagoda Ladoga:

The two friends were on a Russian summer study program together and didn’t realize they were both reading my book until they happened to sit down at the beach that afternoon!

Because I love pictures of girls gone wild for Russian literature, I was also very happy to receive the following from Amy Knowles (a calculus teacher in North Carolina), who appears below with her friend Shannon at the time of their college graduation. Amy had just written a thesis on Andrei Bolkonsky; Shannon had written about The Brothers Karamazov.

Ladies, I salute you!