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Furthermore, the details about the ghosts remaining afar because they are trying to shorten the distance to the children was really really well done and I thought totally novel.

To be fair, chapter XII is quite a little chapter. The sanity of the children’s teacher gradually comes into question in the reader’s mind and the tension is really raised in a well done piece of writing for sure.

Call them cut-away clauses.

Half this damn book is tiny dependent clauses and asides! How can someone seriously read this? Half of what’s written serve no purpose whatsoever!

A quote regarding the above “Under the influence of various vague emotions, the sense of life passing by, the desire of novelty, she had forced herself to go up to a certain point, forced herself to look behind herself, and had seen behind her not even an abyss, but what was empty… or revolting.”

Mmm interesting… the conversation continues between Bazarov and Madame Odintsov in Ch. XVIII. Bazarov is seized by passion and reveals his love. However, what I believed was tender feeling from both was actually a coldness from the latter.

The subtlety of chapter XVII is so well done. The interview between Bazarov and Anna Sergyevna in her room is so layered, perfectly stylized, intense, and lovely and well done! It reminds me of the scene in middlemarch where Reverend Farebrother implies Mary Garth should wait for Fred Vincy rather than choose him.

“It is often extra affectionate to leave people you care about alone. Anyone who has ever walked into a lamppost knows that all speeds above nought miles per hour are really pretty fast, thanks.”

Taken a while to build interest but I think it’s there now. I like how the book doesn’t try to hide its concept, in fact it hits you over the head with it: time, time, time! Would be interesting to read this book alongside Peter Hankes “The Goalies Anxiety at the Penalty Kick.” If I remember right they both deal with similar concepts.

King Lear of the Steppes - 4/5

The song of Triumphant Love - 3/5 - notable for its elements of weird horror.

First Love - 4/5 - I know one must separate the art from the artist, but Tergenev may have had a thing for neurotic women. "I would climb up on the high wall, sit down and remain seated there, such a picture of unhappy, lonely and melancholy youth that I'd even begin feeling pity for myself- and those sensations of misery were such a delight to me, I reveled in them so." Here is a buffoon that is not superfluous.

Its that telling gestures - so subtly done by Turgenev - that seems to add so much to both romance as a genre and perhaps to Russian fiction of this era as a whole.

Asya - 3.5/5 - Bittersweet story of the flighty love of a young Russian girl abroad in Germany. The character of Asya is done well as a lovable neurotic; and one sympathizes with the narrator for having a moments hesitation so harshly punished. "She wanted [...] to make the whole world forget her origins. She was both ashamed of her mother and ashamed of her shame - and yet she was proud of her too."

Mumu - 2/5 - A deeply felt anti-serfism story about a giant, loveable, mentally challenged serf named Gerasim and his dog Mumu. Written well and with a strong sense of place. But why doesn't he just take the dog with him when he goes back to his hometown?

Comment has to be made upon that odious character "the landlady." I appreciate reading old novels: they seem to be uninhibited in their placement of evil.

The Diary of a Superfluous Man - 3/5 - There are points to recommend it. Not least the naming of that great Russian character type. An important insight is given by Tergenev "It was only after I had been expelled from the Ozhogin's house that I finally realized how much pleasure a man can take in being aware of his own misfortune." Russia is really the perfector of schadenfreude. There are so many layers of it here.

Why does it feel like I’m reading Morrissey’s journal?

I liked the "What is a Human" chapter until the very last line by George Bernard Shaw "Life is not about finding ourselves, its about creating ourselves." Sure there is some aspect of this, life would be tragic without the aspect of self creation. But for the books purposes I think it would have been better to highlight the static and permanent aspects in a human (which I staunchly insist is deep and abiding surely)

So far it’s the atmosphere and imagination that’s saving it. The writing is take or leave.

1.) Penn Warren's penchant to extend an image over paragraphs and use an initial metaphor as a wellspring for others. Example. A room as greasy and then later on, the candle looked fed by the grease. A scene like a play backdrop then, after a few paragraphs, characterize a noise as 'somewhere offstage,'

2.) The slow intro of Adam Stanton over 200 pages before his role becomes clear is really, really something.

Like the concept but when is he going to say anything about mid-century modern or brutalist buildings. One cannot just write off all modern styles with a criticism of Le Corbusie and not have to then deal with them. I like Italian architecture as much as the next guy but I also like midcentury modern as well! He's never said anything about his work being applicable to modern styles.

Stylistically, it’s like a bunch of different devices, tenses, moods, symbols, and other crap thrown together without any care or foresight hoping something sticks.

I appreciate how much care Roth seems to have for his characters. In the actual sense that he really cherishes them and loves them. Which itself is an interesting stylistic phenomenon that I haven't noticed before. Ultimately though, the style is wordy and most of it seems to be fluff. I'm going to continue reading but I'm frustrated by a lot of the uselessness of the prose.

Three things:
1.) fitting I buy this book at the Harvard Square bookstore.
2.) It’s useful to originate the MAGA phenomenon in the 1960, but it’s far from accurate. And, relatedly
3.) Through the introduction there is much of the usual talk: centering female/bipoc experience, problematizing the family, framing native climate experiences but not a damn word given to deindustrialization. Typical

Strangest and shadiest introduction to an edition I’ve ever read. It’s just the editor launching a polemic at another Chesterton fan - and rather spitefully I must add… very strange.

Incredible the amount at which racial navel-gazing gets mistaken for an interesting plot.

Was worried for a second Nikolai and Princess Mary’s weren’t going to get together. Tolstoy teases us for a couple chapters in the epilogue.

Finally entering the epilogue. It's been very good but it lost some steam in the second half and the journalistic endeavors Tolstoy attempts are good but incongruent with the work it seems to me. Finally, the character of Pierre... Gosh I don't know. Tolstoy also too often uses the phrase 'looked the same but everything had changed.' That phrase comes up way too much for a writer with such psychological depth.

These strange journalistic endeavors into the maneuvers of the Russian and French militaries in 1812 seem out of place - I much more care about the Rostovs and Pierre! But the 'great man' theory hate is well taken. The quote 'Napoleon - that most insignificant tool of history who never anywhere, even in exile showed human dignity - Napoleon is the object of adulation' Could similarly be used for many tech savior.

On par with Wright’s Falling Water or The Sistine Chapel in terms of artistic achievement. So forcefully and brutally good it needs new categories created to talk about it.

These people think I’ll be shocked by the power-knowledge binary as if I haven’t read Foucault.