Théo d'Or ’s Reviews > A Gentleman in Moscow > Status Update

I'm beginning to grasp the towlesian secret. In real life, we don't always understand things as they happen. We look back later, and realize why something mattered, we see how small choices led to big changes.
Towles captures that feeling perfectly.

Ah, Sofia - about playing Rachmaninov, at Palais Garnier ....Is she ready ? The Count would say - readiness is not a matter of certainty. It is a matter of courage.. But what if she falters ? Then, the Count would say " then falter with grace. " A gentleman will always have the right answer..

Chapter 22.

In which Sofia reminds Count Rostov that children don't need much to be happy. Just a song, a story. ... Somewhere along the way , he forgot that. Or he didn't forget, just got busy surviving. So sad...we all try to survive, waking up to alarms, not sunrises. We scroll before we breathe... Living is different. Children know this instinctively. They don't need a reason to be happy. Let's be kids

I still wonder how anyone could rate this book negatively. Then again , it's certainly easier to play with the " like " button, than to try to delve into something your level doesn't allow you to grasp.. In a world where scrolling has replaced thinking, maybe is no surprise that reflection isn't actually just out of fashion, but it's simply beyond the cognitive resource of the average scroll-conditioned mind.

" By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration ".

So true. Just experienced that.

" There is a difference between being resigned to a situation, and reconciled to it. "

Indeed. Resignation is the truth you hate. Reconciliation is the lie you frame. Resignation is the moment you see the world clearly. Reconciliation is the moment you decide clarity is too expensive.

In a world imagined by Amor Towles, serial-likers would likely be sent to the Metropol not for dissent, but for excessive digital enthusiasm - condemned to press the like button on blank pages, under the watchful eye of a Bolshevik refined in his own way, with literary taste and a deep aversion to emojis. And all of it, of course, set to the wistful soundtrack of As Like Goes Bye.

The Count : " Are you quite certain you're not a Bolshevik ? "

Nina : " I'm nine ".

Innocence is the last place where the world is still whole.

Can a man honor a vanished world without becoming a stranger to the one that remains ?

" To what end had the Divine created the stars in heaven to fill a man with feelings of inspiration one day, and insignificance the next ? "

There's quite a stoicism in this reflection, which also touches on theodicy - ( ugh.... involuntary connection.. ) - the question of divine intention. If the Divine created such beauty, why burden in it the seeds of existential turmoil ?