Arthur Fuller
fuller.artful at gmail.com
Sat Sep 19 18:09:41 CDT 2009
Shamil, Russian novelists have nothing to apologize for. IMO they rank among the greatest ever born. The only real issue in Russian lit (I didn't actually take a course from Nabokov when he taught at Cornell, but my then-girlfriend did, and she gave me all her notes to read. Nabokov and I see Russian novels from completely opposite perspectives. That's cool. I like opposing views, they stimulate discussion! Nabokov preferred Tolstoy, I preferred Dostoevsky. We both loved Gogol, a commonality among major other differences. Nabokov believed that every single detail within a scene was crucial. My GF once faced an exam from him, containing a single question, which I cannot quote, but it went approximately like this: when Count Vronski said xxx, what colour were the walls in the room? Whereas my exam question might have been, was Raskalnikov crazy, and if so why, and if not why not? Or going further back to Gogol, was it crazy or mere opportunism to sell dead souls? A strange perspective: Russia as the birth of capitalist oppression. LOL. Anyway, Shamil, I would be most interested in your take on "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home." I deem it a truly great work, and I made it through without reference to the notes, although I admit that it took me a couple of days to work it out. Meanwhile, I'm back to trying to resolve Fermi's Last Theorem. It's tough! A. On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 6:51 PM, Shamil Salakhetdinov < shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru> wrote: > 2B || !2B ? > > -- > Shamil > > P.S. FYI: In Russia eternal questions are: "Who is guilty?" and "What to > do?" with "Who is guilty?" one taking 99% of the time to "chat about" for > ages now... > >