Things I Liked and Didn’t Like This Week: Week 3
Last week we were too busy [checks notes] doing my job to write. We’re back though, and for some reason, we’re basically only talking about Russian Literature and Literature Adjacent To Russian Literature. So, uh, read on I guess.
A Gentleman in Moscow
Welcome to another edition of Ben’s Literary Hour.
A Gentleman in Moscow, written by Amor Towles (which is somehow not the name of a designer hand towel line), is an extraordinary novel.
Without spoiling too much of how the story flows together, it is the story of a man placed under house arrest in a Moscow hotel for over 30 years, between the late 1910s through the early 1950s. The most surprising part of the book is that it lacks any hint of claustrophobia. For a story told entirely within six or so floors of one building, it’s sprawling in scale. Unable to lean on an entire city as a setting, Towles expands his setting in other ways. The hotel is described in loving detail. The allure of telling yet another “a gilded cage is still a cage” story was ignored, and the novel is so much better for it.
The setting, unable to expand in space, expands in time. Towles is more interested in how time passes generally. The 30 years go slowly at first, then skips ahead quickly towards the end, an artistic touch that follows the way time is experienced. Despite being set in one of the most dynamic places in the world at one of the most dynamic times in human history, this book isn’t really historical fiction. The setting of the Russian Revolution is really just a background soundtrack for the story of a man learning how to age. And, being set in Russia, there is a never-ending list of characters and a commitment to parentheticals several pages long.
And that last note is where, if criticism can be made, there’s room to do so.
Russian literature is diverse, yes, but it is also something that you can clearly identify when you see it. I don’t remember which book it was in, but I remember reading a book about reading books where someone said that Hemingway would describe a face as “it was a pretty face,” but Tolstoy would have to describe it in several pages to make sure no small detail was left out. You can tell that Towles is aware of that. Maybe too aware of that.
I don’t think you need a huge background in Russian literature to tell that Towles is trying to affect its style rather than writing a book in his own authentic voice. All you need is a decent BS meter. It feels strained sometimes. Something about the way things flow just feels...off.
Which isn’t to say that the book suffers for it. At all. It is above all an extremely good read. It’s emotional, it’s enlightening, it makes you think. And yet, it feels more like watching a really good cover band than a really good musician.
(The flip side to this is that my criticism is a pretty elitist, bordering on noxious way to look at the book. Criticizing A Gentleman in Moscow for not reading exactly like Tolstoy is, after all, a not that hard to parse way to brag about reading Tolstoy. Most people haven’t and probably wouldn’t get the same feeling. And even if they did get that feeling and were inspired to go out and read some “real” Russian literature isn’t that for the best? Maybe some ruddy-faced man reading A Gentleman in Moscow in row 27 of his flight to a conference in Sarasota enjoyed it so much he read The Brothers Karamozov and then loved that so much he read Anna Karenina and on-and-on. Wouldn’t that be the best way to honor those authors?)
(The above is me, trying to write in a vaguely Russian style. See how it doesn’t read quite right? It’s still fine, but it’s just...not all there. That’s an extreme version of what A Gentleman In Moscow feels like.)
This line from Crime and Punishment
Yeah, I’m the guy that I described two paragraphs ago. The first thing I did after finishing A Gentleman in Moscow was to go out and buy a Dostoevsky book. After a long and serious deliberation process (texting my family and asking which Russian lit book isn’t 800,000,000 pages long), I landed on Crime and Punishment. At the time of publishing, I have about 150 pages to go, so please no spoilers.
Look at this paragraph from Fyodor.
Beyond just being one of the most vicious takedown paragraphs I have ever read, the last sentence has been rattling around in my head for the past week because I think it’s a really interesting bit of political criticism.
The idea that “however sincerely” you believe in a cause you can still “vulgarise” and “caricature” that cause from being some combination of vain, half-educated, or just dumb is kind of harrowing. It’s worth a bit of introspection to think if you’ve ever been guilty of giving your causes a bad name by how you support them. Or, more accurately, when you have done that because you have.
And if that’s not doing it for you, there are a handful of insanely tight insults you can use the next time you’re mad. Fyodor Dostoevsky: Service Journalist.
Once I actually finish this book, it will formally be included as a “Thing I Liked,” because it really is every bit as good as advertised. It’s surprisingly accessible given its plot, too.
Veronica Burton and Northwestern Women’s Basketball
Veronica Burton can stuff a basketball down my esophagus, this team rocks ass and I wish I had a free weekend to get to Welsh Ryan to see them. Fortunately, they’re going to host two NCAA Tournament games, so I can make my trek up to Evanston then.
