The Failed Academic Who Became a War Propagandist: A Minor Character in Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina"

A Russian soldier laughing at an Ottoman Turk. Before being pitted against each other in WWI, bad blood between Russia and Turkey dated back to the 16th century. source

All quotes are from Book 8 of Constance Garnett's translation of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina on Project Gutenberg. Go read Book 8, Chapter 1, and then return to this page. The character on whom this article focuses is Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev, the half-brother of Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin, at whose estate Sergey Ivanovitch will later in the Book spend some time and from which more quotations will be drawn.

So Sergey Ivanovitch spent years writing a book which he expected "would be sure to make a serious impression on society, and if it did not cause a revolution in social science it would, at any rate, make a great stir in the scientific world." Instead, after indifference and a devastatingly effective hostile review, "Sergey Ivanovitch saw that his six years’ task, toiled at with such love and labor, had gone, leaving no trace."

Sergy Ivanovitch turned his talents and energies into mobilizing Russian support for Slavic peoples revolting against the Ottoman Empire, in particular, the Serbs and Montenegrins.

Recommendation: "Minor Detail" by Adania Shibli

 

The incident took place on a morning that would coincide, exactly a quarter of a century later, with the morning of my birth. Of course, this may seem like pure narcissism, the fact that what drew me to the incident, what made it begin haunting me, was the presence of a detail that is really quite minor when compared to the incident's major details, which can only be described as tragic. It's completely plausible, though, for this type of narcissism to exist in someone. It's an innate tendency, one might say, toward a belief in the uniqueness of the self, toward regarding the life one leads so highly that one cannot but love life and everything about it. [p. 58]

In 2021, the One Book, Many Communities project of Librarians and Archivists with Palestine selected Minor Detail by Adania Shibli and translated by Elisabeth Jacquette.

Don't stop talking about Palestine.

Excerpt from "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison for Banned Books Week 2022

Quotes from Mary Shelley's "The Last Man"

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) is most famous for Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus. A friend suggested her 1826 novel The Last Man was especially poignant during the COVID-19 pandemic.

If you can ignore the Victorian-era obsession with facial characteristics and the casual assumptions of European, in particular British, superiority to the rest of the world, the novel does have some excellent, thought-provoking passages.

Quotations are lifted from the Romantic Circles website page on the novel. The narrator is Lionel Varney, the sole survivor of a plague and its resulting chaos. I've added my thoughts in bold.

Favorite Quotes: Günter Grass, "The Tin Drum"

Günter Grass received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999, and his most famous book is Die Blechtrommel, translated into English as The Tin Drum. The June 4, 2007 New Yorker published his account of his participation as a teenager in the German Nazi war effort. Because he had not disclosed these matters publicly, despite his reputation as a critic of post-war Germany's attempts to forget its fascism and its crimes and their popularity, he received much criticism.

I read the 1961 Ralph Manheim translation, but some of these quotes are from the Breon Mitchell 2009 translation. Click to enlarge images.

Favorite Quote: F Scott Fitzgerald, "The Last Tycoon" - "learned tolerance, kindness, forebearance, and even affection like lessons"

F. Scott Fitzgerald never finished the novel The Last Tycoon. Elia Kazan directed a 1976 movie based on the novel. Amazon produced one season of a series based on the novel.

From p. 97, a description of  "Hollywood studio manager Monroe Stahr, clearly based on Irving Thalberg (head of the film company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), whom Fitzgerald had encountered several times." (Wikipedia)

Like many brilliant men, he had grown up dead cold. Beginning at about twelve, probably, with the total rejection common to those of extraordinary mental powers, the "See here: this is all wrong -- a mess -- all a lie -- and a sham --," he swept it all away, everything, as men of his type do; and then instead of being a son-of-a-bitch as most of them are, he looked around at the barrenness that was left and said to himself, "This will never do." And so he had learned tolerance, kindness, forebearance, and even affection like lessons. (emphasis in original)

Review: The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud

Kamel Daoud's novel was originally published in French under the tile Meurault, contre-enquête in 2013 in Algeria. John Cullen's English translation is entitled The Meursault Investigation, and it was published in 2015. There is also an Arabic translation under the title معارضة الغريب.

By no means should this blog entry be considered a genuine review. Nevertheless, I hope some of my thoughts after reading Albert Camus's L'etranger (English title The Stranger), excerpts of Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism and Kamel Daoud's recent novel will be useful.

This does contain a few spoilers.

1. I don't think it's useful to read The Meursault Investigation without having first read The Stranger. Kamel Daoud denies that his novel is a response to Albert Camus, and I actually buy that. It's just that there's too much meta going on in Kamel Daoud's novel which a reader who hadn't read The Stranger would miss.

Quotes from Ralph Ellison's "The Invisible Man"

Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man is the best English language novel I've read, IMO. How I've considered myself well-read this long without having read it is to my shame. I consider it a decolonization novel for black people of the United States (and hence for all other marginalized groups here). The unnamed narrator goes through a Ulysses-like odyssey in search of personal power and individual and collective liberation, growing and learning through each betrayal and cul-de-sac.

Review: Muslim Women Writers of the Subcontinent (1870-1950) by Munazza Yaqoob & Sofia Hussain

Review: The neglected history https://t.co/83HUQNFt2D pic.twitter.com/Onz3VUV7aF

— The Express Tribune (@etribune) July 9, 2016

Use worldcat.org to find the book in a library near you.

I have not read the book.

Favorite Quotes - Sinclair Lewis, "It Can't Happen Here"

Harold Finch from CBS's "Person of Interest"
reading It Can't Happen Here

The first Sinclair Lewis novel I read (heard on CDs, actually) was Dodsworth. Some satirical passages were entertaining, but I never felt like I learned/felt/thought anything profound. Frederic Rich's Christian Nation quoted from Lewis's book It Can't Happen Here, so I decided to read it. Overall, it's a vigorous defense of Liberalism from Fascism and Communism, yet it does allow room for criticism of Liberalism. I'm excerpting some lengthy passages from the book, the text of which is available for free online. I've prefaced each passage with a header. So just like al-Imam al-Bukhari, my thoughts are in the headings and the passages I've chosen to excerpt.

The University of California system produced a reading guide which looks really interesting. Also, Donald Trump's campaign has sparked new interest in the novel.

For more thoughts on fascism, read Umberto Eco's essay on Ur-Fascism. Also, check out my other blog entries tagged fascism.

Review: An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine

Wrote a feminist novel! http://t.co/434qwffhFH
— Rabih Alameddine (@rabihalameddine) November 15, 2014

Julie Kearney wrote a review of An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine

Rosecrans Baldwin also did a review for NPR.

Read our interview w/ @rabihalameddine, whose novel, An Unnecessary Woman, is on shortlist for the Nat. Book Award http://t.co/zc68JE16GO
— The AAWW (@aaww) November 14, 2014

I have not yet read the book.