NP Vollmann's "Europe Central"

[bekah]

Good stuff, huh?   I appreciated that first chapter about Lenin's 
wife but not until I'd read the whole book through and went back for 
some clarification.   Some of this book makes sense only after you've 
already been through the whole thing and see some themes.   There are 
some extraordinarily powerful chapters in this book.

Do you see where the paired chapters are coming from?  When I read it 
the second time I was trying to put the chapters together by the 
moral parable  they were said to form.   I did pretty good from my 
own interpretations but I could be somewhat off base.   It was 
interesting though to see how the chapters paired up by  moral theme.

Bekah


At 5:16 PM +0200 7/4/06, Otto wrote:
>At p. 263 now and I'm still quote enjoying it.
>
>Up to now, it is quite informative, I liked the pieces on Kaethe 
>Kollwitz ("Woman with Dead Child"), the various chapters on 
>Shostakovich & his women and the one on Roman Karmen ("Far and Wide 
>My Country Stretches") very much.
>
>Seems as if it's not bad to re-read the chapters on Russian 
>Formalism in David Lodge's "Modern Criticism and Theory" (1988).
>
>--------------
>
>"But maybe that's a normal symptom of youth's end, to feel that the 
>sky's greyer and that most of what I used to call beautiful isn't 
>more than glitter." (173)
>
>"He dreamed that a bomb was singing to him. From far away, the bomb 
>was coming to marry him. The bomb was his destiny, falling on him, 
>screaming." (186)
>
>"History can't be undone." (207)
>
>"Leningrad is not afraid of death; death is afraid of Leningrad." (218)
>
>"This was the moment when he understood that the representation of 
>reality can be more real than reality itself." (231)
>