So with that disclaimer out of the way, can I say that the performative cancelling of all things Russian is making me cringe? Pouring out bottles of vodka which have already been paid for is useless theater designed to draw attention to oneself, not actually do anything helpful. And as for that Italian university which declared its intention of removing Dostoyevsky from its reading list because he was Russian... I really don't know what to say to such stupidity. Does anyone actually think Vladimir Putin cares if you throw your copy of The Brothers Karamazov over the back fence or not? If you want to hit Russia where it hurts- financially- STOP BUYING RUSSIAN OIL!! Canada has plenty, and if we didn't have the petulant man child Justin Trudeau as leader, we'd be ramping up domestic oil production and telling Russia and the other corrupt nations we currently buy from to go pound sand.
Let me just start off by saying that I have no love for Russia, Communism, or Vladimir Putin. Putin's a megalomaniacal lunatic, Communism has been a deadly scourge on humanity for over a century, and as for Russia... well, like most Canadian kids I was raised on tales of the 1972 Canada-USSR Summit Series. I knew who Paul Henderson was long before I knew who the first Prime Minister of Canada had been. Americans had the Bay of Pigs, Canadians had the Summit Series. For the uninitiated, here's a five minute explanatory video on the real Cold War rivalry: So with that disclaimer out of the way, can I say that the performative cancelling of all things Russian is making me cringe? Pouring out bottles of vodka which have already been paid for is useless theater designed to draw attention to oneself, not actually do anything helpful. And as for that Italian university which declared its intention of removing Dostoyevsky from its reading list because he was Russian... I really don't know what to say to such stupidity. Does anyone actually think Vladimir Putin cares if you throw your copy of The Brothers Karamazov over the back fence or not? If you want to hit Russia where it hurts- financially- STOP BUYING RUSSIAN OIL!! Canada has plenty, and if we didn't have the petulant man child Justin Trudeau as leader, we'd be ramping up domestic oil production and telling Russia and the other corrupt nations we currently buy from to go pound sand. All of this is by way of an explanation for my discussing The Overcoat, a short story by Russian writer Nikolai Gogol (who was actually born in the Ukraine). It's ridiculous to retroactively reject great writing from classic authors because we have irreconcilable differences with their country of origin. So I decided to revisit an author whose work I've discussed before- Gogol- mostly because he produced some great short stories and I don't have time right now to start in on something like Anna Karenina. Gogol wrote The Overcoat in 1842, and it is now regarded as one of his best works. Vladimir Nabokov went so far as to call it "The greatest Russian short story ever written." Many others agreed, asserting that this short story influenced the writing of most- if not all- of the Russian authors who came after him. In the words of Marie-Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé (or maybe Fyodor Dostoyevsky; the quote's been attributed to both of them): "We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'." (To Be Continued...)
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