All Posts – Page 6

Bike Tour: The Hills Are Alive

Post author By jon
Post date August 26, 2020

1,053 km (654 miles) over 18 days between Aug. 26, 2020 and Sep. 12, 2020. Read the full account on CycleBlaze here.

Spectacular alpine scenery and the spectacle of me attempting to lug my fully-loaded bike up some truly unreasonable gradients.

In the midst of the chaos of 2020, I found a window when the coronavirus regulations would allow European travel and I could fit in a cycle tour. Starting in Munich, I made my way into Austria and travelled the length of the country through some of the valleys and high passes. After a brief sojourn in the wine growing country around lake Neusiedlersee and across the border to Bratislava, I finished up in Vienna and home.

Books Fiction Nabokov Reviews

Review: Forgetting Elena

Post author By jon
Post date August 7, 2020

By Edmund White (1973)

I’ve just finished White’s first book, Forgetting Elena – this is the book that Nabokov called “remarkable”.

It is something else. An apparent amnesiac, who doesn’t even know his own name, plays out several days on an idyllic island, attempting to piece together his identity in a sort of utopian society ruled by infinite shades of etiquette.

Combines dreamy psychedelia with really precise poetic language

Books Fiction Reviews

Review: A Saint from Texas

Post author By jon
Post date August 7, 2020

By Edmund White (2020)

I’ve been meaning to read some Edmund White for a while – given that White got a very rare enthusiastic recommendation from my favourite writer. Amusingly, for a long time I confused him with E.B. White, creator of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little – they are emphatically not the same guy!

I definitely enjoyed this, the immersion into unfamiliar worlds is very well done – I partly like all the technicalities on practically how saints are made.

Books Nonfiction Politics Reviews

Reviews: Anne Applebaum on Eastern Europe

Post author By jon
Post date August 7, 2020

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe (2012) and Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe (1994) by Anne Applebaum

Anne Applebaum’s recent book is so good, I’ve been working my way through her back catalogue.

Two books about the “borderlands” of Europe – Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Hungary, Belarus and Moldova – their crushing and Sovietization following 1944, and subsequent re-emergence in the 90s are excellent if you have an interest the region, its history, and the recent destablilisation.

Pure joy, and the best non-fiction book I’ve read this year

Books Politics Reviews

Review: Twilight of Democracy

Post author By jon
Post date August 7, 2020

The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends by Anne Applebaum (2020)

So I’ve been on a massive Anne Applebaum kick for the last couple of weeks. A very long time ago I’d read her history of the Gulag, an extremely jolly read, and subsequently forgot about her.

The best political, and one of the best nonfiction books, of the year. This is a million miles away from the often tiresome hot takes of the internet punditry.

Arcana Books Nabokov The Feud

Nabokov, Pasternak, Ivinskaya and Zhivago

Post author By jon
Post date January 7, 2020

Beam’s carelessness reaches an apogee in the Boston Globe article Nabokov was such a Jerk.

It’s not worth dwelling on much of the content: there’s little there of substance. But I shall take a look at the claim that Beam makes regarding Doctor Zhivago. Zhivago is important to this story, as while Nabokov hated the book for artistic and political reasons, Wilson latched onto it. “A black cat came between us … Doctor Zhivago” as Nabokov explained.

Arcana Books Lit Crit Nabokov The Feud

Gerschenkron and Nabokov

Post author By jon
Post date January 7, 2020

This follows up in detail on the review of Alex Beam’s The Feud: Vladimir Nabokov, Edmund Wilson and the end of a beautiful friendship. You can read my (not entirely positive) review here.

The dust-up of the feud, and the spectrum of reviews, seems unsatisyingly damning for Beam. So, as a final word on the exchange, he brings in a deus ex machina in the form of Alexander Gerschenkron. We are told that Gerschenkron – the “known as ‘The Great Gerschenkron’ … a mythic figure … feared no-one, not the Bolsheviks, not the Nazis … certainly not Vladimir Nabokov”. In Beam’s account, Gerschenkron attacks every aspect of Onegin – the translation, the commentary, and the scholarship in a “merciless takedown” – Nabokov never replied, and quietly incorporated his changes into the revision.

This account should trouble us, as it brings convenient closure for Beam and allows him to avoid having to examine the scholarship in detail. How accurate is it?

Books Lit Crit Nabokov Nonfiction Reviews The Feud

Review: The Feud

Post author By jon
Post date January 7, 2020

Vladimir Nabokov, Edmund Wilson and the end of a beautiful friendship by Alex Beam

An amusing, light-footed but increasingly partial and even sloppy account of the infamous disintegration of a long-standing literary friendship.

What’s important in a friendship? Does loyalty and tolerance in disagreement come first – or does principal, character and rapport count for more? For a quarter of a century, Vladimir Nabokov – already a well-respected Russian author in the European emigration, but virtually unknown in his adopted American home; and Edmund Wilson, the pre-eminent critic of his day, were vital friends.

Cycle Touring Cycling European Tours Travel

Bike Tour: Bohemian Rhapsody

Post author By jon
Post date August 11, 2019

1,402 km (871 miles) over 15 days between Aug. 11, 2019 and Aug. 25, 2019. Read the full account on CycleBlaze here.

Poland, Czech Republic and Germany: A journey back to the west through Mitteleuropa

In 2019, I visited Central Europe on my summer tour. Taking a train into the heart of Poland, I returned to the west by a meandering route through hilly Bohemia. Beyond the beer and bombs of Plzen I crossed the width of the old East Germany, to make it back to the west in Kassel.

Books Nonfiction Reviews

Freud: The Making of an Illusion

Post author By jon
Post date February 7, 2019

by Frederick Crews (2017)

This is a comprehensive and illuminating independent history of the early days of Sigmund Freud, from his early neurological work, his fixation on cocaine and the nose as the source of all neurosis, to his development of the ideas of libido and repressed sexuality. A weighty and extremely thorough book, it is nonetheless very entertaining in parts, particularly in the cocaine sections.

A weighty and extremely thorough book, it is nonetheless very entertaining in parts, particularly in the cocaine sections.

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