Reading, er, Tuesday

[troisoiseaux]

Read Boris Pasternak's "sketch for an autobiography," I Remember, which I discovered at a used bookstore a few weeks ago. Curiously, he spends most of it talking about other people: the artists he admired and was influenced by— Tolstoy, who was a family friend; the composer Scriabin, a neighbor, and the reason Pasternak had originally wanted to go into music rather than writing; poets Blok and Rilke— and his contemporaries on the Russian literary scene of the early 20th century, Mayakovsky and Marina Tsvetayeva in particular.

Reading Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump by Spencer Ackerman, which is what it says on the tin. Obviously, horribly relevant reading given current events, but I've found this - how legal, political, and cultural forces shaped and were shaped by the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - kind of a reoccurring theme this year, from my constitutional law class last semester to podcasts like Slow Burn, You're Wrong About, and American Hysteria. And, like— I was four years old in 2001; I literally can't remember a time before "the war on terror," but my actual knowledge of it has been patchy at best, so this book (and class discussions, podcasts, etc.) has been eye-opening.

Comments

[kore]

Hunh, that sounds interesting....I was thirty in 2001 (CRUMBLES INTO A HEAP OF DUST) and the difference in civil life before and after is still pretty stark to me. I'd be interested to see what he highlights. -- For one thing, while everyone is screaming at Joe Biden about Afghanistan (in some ways deservedly) and some news outlets have emphasized Trump was inviting the Taliban to Camp David (Why. What. Why) I remember fucking Operation Enduring Freedom and Rumsfeld cosplaying Robert McNamara and how civil dissent was like crushed overnight. It felt like the politicians were dragging the world down the wrong timeline and there was no way to fix it.

[osprey_archer]

The Pasternak book sounds really interesting! I love reading writers talk about other writers (or other artists of any kind really). Is it called a "sketch for an autobiography" because it was meant to be longer?

[rose_griffes]

Ackerman's book recently came to my attention, so seeing you mention it in a positive light has further piqued my own interest.

(Here's an interesting essay by an American veteran who served in Afghanistan.)

[cmcmck]

I re-read Rilke's 'Duino Elegies' a while back.

Well worth a read if you haven't.