Thursday news
Today is the 31st of March, 2022. A selection of book recommendations and yesterday’s visuals.
Do you think that time dictates interests in literature? For example, I can't read right now. I wish I could, because I have started Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin, a designer’s biography written by Andrew Wilson, and it’s good. But I either fall asleep exhausted by news reading and the day's thinking or can’t find a reason not to look into the direction of other things that don't cause sadness.
Nevertheless I know people who dive into reading (or listening) the books right now. And there are two opposite crowds - someone is searching for easy stuff, and others - for the hardcore literature that can help them to see the underlying ideas or history of complicated matters.
As far as I have questions from my followers about my personal reading recommendations, I’ve made a list. Today I will write about the first five books, and start with a light story so as to move to the darker materials.
“The pigeon pie mystery” by Julia Stuart (“Тайна голубиного пирога”)
Charming story that has a bit more to offer than just mystery solving. As far as in the centre of the story is a young Princess Alexandrina (Mink) whose father, Maharajah of Brindor, died and left her penniless. She was relocated in a 'grace and favour' house at Hampton Court with her only servant - Indian maid Pooki. She’s alone, too smart, too active, too well educated and absolutely out of the world for the place and for her neighbours she’s pretty exotic in all the senses. The reader learns about the characters and their secrets - those are many - but also about the place of the women in Victorian England, the sentimental and social habits and manners of the time, even fashion and the whole practice in and around the place. Sometimes it’s just curious, most of the time - fun. It’ll most definitely bring a smile even in the middle of a dreadful day.
“Les gens heureux lisent et boivent du café” (“Happy People Read and Drink Coffee”) by Agnès Martin-Lugand (“Счастливые люди читают книжки и пьют кофе”)
Diane lost her husband and daughter in a car accident. She’s the owner of a literary café in Paris. She named it “Happy People Read and Drink Coffee” and for the time that was exactly what she felt before the tragedy, when her life seemed perfect. But after a year there’s no sign of hope she’ll ever meet her guests with a smile. She decides to get lost in the middle of nowhere - to heal or at least not to feel the pain from too vivid memories. The middle of nowhere happened to be in Ireland - on the coast. She adapts to the village life, rough and simple people, and of course falls in love again.
I can’t say it’s a perfect piece of literature. Maybe the French original is better than my Russian edition, and I can’t judge the English one, because I haven’t read it. But it's a short story that has few intense moments and like literature, written by a professional but not in writing, it is true of the moment. And that positive drive at the end, that seems banal and simplified, but I think that was the moral of the story the psychologist could only tell, that high point is exactly what people liked and enjoyed the most. A shimmering essence of hope for a happy end.
“Der himmel kennt keine günstlinge” (‘Heaven Has No Favorites’) by Erich Maria Remarque (“Жизнь взаймы”)
Among the bigger novels written by Remarque I chose today one of the smallest. And to tell the truth, not because it’s the best. It’s not, but even the worst of Remarque is the best you can expect to read of contemporary writers in general. Two main characters - Lillian and Clerfayt. She’s 24 yo slowly dying of tuberculosis, spent the last 4 years in the hospital in Alps, before that - 4 years of World War II, hunger, life in shelters and losses. She hasn't lived and she wants to see the world, to taste and to feel everything without precautions. He’s a racer and after the war he doesn’t really value his own life. Living from one moment to another he doesn’t care about the future. He doesn’t have illusions about women or men.
They start a journey together - she runs from the hospital, he sees her as a nice company till Paris. But then he falls in love, as well as she does. The only difference is he has a future and soon he wants to actually live it in peace with her. But for her who doesn’ believe she can live that long every quiet and safe moment is a waste of time and a cage. He risks his life at the car tracks, she feels it as a mocking to the death, a stupidity, irresponsible childish behaviour. She hides her condition from him, escapes with every opportunity, but returns.
How long can they live together? How much time is left? How to spend it perfectly right? How to find peace with the end - sudden or expected soon? Usual questions for Remarque. He tried to find and shape different love stories with unavoidable death. This one is the most peaceful and is the most schematic in the grieving aspect. It’s about life in expectation of the end. About feelings evolution, the nature of mutual attraction and the resolutions. The possibility, the chance. Unfortunately the women’s part is written by the men and I feel it simplified. But that's not the point. The point is what to do with life and how to do it together, for how long that “together” is possible and in what form. Every second matters as much as every movement of a soul.
“The given day” by Dennis Lehane (“Настанет день”)
I think I can’t recall another traditional American epic novel written in the last decade with the same level of intersection of private stories and the historical social movements and the same smoothless style. It’s incredible how contemporary it feels. I don’t mean the language but the whole spectrum of the problems and marks of the time. It brings the time of the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 in Boston. World War I was just over. Soldiers were back home. The lost generation. The beginning of the FBI. Dry law. Police history and the anarchists and revolutionaries hunt. Racism. Poor and rich. Social responsibilities. Black communities and White. Corruption. The criminal world structure. The search for the ideals and the purpose. The honour. Personal choices. Including the view on the home violence and abuse.
Look at what we passed for the last couple of years: pandemic, extreme levels of domestic violence, BLM, American police reformation demand, wars ended and started.
A book to read and enjoy the story, but also to educate yourself about the history and to look at the time we live in at different angles, searching for the answers on all sorts of “why?”.
“Les Bienveillantes” (‘The Kindly Ones’) by Jonathan Littell (“Благоволительницы”)
"Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened." - the opening line of the memoir of Dr. Maximilien Aue. He’s a middle-class, ordinary man living in France. No one could suspect in him a former Nazi officer who worked with concentration camps and formulated the purposes for the genocide, selected Jews for camps and for shootings along with gypsies, and all other “unclean” races. He tries to “educate” us about his generation, about the Germany of the time before and during World War II. He’s an intellectual, not a butcher. Perfectly educated, philosopher and a linguist, no signs of psycopathic disorder, quite empathic personality, broken and abused as a child and being a homosexual he’s in the vulnarable position but that doesn’t keep him form the consuming the racial theory, rationalising it for the practical use.
With cold logic he explains the foundation, the purpose of fascism and compares it to stalinism, collectivism. He reviews the history of the war through his experience and his knowledge which is the knowledge of the person who was at quite high rank and at power to decide things. All that is in disturbingly precise details. Max was posted to Poland, the Ukraine, and the Caucasus; presented at all the major battles on Eastern front and inspected many concentration camps in Poland, including Auschwitz. The fall of Nazi regime he witnessed in Berlin and he has his own opinion about the winners and those who stole the glory, and what went wrong in the Army and in the doctrine.
Max is a made-up character, but the book is inhabited by real historical figures: Eichmann, Himmler, Göring, Speer, Heyrich, Höss, and Hitler. It is huge, intense, and has surreal hallucinatory moments but those are felt like coffee-breaks between the horrors of mind and historical facts. There’s logic that makes it available for understanding and rationalising so you can see why the whole civilised nation believed in it. He draws a line between sadism and the necessity of the terminal solutions or exploitation. The ground under the race differences and perverted sense of human evolution. And all that contradicts his personal story. His perverse sexual obsessions are his escape into the human irrational. But ugliness is everywhere and at some point even the perfect logical system collapses.
Though it’s based on huge historical research it’s still fiction. A genius one. About the nature of evil and about the nature of fear, hate, love, desire, mind, and the animalistic side of human nature. About definitions. And the resolutions. You can’t find the point of history and fiction separation. So you start to understand how much the facts interpretation depends on the intentions and sight of the observer. Provocative and, no matter the chilling pictures, involving story. Challenging but really rare example of deep connection to the historical truth. Uncompromised to the tiniest pieces of the puzzle.
A digest from my Instagram for March 29-30th, 2022
6.30am zakharova_kaetano Good morning 🌞 How are you today? #haveagoodday Each morning I start with news reading, during the day I try to write… but news reading follows me till the night. You know, those dairy kind of articles, an endless editor’s letter, that I publish and email to my subscribers on Substack (link in bio), is born from that “fishing”. It’s all I can do right now, when open news publishing in Russia is “shrinking” to the Ministry of Defense reports. Help me to keep going. Please, subscribe. Support me. I really appreciate every time you leave your comments or write to me directly after the reading. And your monthly crowdfunding of my blog is helping a lot. So I can continue writing for you and looking for news. Hopefully those will be better… So time to time I give myself a break and post articles about fashion, jewelry or, like yesterday, about the Oscars. Because how can you miss the slap? Link is in stories. #morningthoughts #morningroutine i thank @richardquartley for the image Of “Andy Azwin Drummer for the band Estranged” - a perfect visualization of what I do and how it feels. Yours #morninginspiration fisher, who used to be a mermaid a month ago🤦♀️ … evolution🤷♀️ #morningmood #goodmorningpost
6pm zakharova_kaetano #finding micro mosaic ring by @lesibille#artofjewellery #beautyofjewellery #jewelleryasinspiration#contemporaryjewellery
9pm zakharova_kaetano #nightmood #fashioneditorial#fashionmetaverse #fashionportrait @voguechina January 2022. Models @xinxie_0728, @fanlingxi.lx, @_hahn1010, @thetall.7, @mengnan003 Photographed by @momochen_ Styled by Michelle Zhao @muchellle Make-up by JonathanYang @jonathanmakeuplab Hair by @ianyu0714 #artofphotography#virtualfashion #fashionasinspiration #artofvideography#fashionNFT #NFTinfashion
11 pm zakharova_kaetano #goodnightandsweetdreams #nightmood#artasinspiration @varsamkurnia “To rise and to rest” #contemporaryart #beautyofart #fairytaletime #symbolism
9 pm on 30th of March zakharova_kaetano #goodnightandsweetdreams #nightmood#fashionportrait #fashionstory a selection of @zhonglin_photography #artofphotography #beautyoffashion #surrealmood#surrealart #colour #fashionasinspiration #beautyeditorial
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