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The Monday Morning Memo

From_Our-Ambassador-to-Russia_WHJ

What to read, bearing in mind a visit to St Petersburg… EPISODE 5

Lermontov – A Hero of Our Time.

Bulgakov – Master & Margarita. It’s not a Petersburg novel, but it’s a fantastic surreal romp through Soviet Moscow. Dovlatov – the drinking man’s writer, died in NYC. I’ve only read Pushkin Hills, which I loved; have heard great things of Ours. Kharms is Russia’s Edward Lear, writing in the 1930s. I haven’t read enough of his work to recommend anything, but if you’re into that sort of thing, he’s fascinating. Did a lot of children’s books. Goncharov wrote the sublime Oblomov, about a man who’s all set to take life by the horns, but just as soon as he gets up. He has a remarkably hard time getting up. His man servant is of less use than the broken brush with which he pretends, badly, to clean the apartment, and the whole thing is a most wonderful exploration of the mind of a truly lazy man. For anyone who doubts their own productivity – Oblomov is the man you want to compare yourself to.

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Random Quote:

“The average lifespan of an American today is about eighty years. The world of 2025 is therefore just three modern lifetimes away from the world of 1785—three eighty-year-olds holding hands across time. To travel back three lifetimes to the 1780s is to enter a world without a car, toilet paper, or large-scale production of soap. In the realm of food, it is a world before can openers, pasteurization, or modern refrigeration. In medicine, it is a world without antibiotics, anesthesia, or a single vaccine. What principally distinguishes the past from the present is not biology, nor psychology, but rather technology. If the world has changed, it’s because we have changed the world.”

- Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson, Abundance (2025)

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