Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018) by Marielle Heller

Book title

The Russia House (1989) by John Le Carré

Dear Sammy: Letters from Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas (1977), edited by Samuel M. Steward

The Prince of Tides (1986) by Pat Conroy

The Magus (1965) by John Fowles

Possession (1990) by Antonia Susan Byatt

The Russia House (1990, Fred Schepisi)

3/27/23

As much as I'd love to talk Carré, I gotta admit I've tried and failed to get through even one of his novels. (I had to do research to even find out which it was, it was The Spy Who Came In From the Cold). It's really a tragedy, as someone who is SUPER into spy stories, political thrillers, and cold war history esp. re: the GDR, I was so ready to enjoy this book. But it just gave me nothing I enjoyed and I gave up halfway through. Also read excerpts of Tinker, Taylor for university and while that was a little better, I can't say I felt the need to get the full novel either...

Is there any novel of his that is markedly different in style or should I just give up on Le Carré if I didn't like that one?

I'm very glad that you've asked this question so that I can say: please, do not give up on Le Carré! One of the things I love about him is the variety of his novels, the precision of their individuality. Also, I'm trying and failing to imagine how reading excerpts of Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy would work, because while the prose is gorgeous, it doesn't strike me as, really, an excerptable novel. A word in defense of TSWCIFTC as well: when I first read it, in my early twenties, I rather forced myself through much of it it, not seeing, really, how it all added up: the deliberations, the compromises, the aspirations, the betrayals. And then I got to the end, started weeping, and immediately started rereading it to try to force the novel and the characters to some other conclusion.

Anyway! Other Le Carré recs: A Small Town in Germany, perhaps the most Austenian of his works, about the functioning and functionaries of Bonn, and postwar/Cold War anxieties in the Bundesrepublik.

For late Cold War anxieties, there's A Perfect Spy, about the (mis)education of a British spy, and the myths and vulnerabilities of the Old Firm. The Russia House is a particular favorite of mine, with the US, UK, and USSR anxiously figuring out what the parameters (and vulnerabilities) of glasnost are, and people figuring out what heroism is required to live with integrity in an era of inhumane states and... I just love it a lot.

You might also enjoy his more recent political thrillers, whether about neocolonialist exploitation (The Constant Gardener,) Islamic fundamentalism and western cynicism/hypocrisy (A Most Wanted Man,) or the feverish extremism of the Brexit/Trump era (Agent Running in the Field.)

The happiest of birthdays in the afterlife to Sean Connery!

J.T. Walsh as Col. Jackson Quinn in The Russia House (1990)

He was 7th billing behind some big names! But, the role wasn't as meaty as I'd hoped considering that the film was over two hours long...

What's the easiest way of testing whether a melody holds up? Play it on the piano!

Virtually all film composers compose their music on the piano (or on a computer's keyboard).

(OK, John Williams mainly composes in his head and writes the notes down on paper sitting at his desk...)

Dacha, Fyodor Savintsev

Ryabushinsky Manison, Gorki House (1901) Located: Moscow, Russia

love my shitty town

Yesterday I visited the Penates - the house of Russian painter Ilya Repin. It stands surrounded by pine forest, and the Bay of Finland is a 5 minute walk from the house.

The wooden house is very Russian style with little roofs and multiple terraces and enamel fireplaces in every room. There's a large studio on the second floor with large windows and skylights to allow as much natural light in as possible.

Repin was a very prolific painter and a huge name in his day, but also a bit of an eccentric. He always slept in a small unheated terrace, even through the winter. Him and his wife were vegetarian and practiced no-help dinner parties (with no servants at the door or the table). His weekly dinner parties on Wednesdays were attended by a multitude of artists, musicians, scientists. He was friends with Gorky, Mayakovsky, Chukovsky, Tolstoy, Yesenin etc. etc.

(Last picture: Ilya Repin paints opera singer Fyodor Shalyapin in his studio, 1914.)

the house that ivan built

Katalnaya Gorka pavilion, Oranienbaum, St. Petersburg, Russia,

Designed by architect Antonio Rinaldi,

Andrey Dyatlik Photography

Moscow Auction House Sells a $1 Million Painting Stolen from a Ukrainian Museum

In Russia, Ukrainian artist Ivan Aivazovsky’s painting “Moonlit Night” has been put up for auction, according to Ukraine’s former Deputy Attorney General and Prosecutor of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Gyunduz Mamedov, who has reported the auction plans.

Russia’s looting and destruction of Ukrainian museums and cultural heritage sites have resulted in significant losses, with nearly 40 museums plundered and almost 700 heritage sites damaged or destroyed since the invasion began in February 2022, causing cultural losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of euros.

The first report that “Moonlit Night” will be the main lot of the auction, which will take place at the Moscow Auction House on 18 February, appeared on the Telegram channel by Russia’s state-funded news agency RIA Novosti, noting that the painting was estimated at 100 million rubles (approximately $1.09 million) before the sale.

‘In 2017, [Interpol], at the request of [Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Crimea], put the paintings on the international wanted list. Thus, Russia openly disregards [international law], as according to the 1970 UNESCO Convention, the export of cultural properties and transfer of ownership is prohibited,” Mamedov emphasized on X.

In 2014, during the early stages of Russia’s occupation of Crimea, Aivazovsky’s painting “Moonlit Night” was illegally transferred to the Simferopol Art Museum, along with 52 other artworks.

In 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, some of his works were destroyed in an airstrike on the Kuindzhi Art Museum in Mariupol, and others were looted by Russian forces from Mariupol and Kherson museums, including “The Storm Subsides,” which was moved to the Central Taurida Museum in Simferopol, Crimea.

꧁★꧂

I don't want to talk about this in art account i made to spread my art to other people, but i can be silent when my country and people are suffering from russian aggression

I'm scared for my family

For myself

Yesterday and today i spent all night and morning at the basement of my house because it's was huge missile and drones attack at all Ukraine and who know if this night they will do it again

I just want to live peaceful life, draw what i want, be happy, find a job,but all this impossible when russia try to kill you. every.single.day.

All i think right know that i scared for that night and i don't know if i survive if they again attack us with rockets

I'm sick to my stomach, all i can do it's cry and hope today me and my family will live

Please don't close your eyes on this. It a genocide. They will not stop when they occupied all country and kill as all.

Please support Ukraine and pray for us because if Ukraine fall - next it can be your country.