There is a popular and enduring American fiction that the US President is sworn into office on something called Inauguration Day, which is commemorated on January 20th in Washington DC. Seasoned students of the Republic are well aware, however, that the actual, truly meaningful, Inauguration Day is not so rigidly anchored to a particular freezingContinue reading “Missile Firing Day: The Republic’s Inaugural Day Is Here”
Tag Archives: Russia
Writing Too Strong, Too Talented, To Endure
In Koba The Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million (Vintage International, New York, 2002, pp. 230), Martin Amis writes (on Maxim Gorky‘s relationship with Stalin and his death following his return from exile in Sorrento to a period of ‘recantation’ and self-debasement): Writers were pushed, sometimes physically, sometimes spiritually, into all kinds of unfamiliar shapes byContinue reading “Writing Too Strong, Too Talented, To Endure”
Turgenev’s Hamlet And Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man
This semester, I’m running an independent study on existentialism with a pair of students from the English department here at Brooklyn College. Our reading list includes seven novels, four plays, and extracts from several philosophical texts. We kicked off our readings two weeks ago with Dostoyevsky‘s Notes from Underground. Because my students had purchased theContinue reading “Turgenev’s Hamlet And Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man”
Samir Chopra 