On March 27, Read Russia and The New York Review of Books are co-hosting the book launch of the much awaited An Invitation for Me to Think by Alexander Vvedensky, translated by Eugene Ostashevsky, with additional translations by Matvei Yankelevich. All of these publishers, organizers and translators will be in attendance in NYC at Pravda on Lafayette St.
Admission is free but you have to RSVP here, and do it soon because it starts in six and a half hours!
Alexander Vvedensky was one of the founding members of OBERIU together with Daniil Kharms. He died on a prison train in 1941.
You can read Ostashevsky’s translation of his poem “The Conversation of the Hours” at Words Without Borders.
Mikhail Shishkin on the perpetual recreation of the Russian literary language
The author of Maidenhair has a great essay in The Independent on his relation to his native language upon going to live abroad that goes well beyond the usual clichés and reaches some deep and unpleasant truths.
New view of Nabokov
In the New Republic, a review of Vladimir Nabokov’s recently published play The Tragedy of Mister Morn, provides a forum to inject some politics back into the long-established image of the butterfly-collecting aesthete. It is also certainly the first Nabokov review that mentions Marilyn Manson in the opening sentence (at least I assume it is).
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