October 2024
Reading Turgenev in Alaska
Friends,
Becca and I were up in Alaska at the start of the month. We had an incredible time hiking around the Haines area with our friends Sarah and Tyler and their boys, Hazen and Alder.
Ahead of the trip, I searched my shelf of To-Read books for something Alaska-related. Sitting on that shelf was Barry Lopez’s posthumously published Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World, which, I assumed, could contain some Alaska-related content (Lopez, a favorite nature-writer, had written about Alaska in two of his books).
Book in hand and with plenty more packing to do, I nearly turned away from the shelf when another book caught my eye. Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons.
Suddenly, Tina Fey-as-Sarah Palin spoke to me. “I can see Russia from my house,” she said. And so I set down the Lopez and went with the 19th-century Russian.
This month has been my Turgenev month. After Fathers and Sons, the last quarter of which I found extremely moving (I read the Constance Garnett translation), I reread his wonderful short story “The Singers” with my creative writing class at UNCG. If you haven’t read “The Singers,” which is about a singing competition in a Russian pub but also - crucially - about the power of art, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Read it here. And if you have read it but it’s been awhile, now’s a good time to read it again.
Your friend in reading,
Evan
Becca’s Pick of the Month
Becca’s pick of the month is to add peanut butter to your Rice Krispie treats “to honor Jimmy Carter (HBD).”
