So I went with my mother and sister-in-law to see Topol’s farewell tour of Fiddler on the Roof in Dallas two months ago, and at the end of the show, the sister said, “I didn’t remember that the ending was so depressing.” Well, yeah.
Her brother had told her before we left for the show that […]

When we left our travels, we were in Russia with Dostoevsky, whose most famous novel is Crime and Punishment, about a young hoodlum in St. Petersburg, who commits crimes and is punished.
If I wasn’t a Web site programmer, I might like to teach English literature. I’ve thought about topics for papers where the students might […]

Christmas carols keep me from being a big humbug, and Christmas makes me think of Christianity, which makes me think of The Bible, which makes me think of blood and gore, which appeals to my morbid side. Is that wrong?
Our local suburban arts center hosted an open house last week with a Russian Christmas theme. […]

In George Bird’s translation of Dostoevsky’s The Double, there’s a scene in the beginning of the story where the hero is described as being “as pleased as Punch.” My first instinct was to blurt out, “What?”
I thought to myself, why would Mr. Bird translate the Russian story into English cliches? I mean, how cheesy is […]

In Gogol’s Ukranian short story “”St. John’s Eve,” he describes a particular beautiful girl as “a dark-browed daughter.” It made me think of similar descriptions of beautiful girls in Arabian Nights.
The really pretty girls in Scheherazade’s tales had faces that looked like the moon and one long, black eyebrow atop their eyes. Ukraine is fairly […]

Gogol and Dostoevsky both mention serfs in their stories, these people on the fringe of society. So I had to surf the Web and read up on Ukranian and Russian feudal history. Travels don’t always lead to other books. They often lead to the peripheral knowledge that can be garnered from the wonders of Wikipedia.
It […]

Russian writers aren’t always known for their comedy, what with all that cold and bleary bleakness, oppressed masses and Communist revolt. But Nikolai Gogol’s short stories are truly fun and kooky, especially the stories set in Ukraine.
I was speaking with a friend of a friend from one of those former Soviet countries, and I was […]

It’s running. If you hurry, you can catch it.
My allergies have been so bad all my life, I didn’t even realize I had inherited my mother’s intense sense of smell until I was in my twenties. I started going to an allergy doctor because I thought I might be allergic to my fiance’, and like […]

The Namesake took me on a journey from India to New England and back to India, and when I put the book down, it guided me forward to Russia.
Gogol’s parents moved from India to the United States, landing in the Boston area, where Gogol’s father taught school. Their early adventures include a small drama around […]

The scene is St. Petersburg in the mid 1800s. A clerk works in a meaningless job sporting delusions of grandeur. Everyone in his office is talking about him, and everyone is out to get him.
One thing you can say about Fyodor Dostoevsky, he can really get into the mind of the mentally ill. I recently […]