I know there is a lot of controversy about this book. Whether or not you are inclined to believe it, the work is marvelous nonetheless. And there is truth in it, profound truth, lasting truth- even if you consider the book to be a work of fiction.
This is definitely going in my permanent library.
How can you complain that it's hard to find a "fresh approach"? What is it, a wallet full of money? Can you find a "fresh approach" walking down the street- someone drops it and you pick it up? .... [Y]ou can't find a fresh approach; it has to find you. A fresh approach to music, as I have seen time and time again, usually come to those who have a fresh approach to other aspects of life, to life in general. (p. 72)
At least, it always seems that everything is different today from what it was yesterday. And it will all be different tomorrow. No one knows how, but it will be different. (p. 108)
When he was talking about torture, including the torture of animals, this phrasing caught my attention:
I see a desire to drag animals down to the level of man, so that they can be dealt with like men. (p. 124)
He deals quite a bit with the treatment of the Jews. There is little humor in it, except in this passage, which is simply so absurd:
Recently I went to the Repino station to buy a lemonade. There's a little store, a stall really, that sells everything. There was a line, and a woman in the line, who looked very Jewish and had an accent, began to complain out loud. Why is there such a line, and why are canned peas only sold with something else, and so on.
And the young salesman answered along these lines: "If you're unhappy here, citizeness, why don't you go to Israel? There are no lines there and you can probably buy peas just like that."
So Israel was pictured in a positive way, as a country without lines and with canned peas. And that's a dream for the Soviet consumer, and the line looked with interest at the citizeness who could go to a country where there are no lines and more peas than you could want. (p. 158)
Ah, and it was mentioned that in a backlash against the West, French bread was renamed "city" bread. Everyone is always renaming food to show their disdain for those poor French. (p. 173)
Advice with sardonic insight:
Don't try to save humanity all at once, try saving one person first. It's a lot harder. To help one person without harming another is very difficult. It's unbelievably difficult. That's where the temptation to save all of humanity comes from. And then, invariably, along the way you discover that all humanity's happiness hinges on the destruction of a few hundred million people, that's all. A trifle. (p. 205)
The event described on pages 214-215 is quite horrible, beyond words. And yet it happened.
On censorship:
Soviet man has withstood everything: hunger, and destruction, and wars - one worse than the other- and Stalin's camps. But he won't be able to take that chapter from The Possessed, he'll crack. (p. 269)
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