(no subject)

[skygiants]

A year or two ago I stumbled over a copy of Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States in a used bookstore and brought it home with me with intent to read at some future time. Last month I ended up having to sit still in our living room out of reach of my phone/current book/etc for cat-related reasons and so pulled the nearest thing off the nearest shelf: the time had apparently come.

And what a weird time it was, is, to be reading this book. The book was published in 2004, the essays commissioned for the project. The essays themselves vary from interesting to funny to overwrought to banal to offensive -- and one can't really be offended even so; it is, of course, always fascinating to see oneself as others see one -- but all of them were written in the early 2000s, in the immediate years following 9/11, and so there is a kind of thread of envy and pity and a little fear running as an undercurrent throughout the whole book: you Americans, you stupid Americans, you thought you were exempt from terrible things happening to you, and what are you going to do now you've realized that they can?

Comments

[nextian]

woof.

[skygiants]

woof!!

[passingbuzzards]

I have to wonder how this would all sound from a perspective of knowing a lot of Russian expats who largely came over to the US around 2000! (But yeah, oof.)

[skygiants]

I also am very curious tbh! (the essays are a pretty even mix between people who have been living here as expats, people who came for a visit and left again, and people who have never actually visited America and are providing some vibes-based impressions from across the world)

[eglantiere]

i must confess that's kind of roughly where i'm at, in the year of our lord 2025. but America has always been a shadow figure writ large in soviet/post-soviet/russian mythos, of course.

[eglantiere]

this said, i just opened the link and the quote there from max frai, which is in retrospect deeply hilarious for many convoluted russian sf/f-ish fandom reasons (frai used to be a very influental writer of vaguely magical realism fantasy, who ushered a lot of vaguely cozy magical realism fantasy, who themselves seems to be a genuinely unpleasant person with a delusions of grandeur, and who went completely off the walls bonkers insane in response to covid, in a you-sheeple-wearing-masks-are-killing-the-soul-of-world way). so there's that.

[skygiants]

sajdk;fld thank you extremely for this context, I liked his essay more than many but this Adds Significant Color

[eglantiere]

the juxtaposition between the somber mood your post evoked in me and seeing frai over there sure sent me. but yeah, they're our answer to ann rice (derogatory, because a lot of vivid stuff was really vile).

I wonder what you thought about goralik! now that's the creme de la creme of Russian language contemporary lit, and she's gotten better since then.

[shati]

I remember it more as book: Americans, please stop starting wars, simultaneous headlines: Ukraine. (Russia hadn't just invaded or anything, but it was a lot more recent? You definitely bought this more than a year ago because I borrowed it more than a year ago.) May there someday be a normal time to read it.

[skygiants]

I just reread an entry of mine from 2014 that has some reference to 'weird things to be thinking about America in this time in particular --' and I'm sure there were things to be extremely and legitimately angry about in 2014 but man. litany against notalgia I guess. May there someday be, for sure.

[osprey_archer]

you Americans, you stupid Americans, you thought you were exempt from terrible things happening to you, and what are you going to do now you've realized that they can?

Is this not even more current now than in the early 2000s... or perhaps just as current... is history a spiral or merely an illusion?

[skygiants]

I did keep wondering if the way we all feel about Everything Now is because we still can't quite fathom terrible things happening to us, or if the Everything Now is a long slow reaction to the initial shock of the Everything Then. probably a little of both tbh

[stranger]

you stupid Americans, you thought you were exempt from terrible things happening to you, and what are you going to do now you've realized that they can?

Huh, that leads to the thought: more Americans became stupid with paranoia and have voted for stupid leaders. Now what?

[skygiants]

great question.

[mozaikmage]

this is so wild- I looked up the table of contents and recognized one of the last names, and it turns out that guy's brother is a close friend of my grandfather's! small world. the intro made me interested in reading it so perhaps someday I will track it down

[skygiants]

omg small world indeed! it really is six degrees of sometimes

[eglantiere]

my son is traveling with one of the people on the list right now :D