And fate made everybody equal
Outside the limits of the law
Son of a kulak or Red commander
Son of a priest or commissar . . .
Here classes were all equalized,
All men were brothers, camp mates all,
Branded as traitors every one . . .
--alexander tvardovsky (from By Right of Memory)
I've been reading Anne Applebaum's Gulag: A History, and though reading all 677 depressing pages feels like a prison term in itself, I can't put it down. Consequently, it was still in my hand after I emerged from the subway station into Polish occupied Greenpoint and stepped into the corner liquor store for my daily ration of wine (750 ml).
When I brought the bottle to the counter, Pavel, the strapping Pole manning the cash register, asked, "Are you reading that?"
Realizing the book was still in my hands, I said, "Yes. It's great. Did you read it?"
"Yeah," he scoffed derisively, "When I was like twelve years old!" He caught the eye of a colleague and they both rained smirks down upon me like I was some sort of simpleton. But what had I done?
What was so wrong with Applebaum's book that it would hoist ridicule upon a reader? It's a monumental achievement. She had clearly spoken to every survivor of the Gulag, read every memoir, looked at every possible archive available to her (and some that weren’t available, too) and still managed to produce a terrifically clear and readable text. Given the subject, I could hardly say that it is ‘entertaining’, but I have been enjoying the experience of reading this book precisely because it is so well-researched and authoritative.
And was there something wrong with a man of my advancing years reading such a book? Or was it because I was an American and so could not possibly understand or appreciate what life was like in the Gulag? He was a young man -- perhaps in his mid twenties -- So of course he couldn't have toiled in a Soviet labor camp. But as a Pole, he may have had older relatives who had.
Maybe it had something to do with my choice of wine? It was a 2002 Norton Malbec: Gorgeous deep ruby in the glass. Aromas of ripe red berries and a hint of cedar. Smooth, full-bodied with good acidity and easy on the tannins. Overall a very pretty wine that makes a great accompaniment to antipasto and spaghetti marinara. And at such an affordable price -- $7.99 -- certainly not deserving of scorn.
Then I realized that this young man couldn't have read Applebaum's book when he was twelve: It wasn't published until 2003. "Oh, no, this was written--."
"Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian. I know." He interupted, smuggly mistaking Applebaum's book for the Gulag Archipelago. But why was he gloating? And so what if I had been reading Solzhenitsyn's magisterial three-volume memoir of life in the camps rather than Applebaum's?
"Actually, this was written by Anne Applebaum, the Washington Post columnist. It's a different book" I corrected.
"Yes, yes," he waved off my explanation, "I read that one when I was young." By the blush spreading across his face, he clearly hadn't. He knew he was wrong, but couldn't admit it and continued to treat me like an idiot.
Having gone out of his way to insult me, poor Pavel was the only one made the fool. Now if he had wanted to talk Russian wines then it perhaps it would have turned out differently.
nice story. funny how people will claim right to superiority by their reading list -- or their imagined one.
Posted by: bookfraud | February 28, 2006 at 05:22 PM