A portrait, and an addition to wish-list

I was recently drawn into a write-up by a portrait. It is a profile of Russian writer Maxim Osipov. Consider this:

(Photograph of Maxim Osipov by Elena Anosova for the New Yorker)

This beautiful portrait drew me in. The light seems like afternoon reflected off snow. The wood, the smoke hanging in the air - such a beautiful capture. Everything opposite to where I am. I have never lived in a place where it snows. Visitor, yes, but never struggled with the slush, the wet, the snow the cold. And the wooden walls and the desk and the cabin. Where I sit, everything is white around me - the desk, the walls, the white-framed window shutters blinding off the green tree and blue sky and white clouds outside. Nothing  brown and warm. Hence the very idea is beautiful in its other-ness. At times the opposites are interesting because they represent all that you are not. In that, complementing you.

Maybe I am wrong with all the assumptions above. May be. The portrait released that chain of thought. I kept staring at it for a bit and then since it mentions Chekhov in the first breath, I had to read more. The promise of such write-ups is delightful.

This article by Joshua Yaffa introduces Maxim Osipov to the English speaking world. It mentions that he is a doctor, a practising cardiologist in the Russian town of Tarusa, 101 kms away from Moscow. Living in the quiet provinces. Writing, publishing, essays and this collection : "Rock, Paper, Scissors". Added to my wishlist.

The mood of the portrait, and generally the idea of Russia, the earthy, snowy feel to the books - be it the Hunter's sketchbook (another one halfway read, on my wishlist), or other Russian short stories, they are like comfort food. The idea of a cold evening, hot chocolate, snug blanket, cosy thick socks and the book. The idea.

It helps that it is the beginning of  winter in our hemisphere, and although I live nowhere close to snow, the light slants more these days, and the roads are full of fall leaves, and the breeze can at times pierce through you, making the idea of a book of Russian short stories in a cosy setting all the more attractive.

Here is a sample of his writing from one of his essays - the complete quote is from the New Yorker (article linked above) -

" A year and a half after his first essay appeared in Znamya, he published an elegiac follow-up called “Complaining Is a Sin,” in which he describes receiving an early-morning summons from the hospital. “Cold, fog,” he writes. “Ten minutes later, you run into the office, shove the plug into the socket, everything is noisy, you put on a robe, look at the canvas-colored twilight outside the window, and say to yourself, ‘One, it won’t get any better, and, two, this is happiness.’ ”  "

Lucia Berlin

Not a lot going on in terms of reading at the moment, but this overdue update on Lucia Berlin. I recently read her collection of short stories : "A Manual for Cleaning Women" and her memoir/ letters "Welcome Home".  My notes from a few weeks ago:

The Manual for Cleaning Women is different from Evening in Paradise - another of her story collection I read recently. Unlike as in Evening in Paradise, the stories in this collection are not chronologically arranged. One wouldn’t think that they all relate to one person. One would think it an interesting collection of characters, places and viewpoints. If I had picked up the book without any context, would have read it differently. But now that I know the context, and I know it is all Lucia, and her difficult, difficult life which she opens up for us without a single note of complaint. (And that is the really impressive bit. The reason the writing appeals so much is one can perhaps wonder at the life, but the one who lived it, did not use her whimper or whine or complaint. It is all so full of life, and the spirit  to deal with the anything and everything.)

Welcome Home is a memoir, incomplete, peppered throughout with pictures of her, her family and all the different places she lived in. She did not complete it. It leaves off when her kids were still very young and Buddy Berlin was still around. You see glimpses of her stories in that writing. Or perhaps it is truer the other way round. You see glimpses of those houses in the stories.

You don't know her, but after reading these stories you know enough of the themes that have stayed with her through her life. The things that work their way in fiction again and again.

Similar to what Doris Lessing does. Or what Gabriel Garcia does in Living to Tell the Tale. When authors draw so heavily from their lives, you read their memoirs or their books and you jeep getting echoes or déjà vu.

Then there is another list, of all the problems with different houses. Reads like poetry. Sheer number of houses she lived in. Makes you wonder about yourself. And makes you want to do that exercise for yourself.

All this doesn’t take much space. Then there are the letters. It took me a while to bring myself to read the letters. On one hand, there are her stories,  written in very alive, sparse, clipped prose. The stories are matter of fact, no complaints ever comes through. And then there are these letters. One wonders that they are published because people wish to know more about her. And you understand more of her struggle, her life. May be the mystery would have been better. May be, we need heroes who don't complain.

Apart from the emotion on no complaints, the other emotion was wonder and a creeping desire to judge (the desire to judge manifested after the letters. The stories had left me with awe and wonder). It is such an off-centre life. And lives are products of choices. At times things happen where people don't have control. But at times things happen because people have a choice and they make certain choices. And then when you see other's choices, you start wondering - and unless you stop yourself, one can get to judging too. But one needs to stop. There is no right and wrong. Just choices. And one can almost identify with her at times even if most of the times she stays enigmatic, alien.

By the time you read the three books, you know her well, or so you think. And you get it. And you feel sad. It is a slippery slope.

As in one letter she says to Ed:

"Once when I was very little in the Grand Canyon there was a waitress with a huge tray of coffee in cups walking across the restaurant. One of the cups fell and smashed on the floor and she sort of looked up at heaven and said oh hell and tossed the whole tray onto the floor and split. That is what I do all the time."