A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Readable, diverting book about reconciling oneself to changed circumstances, and to keeping your chin up in the face of adversity. Unfortunately it is also Russian literature-lite, a kind of Oprah's Book Club version of the real thing: the author apes the style of a real Russian novel, and his characters' comportment and dialogue ape what you'd find in real Russian literature.

Maybe this might lead a few curious readers to actual Russian literature (see the Russian Lit Starter Pack at the end of this post). If so, then it's good that this novel exists.

The story revolves around Alexander Rostov, a Russian aristocrat deemed a "Former Person" by the Bolshevik regime and sentenced, implausibly, to lifetime house arrest in Moscow's famous Metropol Hotel. In the decades to follow Rostov lives out his life in this hotel as a sort of reverse Forrest Gump: all the world's interesting people come to him.

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Rostov is a good example of a Mary Sue character: perfect in nearly every way, always ready with the consummate bon mot, an unerring observer of human nature, and an expert in whatever arbitrary skill the storyline requires: classical music, literature, orology, gourmanderie, oenology, marksmanship--even pilferage (in one particularly far-fetched plot event late in the book).

For a reader to swallow this novel's fundamental premise (that Rostov, rather than being summarily executed, would be put under house arrest in one of the world's finest hotels where he could somehow, for free, still eat in the hotel's restaurants, drink at the bar, wander the halls, seduce actresses, and, eventually, help teach European and American culture to powerful Bolshevik apparatchiks) requires either complete ignorance of Soviet-era history or a gravity-defying suspension of disbelief. Get past that and the story will carry you along harmlessly.

Russian Literature Starter Pack:

Anton Chekhov short stories

Ivan Turgenev: Fathers and Sons; Torrents of Spring

Nikolai Gogol: Dead Souls; see also his short story "The Overcoat"

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: The Brothers Karamazov

Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina

The Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. Francis Golffing)

Of the three essays of The Genealogy of Morals I recommend the first two. Skim the third. Collectively, they are extremely useful reading for citizens of the West to see clearly the oligarchic power dynamics under which we live. Show me a modern Western nation-state where there isn't an increasing concentration of power among the elites--and a reduction in freedom for everyone else. You can't find one. Today we live in an increasingly neo-feudal system, where elites control more and more of the wealth, the actions, even the thoughts of the masses. Perhaps we should see the rare flowerings of genuine democratic freedom (6th century BC Athens, Republic-era Rome, and possibly pre-1913 USA ) for what they really are: extreme outliers, quickly replaced with tyranny. The first essay inverts the entire debate about morality, as Nietzsche nukes centuries of philosophical ethics by simply saying the powerful simply do what they do , and thus those things are good by defi...

The Fourth Turning is Here by Neil Howe

If you've read the original The Fourth Turning , much of this book will be review. However, this book explains the Forth Turning framework more cogently and tightly than the original, so if you haven't read the original book, I recommend just reading this and skipping the original. You'll walk away with the same central ideas plus the author's additional new (and slightly-adjusted) conclusions. The most profound takeaway from the overall Fourth Turning paradigm is that it teaches you to remember your place in the grand scheme of things. Sadly, modernity teaches the exact opposite: it persuades us to think we humans are bigger than history, that we can ignore it, be oblivious to it, and yet not repeat it. Worst of all, modernity teaches us to believe we've somehow managed to defeat history with our SOYANCE!!! and tEcHNologY--ironically none of which we can understand, replicate or repair. These "modren" beliefs, as arrogant and wrong as they are, conflic...

Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard

Tight, concise discussion of what the State really is and what it really does, not what we would like it to be. Thanks to the recent pandemic response, most of us lost once and for all our delusive belief that governments are a force for good, a force for fairness and justice. In this short book, Murray Rothbard shows how the State--no matter how "limited" a government you might set up in the beginning--always, always abrogates its citizens' rights and freedoms. It's just a matter of time. We also come to understand why the State loves war. It loves it. It gives the State far more power. It provides an easy justification to abrogate still more freedoms. And of course those in the State apparatus who profit politically or economically from war never seem to send their own sons to fight it. An all-too-typical example: note how Benjamin Netanyahu's military-age son lives safely and luxuriously in Miami, his security paid for by Israeli taxpayers . The fourth chap...

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