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Oct. 18th, 2013
A Real Writer
Oct. 18th, 2013 08:26 amPeter Ackroyd is quite a character. He writes like I read.
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Writers write because they have no choice, the cliché goes, but if you crunch the numbers, it’s clear that certain writers have less choice than others. Peter Ackroyd, the 63-year-old English novelist, biographer, historian and author of more than 50 books, is one of those for whom writing at some point turned the corner from avocation to compulsion, and then from compulsion to continuing Olympian feat.
Ackroyd writes nearly all day, nearly every day. Each morning he takes a taxi from his London home, in tony Knightsbridge, to the office he maintains in Bloomsbury, where he typically divides his workday between three books. He begins by writing and doing research for a history book, turns to a biography sometime in the afternoon and finishes the day reclining on a bed in a room adjacent to his book-lined office, writing a novel, in longhand.
“It’s just the way I work,” Ackroyd says. “I think there’s a resistance to the idea that you can be a good biographer and good historian and also a good novelist. You’re either accused of being a dilettante or of overproducing. But I’ve been doing it nearly all of my working life. I suppose the routine was originally designed to inhibit boredom, and also to earn money. But now it’s just become second nature.”
-- Jody Rosen at The New York Times
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Writers write because they have no choice, the cliché goes, but if you crunch the numbers, it’s clear that certain writers have less choice than others. Peter Ackroyd, the 63-year-old English novelist, biographer, historian and author of more than 50 books, is one of those for whom writing at some point turned the corner from avocation to compulsion, and then from compulsion to continuing Olympian feat.
Ackroyd writes nearly all day, nearly every day. Each morning he takes a taxi from his London home, in tony Knightsbridge, to the office he maintains in Bloomsbury, where he typically divides his workday between three books. He begins by writing and doing research for a history book, turns to a biography sometime in the afternoon and finishes the day reclining on a bed in a room adjacent to his book-lined office, writing a novel, in longhand.
“It’s just the way I work,” Ackroyd says. “I think there’s a resistance to the idea that you can be a good biographer and good historian and also a good novelist. You’re either accused of being a dilettante or of overproducing. But I’ve been doing it nearly all of my working life. I suppose the routine was originally designed to inhibit boredom, and also to earn money. But now it’s just become second nature.”
-- Jody Rosen at The New York Times
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Russia and Race
Oct. 18th, 2013 02:13 pmWe have a glimpse of Russia's race problem.
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This weekend, a working class neighborhood erupted in violence after a 25 year-old Russian was stabbed to death, allegedly by a migrant from Russia's Caucasus region. Hooligans and soccer fanatics quickly joined the fray, as did local residents, shouting "Go Russians!" and "Russia for Russians!" They looted fruit and vegetable stands run by migrants from former Soviet republics. They beat up people who looked distinctively non-Russian. Police chased the protestors around, and arrested nearly 400 of them.
[...]
To wit: many of the migrants from the North Caucasus are Russian citizens because the North Caucasus is part of the Russian Federation. (They are illegal because they don't have the special permits required to live in Moscow.) The problem with people from the North Caucasus is that they are Muslim and have dark hair and dark complexions; that is, they stand out from the Christian Slavic part of the population. On good days, people from the North Caucasus or from former Soviet republics in Central Asia inspire derision and nasty, racist slurs. On bad days, it's really, really bad.
-- Julia Ioffe, "Russians Still Love Pogroms" in The New Republic
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Ms. Ioffe closes her article with this droll note: "To my Jewish readers who have roots in this part of the world, if you ever wanted to see why your ancestors left, this is very likely what it looked like, but with less Adidas."
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This weekend, a working class neighborhood erupted in violence after a 25 year-old Russian was stabbed to death, allegedly by a migrant from Russia's Caucasus region. Hooligans and soccer fanatics quickly joined the fray, as did local residents, shouting "Go Russians!" and "Russia for Russians!" They looted fruit and vegetable stands run by migrants from former Soviet republics. They beat up people who looked distinctively non-Russian. Police chased the protestors around, and arrested nearly 400 of them.
[...]
To wit: many of the migrants from the North Caucasus are Russian citizens because the North Caucasus is part of the Russian Federation. (They are illegal because they don't have the special permits required to live in Moscow.) The problem with people from the North Caucasus is that they are Muslim and have dark hair and dark complexions; that is, they stand out from the Christian Slavic part of the population. On good days, people from the North Caucasus or from former Soviet republics in Central Asia inspire derision and nasty, racist slurs. On bad days, it's really, really bad.
-- Julia Ioffe, "Russians Still Love Pogroms" in The New Republic
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Ms. Ioffe closes her article with this droll note: "To my Jewish readers who have roots in this part of the world, if you ever wanted to see why your ancestors left, this is very likely what it looked like, but with less Adidas."