In The Tribe, silence is the perfect cover for a mini-crime ring.
Continue reading...Universal Pictures: Zvyagintsev, Dostoevsky and the Politics of the Particular
James RannSex secrets of the Russian classics
Eliot BorensteinReason #137 to study Russian literature: apparently, it will teach children about sex. This is a good thing, because no one else in Russia seems to want to.
Continue reading...Snowden’s Russian Summer Reading List
Eliot BorensteinHanding Snowden a copy of Dostoevsky’s classic novel is appropriate only in the same way as welcoming someone to Australia with a DVD of Crocodile Dundee: it is an example of purely associative logic. The only real connections are “Russia” and “crime.”
Continue reading...Katniss in the Underground (A Pedagogical Field Note)
Eliot BorensteinHere’s a question for you post-new critics out there: if a student completely misunderstands the historical context of a novel, but is otherwise on target, how severe should the consequence be to his or her grade? It’s something of a paradox: if a tree falls in imperial Russia, but the student thinks it was chopped down in Orwell’s Oceania, does it make an intelligible sound?
Continue reading...