In 1939, Orwell wrote a long essay titled 'Inside the Whale,' about modernism, the nineteen-thirties, Henry Miller, and 'Tropic of Cancer.' — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
“Honestly,” he says, “I judge writers on how they write queries. If you’re a good writer, you’re a good writer.” And if not, then… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
“The sanatorium itself was charming, a group of cabins in the woods, a place for overworked urbanites to feel pleasantly melancholic. A slackertorium.” — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
When we started reading books to Raffi, I included some Russian ones. A friend had handed down a beautiful book of Daniil Kharms poems… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
In the post-Soviet era, the most interesting work on the Stalinist period has been social history, far beyond the Kremlin walls - the study of what one of its leading practitioners, Sheila Fitzpatrick, in her book 'Everyday Stalinism,' called 'ordinary life in extraordinary times.' — Keith Gessen Copy Share
The imputation to Brodsky of Russian nationalist views is, of course, paradoxical and worth considering. — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
During two decades, on and off, reporting in Russia and the post-Soviet states - in the turbulent '90s, the wealthy but depressing aughts and, finally, during the eruption of violence in Ukraine - I occasionally heard people talk about how 'the Americans' wanted this or that political outcome. — Keith Gessen Copy Share
While I was in Astana, a ballet master from St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre staged a performance of 'Giselle' in the opera hall. It was… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
To be on the other side of the law-and-order machine in this country is awful. It is dehumanizing and degrading and deforming. It fills… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
Left Bank Astana was beautiful at night, each building, it seemed, with its own nighttime color scheme and the street lamps all going full… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
All literature has this moral strain, but in Russian literature, it's particularly sharp. — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
“He was getting to be a certain age, he thought. It was the age when his never-to-be-written masterpieces had begun to outweigh the masterpieces… — Keith Gessen Copy Share Image
One of the best and most challenging books about Orwell is by the socialist literary critic Raymond Williams. As a critic - and, in some ways, as a figure, at least within the academy - Williams was what England had in the generation after Orwell, and toward the end of his life, he became more critical of his predecessor. — Keith Gessen Copy Share
