“‘You’re a lucky girl that these books are in the living room, more on the table than on the shelf.’
“‘Yes.’
“‘Excuse me, also about Turgenev, I don’t believe he was an anti-Semite. Of course, most of them were, even if they had brains. I don’t think Gorky was, Gogol probably. Tolstoy, no, Tolstoy had an opinion about the Mexican-American War. Did you know? Of course, most were anti-Semites. Dostoyevsky. It was natural, it seems. Ach, why is it we read them with such interest and they don’t return the favor?’
“‘That’s what women writers say about men writers.’”
—Grace Paley, “My Father Addresses Me on the Facts of Old Age,” The New Yorker (17 May 2002)
Good review! But now I’m not sure I want to watch Part 2. It took us forever to work our way through Part 1, because it was so painful, almost too painful to watch. Part 2 might cause me to dig a hole into the couch and crawl inside and never come out.
What a great series though!
Haven’t watched any of the American version yet. Have you?