thousand-mile hegira

My latest holiday has been expansive and I feel that notation here has suffered, perhaps as I sat for seemingly ages and watched Ken Burns depict that great schism through sepia-tinged photographs and occasional ramblings from Uncle Shelby - that said it was a worthwhile endeavor. That finished, I have poised with some uncertainty after finishing the first volume of Foote's Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville. The text does not end in Kentucky but rather as in the epilogue to War and Peace, Foote interrogates the motives and deeds of Davis and Lincoln after 20 months of mutual bloodletting. It is unsettling to register the impact of Sherman's prognosis that the South will need to be re-conquered, essentially recivillized, in effort for the union to be preserved. A counterpoint to this remedy (or, perhaps, its acute symptomology) is an exchange betweenTheophilus Holmes, a lieutenant general from Arkansas speaking to an Indiana colonel under a flag of truce: "You may conquer us and parcel out our lands among your soliders, but you must remember that one incident in history: to wit, of all the Russians who settled in Poland not one died a natural death."

My uncertainty rings dear as I think I need a break before venturinginto the second volume, the Tolstoy was enjoyable (in a soem dar, removed, whisper) and raised a host of pertinent questions and I now turn to Philip Roth's Plot Against America. N read it 5-6 weeks ago and I returned it to the library without properly approaching it. Fortuna has smiled and i have it again form the stacks. By luck, N's sister Tihana mailed me a copy of Adam Thurwell's shocking novel Politics today for the holidays (Friday is the Orthodox Christmas) but alas it was reapproriated and I, as reading kulak, was shoved against the wall (alas without staring down the ppsh-41) while my bonny proletarian has cracked the novel's cover and is reading as type this. It was a good day despite the rain, which drenched me for the second stroll in two days. A mug of earl grey and shot of rum helped, along with Saint-Saen's 3rd Symphony and Ibrahim ferrer's second album.