A Pause

I completed The Case of Comrade Tulayev this evening. I don't feel hale, congested and a spot of ache: the thematics of the text didn't help. I went back afterwards and read the introduction by Susan Sontag. She goes to lengths to explain Serge's omission from modern French and Russian literary traditions. She makes analogies by way of Koestler's Darkness At Noon. I have never read that novel, even when reading a biography of Koestler w/ samizdat. I do recall Bill Clinton stating that he felt like the protagonist of the novel during the impeachment hearings; he said this, of course, to Vaclav Havel, who kept his incredulity furtive.