To study first-year French is to enter a world of savoir-faire, beauty and romance. Instructive filmstrips show master chefs whisking halos of caramelized sugar; or Versailles woodworkers restoring antique marquetry; or Gallic lovers in deux chevaux, illustrating how “to go” and “to be” while tooting off for a weekend in Marseille. But this is not the world of Russian 101. In Russian 101, you get grainy black-and-white photos of concert halls “closed for repairs.”
It was a textbook dialogue that hooked Batuman, one between “Vera,” a physics graduate student, and “Ivan,” Vera’s physicist boyfriend, who with no explanation moves to Siberia and eventually marries someone else, by which time “Vera didn’t care anymore.”
No comments:
Post a Comment