Well, Red O turned out to be about as expected--a good restaurant with moments of greatness. The 'scene' of the place was at least half the attraction, but the food wasn't bad. Two dishes stood out--a pork mole sopes which had a depth and complexity of flavor I've never experienced before eating mole, and a roast pork shoulder in ancho sauce. The other dishes ranged from average (duck taquitos) to very good (beef salad with beets).
Every month or so the list of new books I want to read builds to a breaking point, and I get on amazon and go a little crazy. That happened yesterday. Now I've got eight or nine books en route, which means I need to finish Crime and Punishment (and, ideally, The Winter's Tale, which I've been slowly slowly rereading over the past month) in the next few days.
Luzhin, Dunya's vain, pompous and conniving suitor is for sure one of C& P's best characters. His attempt to frame Sonya for the theft of a hundred rubles in order to awaken doubt in Dunya about her brother's friends is a masterstroke, plot-wise. [What a terrible sentence structure. X is a Y, something-wise. Nothing should ever be "something-wise."]
Where was I?
Oh, an unrelated thought. Maybe the reason I disliked The Idiot so much when I read it (in 2003?) was because it had more women in it. Dostoevsky seems to me not all that great at writing female characters. They all skew towards a couple of predictable types, none of which are as interesting as his men. Well, that's only a thesis. I don't have enough familiarity with his work to feel confident in that claim. But, it seems possible. And it would explain one of the reasons why Crime is so successful; it's so much about men, the gender D knew how to write.
1 comment:
Scorcese said he has plans to make a film about love -- with no women in it. Just men and their loyalty to each other or betrayal, or something like that. Can't remember the article. The newspaper is now in the trash.
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