In the chapter on Anna Karenina in his Lectures on Russian Literature, Vladimir Nabokov insists “that literature is not a pattern of ideas but a pattern of images. Ideas do not matter much in comparison to a book’s imagery and magic.”
Bookgang is also not without patterns. Our uniformly good looks and intellectual agility certainly stand out. And month after month, our epicurean acumen manifests itself in the swirl of fine wine in our chinking glasses and the array of foods sweet and savory that pass our lips – a pattern that Oblonsky would call first-rate. If there was a pattern among Bookgang’s experience with reading Tolstoy’s canonical masterpiece, it was one of procrastination: despite New York’s best efforts to snow us in or otherwise chill our efforts to leave our snug apartments, our calendars often prevailed and left most of us rushing to finish the reading. But finish we did, most of us anyway, and we celebrated breaking this literary ribbon with a trip to the Russian and Turkish Baths in the East Village. Sadly, no cameras are allowed inside so you’ll just have to trust me when I declare myself the out-and-out winner in the contest of the hirsute chests: consider it my Slavic badge of honor.
It had snowed on and off all that day, so the transition from icy afternoon to reclining in the blaze of the bathhouse seemed that much more incongruous, and unlikely, some kind of instant cure for the disguised ailments of winter. No wonder then, the popular tradition of Russians like Tolstoy’s tubercular Nikolai traveling to Europe to “take the waters.” The Russian room was so hot I began to fear my facial piercings would burn me. When our blood collectively reached a point of brain boiling, a few of us went out onto the open air deck, our heads wet, the girls in their bikinis and we men in the uniform - those unflattering light blue bathhouse shorts. A gentle snow sifted down. We stood impervious to cold and smiling at the world from inside the warm halo of our bodies. On the bench nearby some people were drinking beer and drawing on a spliff. Sebastian bummed a smoke. Yelena walked barefoot through an arm of snow. It was quiet and perfect, and high time to talk books and get some damn food. For those purposes, we made our way to the Russian themed Anyway Café, whose “Russian bloody martinis” – made with the house’s remarkable infused vodkas – could make even the most ardent capitalist see the virtues of going red.
Just as the meal arrived, so did Emily, and Bookgang did what it always does so well: parse the “image and magic” of literature into the realm of ideas.
Hours later, we stepped outside to discover the weather had been as animated as we had been. The streets of New York were white as a new egg. We stood at the corner of Second Avenue. It was a Sunday night and it had that Sunday feeling, when your heart fills out like a sail. The faces of my friends were collectively flushed, a rosy afterglow earned from the baths, from the food and drink, from the time (and dollars) well spent with in the company of one another and Mr. Tolstoy. From the heavens fell a rich, downy snow as if the clouds were tossing confetti. The East Village was quiet, and the streetlamps and storefronts emitted a golden light. Anna Karenina is a book about life; fitting, then, that our night ended with a magical image of what life is all about.
- Jason Watt
