BOB BLAISDELL
ARTICLES
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The Stars Her Destination: On Sara Wheeler’s “Mud and Stars: Travels in Russia with Pushkin and Other Geniuses of the Golden Age”
Bob Blaisdell tags along with Sara Wheeler through “Mud and Stars: Travels in Russia with Pushkin and Other Geniuses of the Golden Age.”
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The Good Doctor: On Maxim Osipov’s “Rock, Paper, Scissors”
Bob Blaisdell appreciates “Rock, Paper, Scissors: And Other Stories” by Maxim Osipov, translated by Boris Dralyuk, Alex Fleming, and Anne Marie Jackson.
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Granted: The Best
Bob Blaisdell pores over “The Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant” and “My Dearest Julia: The Wartime Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Wife.”
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Tolstoy Untangled: On Donna Tussing Orwin’s “Simply Tolstoy”
Bob Blaisdell appreciates “Simply Tolstoy” by Donna Tussing Orwin.
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Risky Rasskazy: Mikhail Zoshchenko’s Thoroughly Unsentimental “Sentimental Tales”
Bob Blaisdell considers the six longer stories collected in Mikhail Zoshchenko’s “Sentimental Tales,” newly translated by Boris Dralyuk.
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Daddy’s Issues: Karl Ove Knausgaard’s “Spring”
If you still haven’t tried Knausgaard or have been unsatisfied with his helplessly casual "New York Times" travel essays, try "Spring."
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A Brilliant Mind’s Pauses: The Fiction of Russia’s Greatest Poet
Bob Blaisdell praises the prose of Russia’s greatest poet, Alexander Pushkin.
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What Rubbish They Publish
The Prank proves Anton Chekhov could write hilarious stories from an early age.
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An Anna Is an Anna Is an Anna
Translators of Anna Karenina are wonderful — except for their annoying habit of denigrating the work of earlier ones.
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Mentors: Marvin Mudrick
MARVIN MUDRICK CREATED the College of Creative Studies at U.C. Santa Barbara in 1967, and was its provost until two