My favorite novel is Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done? Nobody reads it anymore. It’s boring. People only read the title, the eternal Russian question: What is to be done? For us, this book was like the catechism. The textbook for the Revolution. People would learn entire pages of it by heart. Vera Pavlovna’s fourth dream…[He recites it like a poem.] “Houses made of crystal and aluminum…Crystal palaces! Lemon and orange groves in the cities.
