Status Updates From In Memory of Memory

Page 101: The worst survived, that is, the fittest; the best all died.

Page 103: Memory versus History

Page 50: Document versus Monument
I like this

Oh no have to hand this book back to the library… Think I have to buy it to continue reading… Very much enjoying it!

There is a famous story about the emigrant Vladimir Nabokov who once applied to join the literature department of a certain university. One of the panel was against the appointment. A clever and witty man, he noted that Nabokov was indubitably a 'big' writer, but then the elephant was a big animal: you wouldn't appoint it to teach zoology.

We, the people of the past and the present, are endlessly vulnerable, desperately interesting, utterly defenceless. Especially after we are gone.

Any book that effortlessly moves from talking about the consequences of taking selfies to Rembrandt and Caravaggio is a book for me, frankly.

With every new selfie we take, every group shot or passport photo, our lives become arranged into a chain of images, a history which is quite different from the one we tell ourselves and want others to believe [...] Balzac foresaw some of this and refused to have his photograph taken, reflecting that each new picture removed a layer of balzac, pared it away, and if you let it happen, soon nothing would be left of you

this book reads like a dream, so engaging!!

this white, matte cover is just asking for me to spill something on it-

Wowowowwow (a dizzying read for an airplane and I loved it)

lowkey obsessed with this book

Momentos de excelência mas também algumas partes chatas e menos interessantes...

I’m feeling so touched by the thoughtfulness not only of the book, but if the translation- so much effort has been put into the prose of both; making the topic- memory- front and center in a way both striking and tangible

introspective writing; reminiscent of other Slavic-language translations I’ve tried to read in that it’s not very linear

im reading this book again

i’m about to be so pretentious

Some of the best writing...

in memory of memory of memory of memory of memory of memory of memory when will it end

Spent the afternoon outside in the sun reading this

Not great

If I read 5% every day, I will get there...

Fascinating

Writing about the objects and photographs passed down to her, Stepanova attempts to grasp her family’s fragmented history in the 19th and 20th century. It is impossible. She quickly realizes that nothing can be preserved, and that no story reaches us without “having its heels chipped away or it’s face ripped off,” how only trauma makes us unambiguously individuals, separate from mass product.

"This book about my family is not about my family at all, but something quite different: the way memory works, and what memory wants from me."

Solid Russian-Jewish Proustian whimsy so far. Excellent translation too. Flows beautifully.

Purchased from Alphabet City bookstore

i like this book again

i’ve loved so much of this book but part 2 is making me feel like i’m shredding my brain against a cheese grater

This is the book I would love to write about my own ancestors 😭

I don't want this to end.

Last chapter! 16 pages left, I am slowly but surely losing my sanity, my eyes hurt and I’ve had intensive ig-dm discourse over the English vs Swedish translations.