Han Ong

I see them so clearly with averted eyes.

Right.

It's probably the thrill of the explorer coming upon a landscape that has never been seen before or that has been so rarely committed to film or to canvas.

That he thrills at the opportunity he presents him as an artist, as a true artist, alive to the possibility of capture.

Once again, so in this sense, it's parallel to what I earlier described as Ulitskaya's sort of hunger for the capture of all life on our pages.

Yeah.

So I wrote some marginalia on the printed up story in the scene of the old women taking a bath.

And I say that it's a comedy of physical decrepitude as well as the sheer medical fact of old age.

all in one.

And I wrote horror and ghastliness and rhapsody.

Again, so this is a lovely, lovely, you know, if we're lucky as writers, even as skilled writers, we hit on one really good strong note, sometimes two.

But if you do what Ulitskaya has done over and over again in the story, if you hit

A note that sounds two different emotions at the same time or three different emotions.

You're in nirvana, you know.

And the way she also describes the women as harpy graces.

And then later on when Boris Ivanovich titles his, at least mentally titles his drawings, he calls the suite of paintings the white swans.

So, you know, it's a sense of, yes, it is horrible to be that aged.

And to have nature sort of betray you in all sorts of ways.

But at the same time, that decrepitude still belongs, still clings to a living, breathing person.

You know, a person who subsists largely on vodka.