James Wood

That's close third person essentially being used as a tool of sort of ironic estrangement.

Well, what's so amazing about the passages you were just talking about in The Death of Ivan Ilyich is that it's not the character anymore.

It's Tolstoy himself doing it.

It's Tolstoy essentially saying – and here I think this fantastic – he draws in a way on his massive authority as a novelist.

I also think in some way he draws on his authority as an aristocrat sometimes –

To be able to say to the reader, you and I know that this is all nonsense.

It's like Natasha at the opera, except that he's doing it now.

It's all nonsense.

People have to go through these pointless activities in order to get their pointless bits of money.

And

I am tearing it apart.

And you're absolutely right.

There's something really formidable.

I mean, when Ivan Ilyich finally gets his lovely apartment and he's really been sort of thinking, you know, it's almost invading his dreams.

You know, what curtains will I have?

You know, I'll get that little table.

And he's preparing it all beautifully so that when his wife and children come, he can sort of open the doors and say, look, the marvelous place I've appointed.

For you.

Tolstoy comes in and says something like, you know, what he didn't realize.

Do you remember?