James Wood

What he didn't realize is that he thought it was unusual and singular.

But what he didn't realize is it just looked like everyone else's apartment, but owned by people who didn't have quite enough money.

A fantastically sort of aristocratic dismissal.

Savage.

Equally with the salary.

He gets paid a bit more and Tolstoy comes in and says, and as is always the case, he could have done with another 500 rubles.

There's never actually enough.

Everything is being seen through.

And I'm very glad you brought up that whole thing of estrangement.

That's what amazes me about this very brisk sort of 20 or 30 years.

pages where we're getting the rise before the fall where we're getting the rise of ivan illich because it's fantastically estranged and only lightly inside uh uh ivan illich's mind i mean you've got this children came that's just the phrase children came

His wife was growing more and more peevish and angry, but the attitude to domestic life worked out by Ivan Ilyich made him almost impervious to her peevishness.

After serving for seven years in the same town, Ivan Ilyich was transferred to the post of prosecutor in a different province.

They moved, there was too little money, and his wife did not like the place they moved to.

The salary was higher than previously, but life was more expensive.

Besides, two of the children died and therefore family life became still more unpleasant for Ivan Ilyich.

Incredible.

Two dead children are just swiped away in the course of a single phrase as nothing more than part of the general domestic unpleasantness.