Without Lifting A Finger

Though it's "all good" (I'll need to do a reread before I settle on a fave), I'm very much enjoying "Postmark: Moscow" (the last lap of the Corpse ) because it's like time-traveling with Siggy as your guide. From Letter Seven (just happens to be the one I'm on): At the moment I'm very busy looking for Moscow on library shelves. I couldn't have done without the mysterious drawer of the extremely kind and learned Pyotr Nikolaevich Miller; this drawer is stuffed with little square cards: No matter which one you pull out, it is marked "Moscow." This is my third week sitting in the airy reading room on the top floor of the History Museum flicking the dust off old books about Moscow. You may ask: What did I find under the dust? Ashes.      Yes, on forty layers of ashes we all abide, over forty layers of ashes we walk and ride.         

An interesting game mentioned in the "Corpse." * Kottabos ( Ancient Greek : κότταβος ) was a game of skill played at ancient Greek and Etruscan symposia (drinking parties) , especially in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. The game is played by flinging wine lees at targets. The player would utter the name of the object of his affection. [1] The game appears to have been of Sicilian origin, but it spread through Greece from Thessaly to Rhodes , and was especially fashionable at Athens . Dionysius Chalcus , Alcaeus , Anacreon , Pindar , Bacchylides , Aeschylus , Sophocles , Euripides , Aristophanes , and Antiphanes [ disambiguation needed ] make frequent and familiar allusion to the cottabus – and it appears on vases from the era; but in the writers of the Roman and Alexandrian period such reference as occurs shows that the fashion had died out. In Latin literature it is almost entirely unknown. [From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kottabos ]

Not that everything NYRB dishes up is to my taste, but I have discovered many jewels there. Was googling and amazoning about yesterday, thinking What next. Hit on a new author that sounded interesting, even if I've no clue re pronouncing his name: Krzhizhanosky. I've already read the title story, "Autobiography of a Corpse" (I think it good enough to deserve a second reading), and moved on to the second short story in my slender e-volume: "In the Pupil." This tidbit comes from "Corpse":      It was then that my excruciating insomnias began. I gave up my late-night strolls about the streets. They no longer helped. I never could and cannot drink. People's society to me is worse than insomnia. But I had to fill my long, empty vigils with something. I bought thirty-two black and white carved figures and began playing chess: myself against myself. The utter futility of chess thinking appealed to me. After long struggles between thoughts ...

Sigizmund Dominikovich Krzhizhanovsky ( Russian : Сигизму́нд Домини́кович Кржижано́вский , IPA:  [sʲɪɡʲɪzˈmunt dəmʲɪˈnʲikəvʲɪt͡ɕ krʐɨʐɐˈnofskʲɪj] , Polish : Zygmunt Krzyżanowski ; 11 February  [ O.S. 30 January]  1887  – 28 December 1950) was a Russian and Soviet short-story writer who described himself as being "known for being unknown"; the bulk of his writings were published posthumously. Life Krzhizhanovsky was born in Kiev to a Polish family on 11 February 1887. [ 1 ] Judging from his works, major influences on his style were Robert Louis Stevenson , G. K. Chesterton , Edgar Allan Poe , Nikolai Gogol , E. T. A. Hoffmann , and H. G. Wells . Krzhizhanovsky was active among Moscow's literati in the 1920s, while working for Alexander Tairov 's Chamber Theater. Several of Krzhizhanovsky's stories became known through private readings, and a couple of them even found their way to print. In 1929 he penned a screenplay for Yakov Protazanov 's acclaime...