And one more interview about Grossman

[Olga Meerson]

Robertjan, congratulations on your wonderful interview about Vassily Grossman and his significance. The interviewer's (otherwise intelligent) admonition to never read Dostoevsky in winter, however, like many admonitions about long books, is silly: many of these books are often very funny and thus much more effective and relevant than when imagined as classics to gather dust when respectfully put on some shelf for prominence but not for the purpose of being read. Grossman is not funny but he grips you in the same way. One of the silly myths about Russian literature is that it is great because it is o, so serious -- a myth propagated by those, I am sure, who do not like to read, not mentioning do not like Russian literature. Two thirds of The Brothers Karamazov is very, very funny. The funnier, the eerier--a correlation non-readers often miss about great literature. 
Your interviewer seems to be a very good reader but why court the non-reading attitude, even in jest? Is it because nowadays, we all have to sell and sugar-coat the activity of serious reading, even to our own children? How sad. 

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