I’m re-reading (after a gap of perhaps 20 years), Vladimir Nabokov’s autobiography. I’d forgotten how good it is: simply ravishing. I keep annoying my companions by reading passages to them. Passages like this description of his Swiss governess:

A large woman, a very stout woman, Mademoiselle rolled into our existence in December 1905 when I was six and my brother five. There she is. I see so plainly her abundant dark hair, brushed up high and covertly graying; the three wrinkles on her austere forehead; her beetling brows; the steely eyes behind the black-rimmed pince-nez; that vestigial mustache; that blotchy complexion, which in moments of wrath develops an additional flush in the region of the third, and amplest, chin so regally spread over the frilled mountain of her blouse. And now she sits down, or rather she tackles the job of sitting down, the jelly of her jowl quaking, her prodigious posterior, with the three buttons on the side, lowering itself warily; then, at the last second, she surrenders her bulk to the wicker armchair, which, out of sheer fright, bursts into a salvo of crackling.

Watching Nabokov handling the English language is like watching a Rostropovich handling a cello; effortless mastery. I think I have a pretty wide vocabulary, but I’m being driven to consult dictionaries just to check that he isn’t having me on. Page 28, for instance, required three separate checks — of ‘fatidic’, ‘hypnagogic’ and ‘palpebral’. Speak Memory! isn’t for speed readers. But if you like seeing a genius at the top of his game, it’s a delight.

Nothing highlights the intellectual bankruptcy of the Bush regime better than the President’s and Condoleeza Rice’s posturing over Putin’s humiliation of Georgia. There’s a terrific essay by Jeffrey Tayler in The Atlantic which dissects the Bush administration’s failure to think through the implications of its enthusiasm for President Saakashvili’s regime. The asymmetry of Georgia’s dustup with Russia, Tayler argues, “has obscured both the United States’ culpability in bringing about the conflict, and the nature of the separatism that caused it in the first place”. Excerpt:

As Russian bombs rained down on Georgia and Saakashvili pleaded for help from the West and for a cease-fire from Moscow, Putin stated bluntly that “Georgia’s aspiration to join NATO . . . is driven by its attempt to drag other nations and peoples into its bloody adventures,” and warned that, “the territorial integrity of Georgia has suffered a fatal blow.” The Bush administration answered with boilerplate language of protest, failing even to dispatch Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region until six days later for rounds of shuttle diplomacy. Saakashvili complained that “all we got so far are just words, statements, moral support, humanitarian aid.” But neither the United States nor Europe will risk Armageddon for Georgia. For Saakashvili, game over.

The United States has, for all intents and purposes, abandoned Saakashvili, the poster-boy of the color revolutions, and left him at the mercy of Putin, who appears bent on exacting revenge. Moscow and the separatist leaders in both republics have pledged to charge Saakashvili in the Hague for genocide. The lessons that emerge from the Russia-Georgia war are clear: Russia is back, the West fears Russia as much as it needs it, and those who act on other assumptions are in for a rude, perhaps violent, awakening…

Yep. Fukuyama’s thesis seems a bit threadbare now. History’s back in business.

Later: Maureen Dowd has a furious column about Bush’s frivolity which includes this gem:

Despite his 1999 prediction that Russia and China would be key to security in the world, W. never bothered to study up on them. In 2006, at the Group of Eight summit meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, a microphone caught some of the inane remarks of W. to President Hu Jintao of China.

“This is your neighborhood,” W. said. “It doesn’t take you long to get home. How long does it take you to get home? Eight hours? Me, too. Russia’s a big country and you’re a big country.”

Still later: The NYT has a thoughtful analysis of what went wrong. Summary:

The story of how a 16-year, low-grade conflict over who should rule two small, mountainous regions in the Caucasus erupted into the most serious post-cold-war showdown between the United States and Russia is one of miscalculation, missed signals and overreaching, according to interviews with diplomats and senior officials in the United States, the European Union, Russia and Georgia.

For the match against Scotland, England will be without Ryan Sidebottom, who is suffering from pains in his hip, groin and neck.

Do we really need to know the grisly details?

[Source]

Ronnie Drew, the lead singer (and co-founder) of The Dubliners, has died at the age of 73. He was an iconic figure in my youth, with a voice that was once memorably described as “the mating call of a rusty file”. His rheumy eyes, rude lyrics and wicked expression always suggested that he was a rogue, but I have a suspicion that he was a very nice man underneath all that. He was much loved in Ireland (both the President and the Taoiseach issued tributes yesterday) and will have one hell of a funeral. I’d go if I were in Ireland.