Scenes from the Leninka

Googling myself, I found a quote I didn't even know was there (and now I can't find it) in the Chronicle of Higher Education, where I characterize the Lenin Library in Moscow as a "feast of humanity." Which is true. Funny thing is, I feel the same way about New Jersey and the metro area, when I'm out and about. I'm rather consistent in my focus decade to decade: maybe it's Balzac I want to be after all.

But back to the Leninka. A mighty shithole it is, while at the same time a real research library. You had to have some academic standing to get in there, and even then you had to stand in line for an hour or so to get in, though us foreigners got shuffled to the front of our own line, and seated in the presitigious Reading Room #1 along with Academics (a rank) and heros of the Great Patriotic War (WWII). It was cold in there, run down. Even the ferns were sad. One guy almost hacked up a lung regularly.

To smoke you went to the basement, by the bathrooms. Not a nice place. Smelly. Right across from the little buffet. There was one guy in there with thick glasses, who basically spent the whole day roaming around picking up cigarette butts so he could roll his own. Always wore the same sweater, he did. Surely a guy who had some rank back in the day and still had the piece of paper to prove it.

Ah Leninka. Ah humanity.