Amor Towles: A Gentleman in Moscow. NY: Viking, 2016. 462 pp.
(Like all my reviews, this one presumes you have already read the book. That said, there is no need to worry about spoilers.)
To start with, a confession: I am predisposed to like books set in places I am familiar with. More than a decade ago, I used to go to the Hotel Metropol two or three times a week to pick up newspapers. The selection there was the best in town: International Herald Tribune, Moscow Times, Moscow News, The eXile – now all gone except for the Moscow Times, and even that is but a shadow of its former self, and today exists only online. The past no longer has to be distant for nostalgia to set in.
The newspapers were laid out on a table near this staircase.
So I came to this novel prepared to like it. What I found was a good book, with sparks of wisdom and quotable passages. But is it a great one?
Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov lives through a good bit of Soviet history. A Stoic by nature, he comes to terms with his internal exile by adopting a pose of detachment – one which comes easily to him. Born a charming member of the nobility, he becomes a charming member of the staff in the Hotel Metropol – something like Felix Krull in one of his incarnations.
This is the wistful tale of an old-school gentleman who starts wise and ends wiser by learning to adapt to a world turned upside down A living fossil, Count Rostov is a relic of an earlier age who somehow gets by in relative comfort while all around him his homeland undergoes a revolution, war and hardship. Personally, perhaps the greatest bother he encounters occurs when, in a burst of proletarian egalitarianism, the authorities decree that henceforth all wines are to be re-labelled either “red” or “white” – without any further identification.
Much of Towles’ book is an exercise in nostalgia for a more refined age, when people had good breeding and manners, when aristocrats were not snobs but men of innate nobility. This may remind some of the movie “Grand Hotel Budapest,” others of Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday. For me, it’s somewhat reminiscent of “Mr. Belvedere,” the sitcom that ran from 1985-1990 about a butler who went from being in the employ of Winston Churchill to working for Bob Uecker’s family in Pittsburgh. In both cases, the one who should be the master (Count Rostov/Mr. Belvedere) finds himself in the role of servant. An absurd situation to which he adapts himself with aplomb.
A central chapter describes the pleasures of consuming an exquisite repast. Just as tourists in Moscow are even now stopping by the Hotel Metropol, hoping (in vain) to see the very room where the Count lived, those who cannot afford the trip are arranging to have this same meal served to them or preparing it themselves. No doubt this helps explain why this book has become such a hit. Foodies like having their obsession validated by high-brow novelists. For example:
“One first tastes the broth – the simmered distillation of fish bones, fennel, and tomatoes, with their hearty suggestions of Provence. One then savors the tender flakes of haddock and the briny resilience of the mussels, which have been purchased on the docks from the fisherman. One marvels at the boldness of the oranges arriving from Spain and the absinthe poured in the taverns. And all of these various impressions are somehow collected, composed, and brightened by the saffron – that essence of summer sun which, having been harvested in the hills of Greece and packed by mule to Athens, has been sailed across the Mediterranean in a felucca. In other words, with the very first spoonful one finds oneself transported to the port of Marseille – where the streets teem with sailors, thieves, and madonnas, with sunlight and summer, with languages and life.
“The Count opened his eyes.
” ‘Magnifique,’ he said.” (pg. 221 f)
That is some mighty fine writing about soup. Has there been anything better since Proust’s petite madeleine? Six pages are lavished on this exquisite meal, described in loving detail, and enjoyed by a trio of connoisseurs. It takes place at about the time when peasants in the same country were reduced to eating their pets, even to cannibalism. That famine, in which millions died, receives two dutiful paragraphs.
Towles has a gift for turning a phrase, and there are many passages worthy of quotation. “If attentiveness should be measured in minutes and discipline measured in hours, then indomitability must be measured in years.”
Also this one stuck in my mind: “… the Bishop’s [face] expressed the grimace of the inconvenienced” (pg. 408). Somehow that sounded rather familiar. With a little searching, I found a similar expression in Martin Amis’ The Information (1995), where he mentions “the flat smile of the deeply inconvenienced.” I give the nod to Amis for his unobtrusive, implied contrast between “flat” and “deep.”
Towles’ book contains a rather surprising number of passages about Humphrey Bogart, and especially “Casablanca.” I particularly liked this:
“For here was Casablanca, a far-flung outpost in a time of war. And here at the heart of the city, right under the sweep of the searchlights, was Rick’s Café Américain, where the beleaguered could assemble for the moment to gamble and listen to music; to conspire, console, and most importantly, hope. And at the center of this oasis was Rick. As the Count’s friend had observed, the saloonkeeper’s cool response to Ugarte’s arrest and his instruction for the band to play on could suggest a certain indifference to the fates of men. But in setting upright the cocktail glass in the aftermath of the commotion, didn’t he also exhibit an essential faith that by the smallest of one’s actions one can restore some sense of order to the world?” (pg. 458 f)
All in all, good but not great.
Of related interest: See my reviews of Elena Bonner, Mothers and Daughters; Michael Frayn, The Russian Interpreter, Rodric Braithwaite, Moscow 1941; Martin Amis, The Information, and John Lukacs, Confessions of an Original Sinner elsewhere at this site.
© Hamilton Beck
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