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I know I promised to pipe down about the book but things keep happening and I have to share or I’ll burst into flames.

I received an email from a famous professor of Ukrainian philology in Kyiv. He obtained the manuscript of my book and says it’s a diamond in the rough. The rough part being my command of Ukrainian. He edited the whole book, making hundreds of changes. Literally, hundreds. When you make a mistake, you tend to repeat it on every page, which is why there are so many corrections. For instance, in Ukrainian you don’t say “the people who”. You say “the people that”, of which I had absolutely no idea. Plus, there are some cultural things and connotations of which I’m ignorant. So he changed all that. It took me all day to wade through the corrected proofs.

It’s incredible how sweet people are. The professor apologized 3 times for correcting my manuscript. Like I’d be offended that people want to help for free.

There are other things he said that I won’t repeat because they are so complimentary that I feel embarrassed.

The book hasn’t been published yet. And already there’s all this support and interest in the pre-production stage. I’m stunned and overwhelmed.

3 responses to “More Book News”

  1. Avi Avatar
    Avi

    I have so far abstained from commenting on your wonderful news, but I’d like to say a few words which might help to provide context for what may seem at times emotional gushing – which is totally deserved but still emotional, whereas, from reading your blog for the past five years you do not seem to be the emotional type at all.

    Over the past two decades Ukraine has emerged from pre-modernity into modernity proper. That’s a world where rules still make sense, where objectivity is not held on a par with subjectivity, where individuals are not seen as solitary satellites orbiting on their own in a meaningless universe but rather as significant components of a meaningful whole, where society requires people not so much to yield their individuality but rather to co-operate to the building of a sum that is greater than its constituent parts.

    We in the West used to have this, it is what made us and our countries great. However, most of Europe and the rest of the West – the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand – are now irredeemably no longer modern, their elites having been brainwashed into post-modernity. Even the few countries – Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Japan – that so far have not been totally engulfed by the nonsense that is the Adorno-Horkheimer-inspired post-modern wokistry are on the way to the same s**t-pile. I can only hope that Ukrainians can see the light and that by winning against Russia they are able stay on the side of modernity without sliding into our post-modern madness.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Thank you, dear Avi. This is exactly what this is about. What makes me happy isn’t that I’m getting another publication for my CV. God knows, I have no problem getting published. But I do feel like I have a mission to warn Ukrainians about the dangers of sliding into postmodernism. That’s what my book is about.

      The person who interviewed me for “Contemporary Ukrainian Literature” asked me if I think it’s even possible to resist the implantation of postmodern mentality. And I said, absolutely. Often humanity takes the wrong direction but then realizes it and walks back from it. In Ukraine, people instinctively feel that something is wrong. Those who have read my book in pre-production keep saying, “I knew something was wrong. And now I understand what it is very clearly.”

      Our collective journey back from this lunacy has to start from somewhere. I think Ukraine is a great place for this because it’s both completely Western and almost entirely non-postmodernized.

      Thank you for understanding and articulating it so well.

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  2. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “professor apologized 3 times for correcting my manuscript. Like I’d be offended that people want to help”

    One of my side hustles used to be language editing for things written in English (mostly by Polish speakers occasionally some others) and some people can get kind of….. spicy when you point out errors in usage (or questions of style which are far more common and harder to explain….) so I understand his viewpoint.

    Before I began charging (rather than as an occasional favor) one of my best experiences was an archeology doctoral student who actually paid attention. I would mention something (or he’d ask a question) and the same problem wouldn’t appear again (or he’d be apologetic and didn’t know what else to do in that case).

    That spoiled me and very few since have made any effort to change or incorporate my suggestions…..

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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