I just finished reading Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin, a semi-autobiographical novel about a sad Russian emigre curmudgeon academic — based on his experience teaching in America and all the time he spent among the hordes of “cultured” White Russian emigres that suddenly swamped western institutions of higher learning after the Russian Revolution.
kinda think this problem is common to all the European cultures destroyed by the wars of the 20th century. The brain drain that followed gave America a chance to integrate sophisticated European traditions but we fumbled.
Integration failed because we are essentially an odd collection of bumpkins and imperialists. Foreign cultures, if not mistrusted outright, are fed into a process of aggressive assimilation.
The soil here is barren; nothing of value survives.
kinda think this problem is common to all the European cultures destroyed by the wars of the 20th century. The brain drain that followed gave America a chance to integrate sophisticated European traditions but we fumbled.
Integration failed because we are essentially an odd collection of bumpkins and imperialists. Foreign cultures, if not mistrusted outright, are fed into a process of aggressive assimilation.
The soil here is barren; nothing of value survives.