The Russian Man Lights His Pipe
War and Peace for Max I am not interested in War and Peace , the epic sweeping drama, my attention is directed toward the Russian man lighting his pipe, his back against the grey exterior wall of the building, as he takes a pull on the pipe the embers ignite, his whiskered cheeks sink in and out like a concertina playing a lively mazurka where the great bear dances. Tolstoy said War and Peace is “not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle.” I am not writing a novel or a poem nor history, it is about these people, the Russian man who, after smoking knocks his pipe against the outer wall, the sooty tobacco, dregs from the bowl onto the ground, takes a stroll down the city sidewalk and suddenly greets a stranger at a bus stop. He would never do this in his country, in St. Petersburg, where there people on the street do not greet one another, they go along with eyes on the ground, downcast, absorbed in their own thoughts of bread, ren...