A gentleman, indeed, a dignified,
intelligent, crafty soul who exemplifies “Stone walls do not a prison make nor
iron bars a cage” – that is Count Rostov. Gaining insight into himself and the
world, he lives 32 years within the Hotel Metropol, Moscow. While no cage is
literally presented in the novel, an endlessly revolving door through which the
Count could not travel, kept him captive. What crime did he commit in 1922 to deserve such punishment.
What beauty in the turn
of a phrase, the witticisms of Towles and the Count, the interplay of ordinary workers
who combine to populate a seemingly unfathomable world within four walls all
captivated my imagination and kept me turning pages. Delightful conversations held me captive.
I love allusions, innuendo,
and irony in literature and this novel overflows. Casablanca, the
movie with Humphrey Bogart, is one of the final references while novels like Tolstoy’s
War and Peace along with Anna Karenina, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment,
Checkov’s The Cherry Orchard take their turn (Thank you Meta Wallace-freshman literature HSU). Watching Casablanca along with the novel's characters, I heard
the dialogue and visualized Rick and his admonition to the pianist, Sam.
The beauty that was Russia as in Fabrege' eggs of St. Petersburg, and how and why it changed and what an impact the 1950s and 1960s would have on the
country’s culture, as told by a novelist, was mesmerizing. Even America was spotlighted
from the novelist’s and an eastern viewpoint.
As in a romance novel, I wanted the Count’s ladies, Nina, Sophia, Marina, and Anna to be his
salvation. My prayer was answered when the Chief Administrator, a bad-guy at
the novel’s beginning, advised his patrolmen to “round up the usual suspects.”
The novel has become a
favorite. In the time of war, even Casablanca offers hope. When Rick
sets up the cocktail glass on a customer’s table, “the glass having been
knocked over in the midst of the turmoil and commotion of the skirmish,” Towles
reminds the reader that “…essential faith (that comes) by the smallest of one’s
actions can restore some sense of order to the world”
