War and Peace/ Gone with the Wind
I believe it was Ezra Pound who called Europe "an old bitch civilization gone in the teeth." Europe, despite being "gone in the teeth," has quite an appetite for all things American.
"Gone with the Wind" is the American transliteration of the transmongrified "War and Peace," a monstrously long novel about the inability to group a set of happenings as an event per se since eyewitnesses were too busy dreaming to see the real events before their own eyes, googles and gollops of gravy-train events rollicking along at the speed of light. Primary Sources are not all that reliable when people see what they want to see.
One can never tell whether Tolstoy is making fun of the Russian Emperor Alexander or just infinitely mesmerized by him. Tolstoy appetite for young girls is well-known but for effete emperors?
Ashley is being made fun of or is he simply rendered in black and white, flat? What's black and white and black and white and black and white. A nun falling down the stairs? Or the notes of a piano?
