One of the books I own is a copy of Thornton Wilder’s The Ides of March, which Wilder himself annotated, page by page. The Ides of March, as you might guess, concerns Julius Caesar and his last days, and it set in Rome, about 2000 years ago.

In one of his annotations to the preface, Wilder writes: “It looks as though this book required a lot of historical learning on the part of the reader (and the author). HORSEFEATHERS. I knew no more than anyone who happened to read a book about the late Roman Republic. I began and made it all up as I went along. Later, I went back to the libraries and cleaned it up a bit. I simply assumed that people have been much same in all times and places.”

I actually have never read The Ides of March, and don’t know what I think of it as a novel. The reviews were quite mixed, but I have not read them either.

But I have read Amos Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow. I read it shortly after it was published in 2016. I read it because so many friends had raved about it. I didn’t like it at all. I may be the only one.

The reason I didn’t like it is that it was neither factually conceivable, nor very well done fantasy. And it didn’t present itself as a fantasy. Rather, it seemed to have been written in a this-could-have-happened style, even if it didn’t. HORSEFEATHERS.

Towles is apparently a child of fortune. His father, his Wikipedia bio says, was an investment banker and philanthropist. He went to Yale and Stanford, and spent some time on a fellowship in China. Was he ever in the Soviet Union? Or in Russia? I don’t know the answer to that, but if he has been, it was probably on a brief vacation or business trip.

If you look up the book itself on Wikipedia, you will see that Towles says he got the idea of the book from the time he spent in luxury hotels in Switzerland (yes, that’s what he said – no matter how many times you read it over) and the fact that Russia has a tradition of “house arrest”. I frankly know little of the Russian tradition of house arrest – unless the house that someone was chained to was somewhere in Siberia, perhaps – but Russia’s tradition of internal exile was far from house arrest (someone might be confined to a city, or a region, but to their own house?).

In the book, and the new miniseries (more on that below), the Metropol post-revolution remained just as it was in tsarist times. In fact, this was not so – it was almost immediately converted into quarters (living and work) for Soviet bureaucrats. Later it was turned back into a hotel – but largely for foreign visitors. The idea that it remained as the host of formally attired Russians is absurd.

Further, Russia was chaos during the early and middle years of the Soviet system. Nothing was as clean as the book and series presents, with just occasional interruptions of an elegant life by cartoon-like Soviet officials and soldiers. The problems of the Soviet Union were much more serious than a lack of veal for the hotel restaurant’s saltimbocca.

I was curious to see what the 4 part mini-series, which dropped (is that the correct word?) on Paramount/Showtime recently, would be like. Would they rescue the flawed book? Alas, no chance.

We watched the first two episodes last night. All of the problems of the book are still there. Plus two.

For reasons only known in the UK, it appears that all television series originating there must have a requisite number of Black and Indian actors. I have noticed this for several years – but never researched the background. Normally, it is pretty much irrelevant. You know it might not be exactly like this in real life, but honestly, who cares? But in a historical drama, I care.

There were very few Blacks in pre-revolutionary Russia, Pushkin’s grandfather notwithstanding. But in the TV version of A Gentleman, 10% to 20% of Russians turn out to be Afro-Russian, including some of the main characters. And while I am not sure we have seen any south Asians yet, I bet you they will surface by the end of Episode 4.

And, secondly, something that never occurred to me reading the book. That is that all Russians speak English (even though they sing in Russian) with a heavy aristocratic English accent. Who knew?

Yes, I am going to watch the final two episodes, although nothing can correct the problems of the first two (and nothing will attempt to correct those deficiencies).

And yes, I understand that I am in a small minority here. But that has never bothered me. When you grow up in St. Louis rooting for the Browns and not the Cardinals, you learn how to live in the minority.