FSG Reading Series: Roman Kaplan Holds Court at Russian Samovar

The New York Observer, January 21st, 2008

Roman Kaplan, the majestic owner of the Russian Samovar, used to have a blog, but he stopped updating it in October because the people who were doing the typing and translating for him weren’t doing a good job. (The most recent entry is full of references to "Susan Contag." Oops!) Last Thursday night, standing before an expansive dining table surrounded by guests on the second floor of his restaurant, the intellectual ex-pat said he wished he still had a blog so that he could write about this wonderful night.

Mr. Kaplan’s guests had come to Russian Samovar for the inauguration of the new Farrar, Straus & Giroux reading series. Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land, and Richard Price, who has written seven novels and more recently, some scripts for The Wire, both read some of their latest fiction. 150 or so people showed up, among them Zadie Smith, Viking editor Joshua Kendall, some literary agents, and some young editors from the New York Review of Books. Most everyone was gone by the time Mr. Kaplan moved the festivities into the private dining room.

The chosen few who joined him, maybe 20 in all, had gained entry to the after-party by various means: one of them was Mr. Lipsyte, one was a reporter from WNYC, several were people who worked for FSG, and some of the rest were their friends. Some were there because they happened to be in the room or out on the smoking balcony when Mr. Kaplan announced that dinner was about to begin.

As people shuffled in and took their seats—and as the uninvited played along—young women started bringing in plates of salmon (in Russian simply called “red fish”), dark bread, caviar, pirozhki, eggplant, and salad. The room was brightly lit at the center but dim around the edges; two thick, velvet drapes hung along the back wall, half-covering the glass doors to the balcony.

Stragglers were welcomed. “Join us!” Mr. Kaplan sang. “But you have to bring your own chairs. Put one here, that’s for the girl.”

A minute later he was standing in the corner of the room with a glass of pomegranate vodka in his hand and addressing his guests.

“One of the ideas behind the series was to give homage to Joseph Brodsky,” he said. Brodsky, the poet, opened the Russian Samovar with Mr. Kaplan and Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1986 and died in 1996. Today, a photograph of Brodsky stands on a display shelf in the dining room, surrounded by seven formidable samovars.

“In his honor, this whole thing began,” Mr. Kaplan continued. “And on every day of his birth and of his death, which is going to be on the 28th of January, we get together here and we read poetry.”

A minute later he declared his intention to offer a toast in the form of a poem by Osip Mandelstam. He had found a young bilingual man named Alex Abramovich, seated to his left, to translate the poem into English. Mr. Abramovich introduced himself to the room as Sasha before Mr. Kaplan began the poem.

As he read, recently promoted FSG editor Lorin Stein, who is spearheading the Samovar reading series with assistant editor Gena Hamshaw, stood in the back corner of the room and took sheepish sips from a glass of vodka; Mr. Abramovich, anticipating the task of translation, listened from his seat with terror in his eyes.

“So this is the toast,” Mr. Kaplan said once he was finished. “Sasha?”

“Wow,” Mr. Abramovich said. He thought about it for a moment and said, “The condensed version is, ‘shit is fucked up all over, but we will persevere.’”

People around the table laughed a little but Mr. Kaplan looked unhappily at the floor.

“No…” he said, and everyone laughed again.

Mr. Abramovich, who edits Flavorpill New York, protested from his seat (“I am not a professional!”) but Mr. Kaplan shook his head. “We will not persevere,” he said. “We will not persevere, but we must try.” He raised his glass: “To poetry, guys!”

Later, a young man who said he was applying for a job at the New York Review of Books the next day, comforted Mr. Abramovich. “I really dug your translation,” he said. “It felt honest.”

“Thank you,” Mr. Abramovich answered. “It was catch as catch can.”

Mr. Kaplan went around the table and asked the young men who were sitting near him who they were. One of them worked at Time Out New York.

“Time Out? I know Time Out! We were in Time Out once,” he said. “Of course I don’t read the magazine – I read the New York Book Review”—he meant the New York Review of Books—“which is a phenomenal, really incredible publication. The best. The best in English language anywhere. And I read New Yorker because the guy who edits it, David Remnick, is a kind of a pal of mine. And it’s going on fairly well, because everybody thought it would die, yeah? But it’s not dying. And I am friends with a wonderful lady who is the editor of The Nation. Katrina, yes, Katrina.”

As the evening crawled on, young women (whom Mr. Kaplan addressed tenderly as “sunshine”) brought in plates of Russian dumplings and carafes of vodka.

“Who wants plain vodka?” Mr. Kaplan hollered.

He poured all around and then drank his. “Strong stuff!” he said, which you’d think after all this time he wouldn’t.

Around midnight, Ms. Hamshaw, the young assistant editor who is organizing the reading series with Mr. Stein, approached Mr. Kaplan to say goodbye.

He took her hands in his, and she explained that they were cold because she’d been out on the balcony.

“You have my love to keep you warm,” he told her, staring into her eyes.

For the rest of the evening, Mr. Kaplan held court at his seat and talked about Moscow and what his life in America has been like since he moved here in the 70s. When he heard that Mr. Abramovich’s father was a poet, he asked him what his name was. “Ah!” he said. “Of course I know him; he was a dissident!”

People shuffled out around 2am; Mr. Kaplan had by this time disappeared to greet people who had been eating and drinking downstairs.

The next FSG reading series will be held at the Samovar on January 31st in mid-February. Take our advice and hover around afterwards until the VIPs assume you’re one of them.