The magic 'Moscow'

Astral Weekenders! My latest column, on Ekaterina Sedia's The Secret History of Moscow, is up at the L.A. Times site!

Here is the secret history of my review of The Secret History of Moscow—a Dizzies exclusive:

28 comfortable mask
57 delusional
48 magpies
80 british David 83 seed BOTANY
86 toad (cf starfish)
88-9 rat army
MAGRITTE
113 egg 114 Zemun: Celestial COW
126-7 privilege
165 soup-related 168 memory
169
195 The morning is wiser than the night; 215 The bullet is stupid and the bayonet is wise
196 SIRIN 204 Galina thought it strange that mythological creatures were capable of discussing their own origins
211 “The world used to make sense…he started to doubt that historians on the surface ever got the real meaning of anything.”
215 a brook gurgled in its gentle idiot tongue
MEMORY: Just out of reach: 216 underlying memory forever lost—wax mold of a death mask
225 uniformity of memory 222 Sergey & Yakov’s “mass-manufactured Soviet childhood” SHATTERED KALEIDOSCOPE
221 some unseen lining of the known world
224 you can’t get here under better circumstances
224(9): SLUGGISH SCHIZOPHRENIA 226 skeletons shipwreck
228 You can’t live in 2 worlds Palimpsest of a path
229 CROWN: European — “was there any significance”
230 It was all about escape “suspended between worlds”
Changeless coin
Rats as warmth 234[?]
235 Nike more of a gesture
245 a bear made of rats 246 licking the door of the barn — stories…forgotten…flooded
248 Likyo & Zlyden
like a Russian monster manual
memory—————luck
Yakov & Galina, Fyodor & Oksana
254 like an oil slick: pigeon
261 lullaby — unfamiliar longing — charm/spell/curse
269 Sirin’s spell FEBRILE