Blissfully ignoring politics for a week, forgetting to speculate who might be Veep (Oprah? Mikheil Saakashvili?), not even checking on polls, only skipping to the sports section to see how many medals Phelps had (19? 106?). And settling into Animal Farm for light reading. Well, it was in a foreign language, so not so light, but still. A high school book.

Thoroughly detached from the machinations of popular elections, no analogies to transcend, no modern allegories to imbibe. Instead it's a relatively simple story, with Snowball as one of the party leaders who relatively early is forced to flee as a "traitor" and most of the party's problems afterwards blamed on him. There's Squealer who takes the party's maxims and alters them in rather disturbing ways to corrupt or undermine the original (For example, "No animal shall drink alcohol" becomes "No animal shall drink alcohol to excess"), while the blind sheep who follow override any dissension by bleating loudly the only simple platitude they can remember, "Four legs good, 2 legs bad". There's Napoleon, the noble leader who takes on more and more titles and an ever greater aura of infallibility even as his grand goal of a windmill is foiled and his followers are routed in battle - it is all celebrated as victory. And then there's the other side, the neighboring farm owners with whom Napoleon's continually conniving, taking on their ways to the confusion of his own followers. Then there are the party leaders symbolized both by the porkish imbibers of excess and their slovenly undisciplined adoption of behavior they've condemned, as well as the sharp-toothed canines that keep the meek and those protesting too much in line. And finally, there's the sad hero, Boxer, who stoically takes every obstruction and setback as a sign to work harder and organize for the good of the party but despite years of hard work is taken to the bone cleaners at first opportunity, and Benjamin the mule, who clearly sees what's going on but knows to keep his lip buttoned and simply endure the unchanging and burdened existence of farm life as usual despite all promises of change and greater freedom.

So my recommendation for what's left of summer is to take some time to unwind, find a bit of relaxing literature to free yourself from the petty preoccupations and the most recent headlines, to lose yourself in an unlikely and completely foreign scenario, a landscape that could only exist in fiction. Who knows, maybe I'll give up politics completely and revert to writing, to live a more carefree life. It worked for Solzhenitsyn.