“Just Keeping Laughing, Until You Are Dead”

I’m writing an essay about Soviet Jewish identity and I came across this quote:

“Sometimes I do readings and people can’t stop laughing, but I’m reading about pretty tragic things. I think Soviet humor is a desperate humor, rather typical of very different nations, of Jewish people, Ukrainians, and of course, Russians. It’s despair — just keep laughing, until you are dead.”

— Alina Bronsky, interviewed in a New York Times Magazine piece on artists of the Soviet diaspora (via Isak)

I haven’t read Bronsky’s book but she’s someone I’ll be keeping an eye out for.