How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
I am so happy because you were appeased by the first division that I posted to you. You must know that I have performed the corrections you demanded. (4.6)
Alex's letters to Jonathan show us that Jonathan has been helping Alex edit his writing, which are the present-day chapters we're reading about their quest to find Augustine. It's all very meta, reading a book that's about writing a book. (Now, where'd we put that totem?)
Quote #2
Many of the names you exploit are not truthful names for Ukraine. […] Did you invent them? There were many mishaps like this, I will inform you. Are you being a humorous writer here, or an uniformed one?
Score one for Alex. What's the line between writing a humorous book and inventing—or, ahem, exploiting—a culture? Is Jonathan really uninformed, or is he just unethical?
Quote #3
We must review last month's entries. We must go backward in order to go forward. (6.13)
Here, we're learning about the Book of Recurrent Dreams, a place where everyone in the shtetl writes down their dreams. Their dreams say something about themselves and about the village. The idea is that, if they write them down and read them, they'll stop having the same dream over and over again. (We're not sure we'd want to write down all our dreams—especially where anyone else might read them. Just sayin'.)