No Relation No. 7
In the 7 th installment of the ongoing No Relation series--which
sorts out newsmakers with confusingly similar names--Explainer takes on the
Gessens and Glennys, as well as the many variations of Kaczynskis:
Masha Gessen is the chief correspondent for Itogi , the Russian
affiliate of Newsweek . Her reports on the turmoil in post-Communist
Russia have appeared in the New Republic , the Christian Science
Monitor , the Moscow Times (the city's English language daily), and
Slate
(click here to read her assessment of
Viktor Chernomyrdin and here for one of her
"Dispatches from Hell"--Russia's extreme north). In 1997, she authored Dead
Again: The Russian Intelligentsia After Communism and edited Half a
Revolution , a collection of contemporary stories by Russian women.
Recently, Gessen has filed occasional reports from the Balkans, which is
where Misha Glenny gained notoriety. Glenny was the BBC's Central Europe
correspondent before and during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. His
long-term perspective on the region landed him frequently on NPR, as well as in
the New York Times , Harper's , and Foreign Affairs . After
writing a book on the roots of the Yugoslavian wars, he is now working as an
independent journalist. His second book--a history of Balkan nationalism--will
be published in early 2000. Misha's father, Michael Glenny , is
well-known for his translations of Russian works. Most of his
translations--including Mary , Nabokov's first novel--are of literature,
but he also translated Boris Yeltsin's autobiography, Against the
Grain .
The name Kaczynski is, of course, most closely associated with the
Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski , who is serving a life term in federal prison.
Kaczynski is appealing his sentence, maintaining his confession was not
voluntary--a claim that will be heard by the 9 th Circuit Court of
Appeals. One of the judges on that court is Alex Kozinski, who has also
participated in
Slate
's "Breakfast
Table ." But the jurist should not be confused with Alex
Kuczynski , the New York Times media reporter, formerly of the New
York Observer . She ruffled feathers most recently with her unflattering
assessment of Tina Brown's Talk , charging the magazine with selling out
to promote Miramax films.
Ryszard Kapuscinski , too, is a journalist. But he is best-known for
his 1991 book, The Soccer War , which chronicles the horrors he witnessed
covering 27 revolutions and coups for the Polish Press Agency between 1958 and
1980. Jerzy Kosinski , another Polish-born author, won wide praise for
The Painted Bird , a fictionalized version of his experiences as a child
during World War II (he was separated from his parents and traveled alone
through Poland and Russia to escape the Nazis). He is also author of
Chance , which won the National Book Award, and Being There , which
was turned into a movie starring Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine. He
committed suicide in 1991.
Previously in this series, the
Explainer tackled the
Cohens
(two Stephens, three Richards), the
Rays
(two Elizabeths), the
Hirschfelds
(Abe and Al), the
Strausses
(Robert and R. Peter), the
Broders
(Jonathan, John M., and David), and the Moores
(three Michaels).
Have you noticed people in the news with confusingly similar names? Send
your suggestions to Explainer
.
