STALIN, CLASSICAL PIANIST?

Book critic Michiko Kakutani has the fine habit of writing accurate reviews. I trust them. The other day, though, her review of "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar" struck a weird note. Was Stalin, as she seemed to allege, a classical pianist?

Quoting the book's author, Simon Sebag Montefiore, she wrote:

Stalin, Mr. Montefiore tells us, was a voracious reader of literature: his granddaughter remembered him reading Gogol, Chekhov, Hugo, Thackeray and Balzac. He calmed himself down by "repeatedly playing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23" and took pleasure in cultivating roses and mimosas. Like Hitler, he was also an ardent film buff — among his favorites were "It Happened One Night," "Mission to Moscow," John Ford westerns and anything by Charlie Chaplin.

Literateur? OK. Anybody, even a mass murderer, can fall in love with books. Gardener? Why not? You don't have to be nice Mrs. Minniver. Bulgaria cultivates the world's finest roses. Loves movies? Who doesn't? But did Stalin actually play the piano concerto? Or did he play a recording of it? Big difference.

Still . . . 

I'm grateful to Kakutani for her candid review of Alice Walker's latest novel, "Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart." The review began:

If this novel did not boast the name of Alice Walker, who won acclaim some two decades ago with "The Color Purple," it's hard to imagine how it could have been published. [It] is a remarkably awful compendium of inanities.

Kakutani went on to list them: "New Age inanities," "feminist inanities," "flower children inanities" and "plain old bad writing." I've rarely seen such a withering review by any of the Gray Lady's critics. 

Though I haven't read the novel, judging by the silly non-sequitors I heard Walker deliver last fall in a vapid, rambling address to adoring Barnard College undergrads, Kakutani's verdict must be on the money. Walker may have gotten one thing right, however: She named the novel's heroine Kate Talkingtree.