This is Dostoevsky's penultimate novel.  I had read in a couple of different places that this was the weakest of his major works, and it turns out (at least to me) they were right.  In fact I have very little to say about it.  Let's see. A brief summary: The first-person narrator, Dolgoruky, is the illegitimate son … Continue reading The Adolescent →

A wide range of themes were treated upon in 1873's "Diary."  Like I've said before, this reads a lot like a blog, even this one.  Sometimes it's a review of a play, sometimes a travelogue, sometimes random complaints.  It would be hard to write about all of these as a unified whole, so I've picked … Continue reading A Writer’s Diary – 1873 →

[This post also marks my completion of Volume 4 (of 5) of Frank’s biography.  Of course, volume 5 appears longer than volumes 1 and 2 combined, so who knows when/if I’ll finish?] “Now read me another passage. . . . About the pigs,” [Stepan] said suddenly. “What?” asked Sofya Matveyevna [a villager whose hose the … Continue reading Demons – Final Thoughts →

“… I declared everything had happened to the highest degree by chance, through people who, though perhaps of a certain inclination, had very little awareness, were drunk, and had already lost the thread.   I am still of that opinion.” (540) The narrator is describing a singular event and how he later testified - but this … Continue reading Demons – Part Three →

: "...this town here is like the devil took and shook it from a sack" (Fedya the Convict - p. 260) This post discussed Part Two of "Demons" - I'll follow up with Part Three when I've finished. Let me start by saying that the second reading of this book as been far, FAR more … Continue reading Demons – Part Two →

This is the kind of book you need to be really, really attentive to in order not to get lost.  I read it two summers ago and spent most of that time thoroughly confused, with only the barest notion of the characters or the plot.  I'm thinking that as I read it again I'll be … Continue reading Demons – Part One →

As compared with The Idiot, this book was way, way easier to understand.  As opposed to the 15+ randomly related cast of characters, most of the main action of this (also much shorter) novella takes place between two principal characters: Valchaninov, an almost 40 urbane Petersburg bachelor, and Pavlov Pavlovich, a provincial official and serial … Continue reading The Eternal Husband →

The Idiot "... We feel that we must limit ourselves to the simple statement of facts, as far as possible without special explanations, and for a very simple reason: because we ourselves, in many cases, have difficulty explaining what happened" (The Idiot, trans. Peaver and Volokhonsky, 573) So writes the on-again off-again omniscient narrator towards … Continue reading The Idiot →