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 →

It struck me as strange that the author of Notes from Underground would next write "The Crocodile," an allegorical, theater-of-the-absurd type story to have been published in D's dying periodical Epoch.  After all, Notes from Underground was an innovative exercise in narrative technique, with all sorts of interestingly problematic aspects.  "The Crocodile", by contrast, is … Continue reading The Crocodile →