A Writer’s Diary – 1876-1877

For Christmas, Brooke got me a record player. Since then I’ve probably bought 20-25 records at Reckless Records in Chicago, almost all classical. You can buy just about anything you want there for between $1 and $4. It’s really fun to listen to all that music on record, for reasons that are obviously as nostalgic … Continue reading A Writer’s Diary – 1876-1877 →

The Adolescent

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 →

The Adolescent/A Raw Youth

I haven't finished this second-to-last Dosteovsky novel yet, so I just have a couple of random things to share from it: a look backward to Shakespeare, a look forward to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and some random thoughts on laughter. 1) A pattern of allusions to Othello - I have to think this out further, but the … Continue reading The Adolescent/A Raw Youth →

A Writer’s Diary – 1873

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 →

Pushkin on Painting and Shoemaking

I'm midway through the first year (1873) of Dostoevsky's proto-blog A Writer's Diary. (2 volumes, Northwestern University Press, trans. Kenneth Lantz) Basically it's a whole bunch of short articles, which were published intermittently, and which deal in various subjects - some short stories, some replies to letters he's been sent, some rants directed at obscure … Continue reading Pushkin on Painting and Shoemaking →

Demons – Final Thoughts

[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 →

Demons – Part Three

“… 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 →

Demons – Part Two

: "...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 →

Demons – Part One

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 →

The Eternal Husband

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 →