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
Tag: literature
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
The Idiot
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
All Things Shining, part one
So, I was looking for something to read on the beach last week (other than student papers), and I decided to go with All Things Shining, by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly. Many things were shining that day, so it seemed like a good choice. Actually, with its mix of history, philosophy and literature, … Continue reading All Things Shining, part one
Reading Aloud
After my students too the AP English exam in May, I had some extra time, and wanted to try something new. We're supposed to read The Great Gatsby during the junior course, and, now having read that book something like 10 times, I wanted to mix it up a bit. What I decided to do … Continue reading Reading Aloud
Point Omega
The summer novel-reading season is here. Though this latest effort of Don DeLillo's is probably better designated as a novella, coming in at just less than 120 pages, and they're pretty tiny pages. There's some interesting stuff here - the book is bookended by its protagonist viewing an art installation at the Met in New … Continue reading Point Omega
Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose
A Review of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom "what is most essential to our personhood is not the ends we choose but our capacity to choose them... It makes the individual inviolable only by making him invisible, and calls into question the dignity and autonomy this liberalism seeks above all to secure" (Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the … Continue reading Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose
Roskolnikov’s Final Dream
Throughout Crime and Punishment, dream-sequences intermingle with reality. Roskolnikov especially has a handful fo dreams. Something in the quality of Dostoevsky's prose makes one miss the transitions, so you can read for several pages of what feels like reality before being pulled back by a character waking up. These dreams are used not just to … Continue reading Roskolnikov’s Final Dream
A totally absurd generalization I’d like to discuss
I was listening to the two guys from Sound Opinions talking about their new book, which is apparently a book-length conversation between the two of them about the relative merits of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. While listening to them talk about this for a little bit (it was during the recent WBEZ pledge … Continue reading A totally absurd generalization I’d like to discuss
The Crocodile
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
Original Positions 