I just read a Dostoevsky essay, “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.” It was about eight to nine thousand words long and the first time I’ve read any of his work. (It was in Adbusters and I force myself to read those mags cover to cover.) I attempted reading his contemporary, Tolstoy last summer but found it fairly impenetrable and quit not too far in. (War and Peace). This essay was engaging and outlined a consequence of death that I don’t discount as possible truth. Something akin to having your consciousness persist after death, helpless to take any action, cemented in the same place for millions of years. A kind of idle hell. That wasn’t the point of the essay, just a place where he put vague drifting thoughts I sometimes have into print eloquently. I don’t agree with the conclusions the essay makes (as I interpret them) but in terms of imagery and craft I found it amazing.
“Staring at someone like that is very disorienting you know?”
“I’m surprised you had enough nerve to come over here.”
“…”
“You don’t recognize me do you?’
“ummm ahhh kind of… I think… no?”
“Faye!”
“Faye?”
“I used to go out with Mike!?”
“Mike?”
“You’re terrible. Saugeen? Two-lower? Faye and Mike?”
“Faye. Wow, you’ve lost a lot of weight!”
“You’re as subtle as a punch in the face.”
“You look so different. what are you still doing here?”
“I’m getting my PhD in theoretical physics. We’re doing some really interesting things in medical blah blah blah. How about you?”
“I’m crying on the inside.”
“Why?”
“I’m still in undergrad.”
“How is that even possible? Don’t they have a time limit?”
“Apparently if you keep paying, you can keep coming back.”
“So what are you going to do with your life?”
“Please don’t ask me that.”
*awkward pause*
“Your glasses are cute. I’ve always liked that style. Like Lisa Loeb”
“Are you still with Merle?”
“Kind of”
“So yes.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re clean shaven. I think you look good with stubble.”
“You know, you said the same thing to me back in second year.”
“It’s cute that you still refer to things by the year of your degree.”
“I shave on Friday and Sunday nights because of work. The old ladies like it.”
“So I just caught you on the wrong day then huh.”
“On Fridays I’m a wolfman.”
“Mmm”
The Ancient Undergrad 
lol…wolfman…oh dear! *gets mental image* I tried to read “War and Peace” too…wow, it’s awfully boring stuff. Anyway…just wanted to say hi 🙂
LikeLike
Here’s another one of us that couldn’t get through ‘War and Peace.’ I tried, I truly did! Dostoevsky can be pretty bad at parts, but I liked him better than Tolstoy. Heidegger (sp?) – the ‘Being and Nothingness’ dude – was hell too. You know, I had no clue there was a Western in Toronto… I mean, I shouldn’t be surprised, but maybe I’m just use to hearing it’s in London.
LikeLike
*whimper*………
That’s my asolute worst fear. Ever since that Tales from the Crypt Episode.
Big meanie bo beanie.
LikeLike
And here I was thinking that you were in Toronto! Now it makes more sense! =P
LikeLike
cute conversatoin… i love listening in… i guess you’d call that easedropping if not invited huh?I like the smell of coconut just not the taste but in the cake my mom cookes it’s wonderful.
LikeLike
“You shouldn’t be allowed in the frozen food section.” “why is that?” “Cause you could melt all this stuff.”
LikeLike
oh, and speaking of Amazons… My senior thesis in college was 104pages on the images of femininity represented in the Wonder Woman comics from 1942-1992. No pop-culture or TV shows, just comics as a psychological and literary device. Fascinating shit. Wonder Woman is my area of expertise.
LikeLike
Sounds more fun than a thesis on protein secondary structure prediction. Half my time is up and I’ve barely started.
LikeLike
Okay. I’d liek to add another comment here, because this has been bugging me all morning. I really hate when people lump Tolstoy and Dostoevsky together just because their both Russian and relatively in the same era. It’s like pretending that Jane Austen and Charles Dickens wrote similar literature. Tolstoy is long-winded in his narrative, his drama overly done, and spends too much time on scenery and agriculture (Dickens). Dostoevsky is insightful, witty, uses caustic sarcasm to dive home a point, the melodrama is necessary to the narrative which focuses on inner though rather than outside characteristics (Austen). Now, I’m not saying that Anna Karenina isn’t a good read, or that some of his short stories aren’t throughly amusing, but let’s be honest: War and Peace is totaly over-rated.
As for Dostoevsky, nothing he has done is over-rated, though some of it is so under-rated that it shifts things out of perspective. Here’s what I suggest: “Notes from the UNderground” is probably only 90pages and has my absolute favorite first few lines. (Then I went off for like two paragraphs about his writing, but it sounded very pedantic so I deleted it).
LikeLike