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The Banality of the Dead: On Dostoevsky's Bobok
in literature, philosophy
I want to focus on a particular story called Bobok, which first appeared in 1873 in A Writer's Diary. At around 22 pages, Bobok is a short, satirical tale that contains many of the themes that occupied Dostoevsky and that he worked out in greater detail in his novels…
Read MoreOn Ibsen's Enemy of the People
in literature, theater
There is much to be said about Ibsen. I want to focus on one of his plays, An Enemy of the People (1882), which Ibsen wrote partly (or, probably more accurately, very much directly) in response to criticism that he received for his earlier play Ghosts (1881). That play centered on some issues that nineteenth century Norwegian society couldn't much appreciate—things like suffering from hereditary syphilis, sibling incest, and whether or not to opt for euthanasia.
Read MoreOn Portraying Nietzsche, or Whether a Philosopher's Biography Should Be Philosophical
in philosophy
Yesterday, I walked past one of my favorite bookstores and spotted a book in the window that screamed out to me. Aptly titled—and emphatically designed—I could not resist stepping into the place and buying Sue Prideaux's new biography of Nietzsche: I Am Dynamite! I began reading it later that day, huddled up in bed with my cat Tai Tai by my side, and ended up sleeping much too late. So it goes.
Read MoreOn Mallarmé's Tomb for Anatole
in literature, philosophy, poetry
Very few are spared losing someone they love. When it happens, when someone we love dies, a reaction is called for—the loss echoes from the heavens, resounds deep inside of us. Even the absence of an apparent reaction, or perhaps especially such a palpable absence, is part of the response: we are surprised to still be living, we are dismayed that after such a tragedy we can and do still live. Guilt may set in; guilt at not feeling—not continuously, not persistently, not all of our waking moments and for the rest of our lives feeling—the spectacular tragedy of the loss.
Read MoreWays of Seeing: On Bernhard's Old Masters
Thomas Bernhard's novel Old Masters, first published in 1985, consists—true to style—of a single paragraph. The plot is very minimal, as with most of Bernhard's works: the tutor Atzbacher (who is also, apparently, a philosopher, even though he has never published anything) has been summoned for a meeting by his elderly friend Reger at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. For thirty years, Reger has visited the so-called Bordone room, which houses Tintoretto's painting White-Bearded Man, every other day. Precisely every other day.
Read MoreJane Austen and Cognitive Bias
in psychology, literature
Toward the end of Jane Austen's novel Persuasion, protagonist Anne Elliot has a short conversation with Captain Harville, an acquaintance. The conversation is about the constancy of love, and is rather playful, all the more so because the man whom Anne loves—Captain Wentworth—is within earshot. Anne does not know whether Captain Wentworth can hear her, but the possibility that he might lends the conversation special significance. The gist of the conversation is the following: Anne laments what she understands to be a peculiar (and often unfortunate) power of women: that they will keep loving even when "existence or when hope is gone."
Read MoreOn Hugo's Last Day of a Condemned Man
in literature, philosophy
Victor Hugo witnessed the workings of the guillotine at first hand. More than once, in fact, he found himself among crowds of curious, expectant, agitated, hate-filled people awaiting a show of death. Much disgusted and angered by the twisted joy that people seemed to take in it—by the distinct ugliness of the spectacle—he decided to write a book against the death penalty. Apparently, it was the day after Hugo had strolled past an executioner casually preparing the guillotine for its next victim at the Place de l'Hotel de Ville, that he began writing The Last Day of a Condemned Man, which Dostoevsky would consider "absolutely the most real and truthful of everything that Hugo wrote." .
Read MoreOn Dostoevsky's Crocodile
in literature
I take pleasure in reading lesser-known works—whether by writers who are themselves little-known, or by well-known writers whose minor works are overshadowed by major ones. Dostoevsky being my favorite writer, I could fill the pages of this blog with commentary on his fiction (all of which, over the course of several years, I have read). And, over time, I probably will. For now, however, I would like to discuss The Crocodile, a relatively long short story that was first published in the last issue of Epoch—the magazine that Dostoevsky published together with his brother Mikhail from 1864 to 1865.
Read MorePerfectionism and Absurd Creation: Joseph Grand in Camus's The Plague
Albert Camus's novel The Plague, published in 1947, centers on the French-Algerian city of Oran, where thousands of rats are found dead in the streets. At first, only a few inhabitants take notice of this strange event—but soon, as the plague rushes through the city and begins to kill people, too, the nature and meaning of the disease can no longer be ignored. The Plague is probably my favorite novel by Camus; it ranks with other great existentialist/philosophical works of fiction, like Kafka's Trial, Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, Sartre's Nausea, Dazai's No Longer Human, Malraux's Man's Fate, and so on.
Read MoreOn Chekhov's Death of a Clerk
in literature, psychology
I have two different translations of Chekhov's July 1883 story The Death of a Clerk: one in the collection Stories, by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky [P&V], and the other in the collection Forty Stories, by Robert Payne. I prefer the former, but I'll be sharing excerpts from each. Preference aside, as I always tell people, I try to read as many translations of my favorite works as possible—especially when it comes to Russian literature. That's the only way to gain as complete an understanding of the text in question as possible, if you cannot read it in the original language.
Read MoreThe Strangeness of Anna Kavan
in literature
Anna Kavan was born in 1901, but she did not exist until 1940. Now, I am not particularly fond of riddles; I cannot tolerate the position of not knowing for very long. Taking to heart Steinbeck's dictum in The Winter of Our Discontent that (I paraphrase) no one really knows about other human beings, so that the best thing we can do is suppose that they are like us, I will quickly reveal the clue. Anna Kavan was the name of a fictional character in two novels by Helen Emily Wood—Let Me Alone (1930) and A Stranger Still (1935). Wood began to use Anna Kavan as a nom de plume, and then, in a move that—as far as I know—is utterly unique in the history of literature, legally changed her name to that of her fictional character.
Read MoreAt the Hospital: Notes on Medicine and Bulgakov
in literature, medicine
I am sitting in the clinically clean-looking lobby of the hospital, where a tree of colorful balloons extending from a bucket fails to give cheer to the large, hollow space. The inside of my left arm throbs—the epicenter of the pangs, on the soft inside of my elbow, is where the needle punctured my skin first and then a vein. Part of me stayed behind in the little office tucked within the belly of the hospital. A vial of my blood—is it still my blood? It will share intimate details about me, soon, as it is processed in the laboratory. But it is no longer part of my system. It no longer helps my body function.
Read MoreThe Joy of Wodehouse
in literature
Perhaps it was a tendency to be drawn to literature's heavier side that prompted my girlfriend to give me a copy of Very Good, Jeeves. I had never read anything by Wodehouse before. I confess: I had never even heard of the good man—Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, affectionately called 'Plum'. But my girlfriend knows me well; she knows my taste in literature and my sense of humor. With regard to the latter, she knows especially how incredibly selective I am when it comes to 'practitioners' of humor. She gave me Wodehouse, and trusted that it would turn out well.
Read MoreSadness: Hemingway and Chekhov
in literature
While reading Islands in the Stream, the last book that Hemingway wrote before he died, I am struck by the sadness that runs throughout the novel. Hemingway controversially considered Turgenev the greatest writer there ever was. While I love Turgenev's writing—from the sentimental First Love across the melancholy Diary of a Superfluous Man to the masterpiece that is Sketches from a Hunter's Album—it takes a certain kind of passionate partiality to call him the greatest writer there was.
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