russian literature
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 MoreI 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 MoreI 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 MoreI 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.
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