Five Articles from Time (1861) A chainsaw is great for felling trees. It isn’t a great pillow. Getting to know a chainsaw’s strengths and weaknesses can help me use it more effectively. The same is true for fiction. Dostoevsky explores what fiction does well in articles he wrote for his journal, Time.* What FictionContinue reading
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The Village at Stepanchikovo (1859) A quick glance out my window will tell me that the leaves beyond it are green. But if I take the time to study those leaves, I will notice all sorts of shades within that green. The same is true of any field. What are just teeth to a laymanContinue reading
Uncle’s Dream (1859) Nothing is as it appears in Dostoevsky’s novella, Uncle’s Dream. Marya hides her Machiavellian viciousness under the guise of a gracious hostess. She and her arch-nemesis act like besties. Her husband looks imposing in his white cravat—until he opens his mouth and reveals he’s an adorably absurd man-child. The Prince looks youngContinue reading
Letters 1849-1859 A few years ago, I read several craft books that left me with the impression that the best writing was improvised—that the real authors were like jazz musicians who could just jam with a natural flow. I heard that Robert Frost quote: “No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader,” andContinue reading
“A Little Hero” (1857) “A Little Hero” has a marvelous ability to render a breadth of situations and characters that give the story a lifelike quality, all the while unifying it all through a central theme, much like Netochka Nezvanova. This theme of the dangers of the attention we can pay each other is wellContinue reading
Netochka Nezvanova (1849) One of the marvels of great fiction is its ability to embrace the complexity of experience and at the same time to shape it into a meaningful unity. Part One of Dostoevsky’s Netochka Nezvanova is a masterpiece of such complex unity. It opens with Efimov, Netochka’s step-father. Efimov is both focused andContinue reading
“White Nights” (1848) I often think of desire as a fundamental element of fiction. In most stories, a character wants something, but an obstacle hinders fulfillment. The vast majority of stories operate this way. But there’s a snag to this sort of storytelling. It just doesn’t square with my experience. To want something wholly, withContinue reading
A Christmas Tree and a Wedding (1848) The basic outline of “A Christmas Tree and a Wedding” is quite conventional. The affinity between a boy and girl is threatened by the girl’s grotesque suitor, whose social position enamors the girl’s parents. I’ve heard variations on this theme many times. But Dostoevsky’s version has some oddContinue reading
An Honest Thief (1848) If I’m going to write fiction, I must be curious about people. That’s vital. But if one of these people, say a roofer come to fix my leaking chimney, actually knocks on my door, two inner voices can drown out my ears of curiosity. The first voice calls curiosity unnecessary. “YourContinue reading
Another Man’s Wife, or the Husband Under the Bed (1848) In Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man, the narrator claims that the best readers look for “more reality, than real life itself can show.” An actor’s body is more expressive than a candid person’s because the actor must reveal what a person experiences but cannot express. FictionContinue reading
