Tag Archives: book-reviews

Demons (1872) Part 2 Dostoevsky’s novel Demons escalates to its catastrophe when a group’s cherished political opinions lead them to murder an innocent man.  Soon after the gun fires, one of them, Virginsky, loses his mind and starts screaming, “This is not it, this is not it!  No, this is not it at all!”  AnotherContinue reading

Letters (1872-1877) Dostoevsky criticizes the literary world of his time for being conventional, ambiguous, phony, dull—in short, lacking in sincerity and directness. Why?  He thinks that this is what happens to writers who are too afraid of appearing ridiculous.  Sometimes the truth of one’s experience is laughable, and if one becomes too preoccupied with avoidingContinue reading

The Eternal Husband (1870) Velchaninov, the protagonist of Dostoevsky’s novel, The Eternal Husband, is haunted by his conscience.  A part of him knows that he has done wrong and has a longing to make it right.  Trusotsky, a man whom Velchaninov had cuckolded, suddenly reappears in Velchaninov’s life.   Velchaninov is a serial adulterer, andContinue reading

Crime and Punishment (1866) Crime and Punishment is one of the most powerful reading experiences I’ve ever had. It hits me in a deeper way than most novels do. Why? I can’t answer that fully, but I think a factor that may be contributing to this soul-level experience has to do with the novel’s senseContinue reading

The Notebooks for Crime and Punishment (1866) Whenever I read an amazing finished work like Crime and Punishment, I often imagine that the book, in all it’s brilliance, just plopped into Dostoevsky’s head, ready made.  I was reassured to find in his working notebooks that this was not the case.  He took many of theContinue reading

Notes from Underground (1864) Part 1 The Underground Man claims that his reason for writing down episodes from his life twenty years earlier is because “I am particularly oppressed by a certain memory from the distant past.  It came back to my mind vividly a few days ago, and since then, has remained with meContinue reading