Tag Archives: fiction

The Gambler (1866) Whenever I read, I hunger for goodness.  If I start to suspect that the book doesn’t have any, I lose interest. But here’s the thing—goodness is difficult to write about.  Why?  It might be in the nature of how I taste goodness.  Take the goodness of pizza.  My experience of this goodnessContinue reading

Notes from Underground (1864) Part 2 When I first ingest the words of Notes from Underground’s narrator, the Underground Man, I think, “Wow, this guy is really eccentric.”  Then I keep reading, and I think, “Dostoevsky seems to be deliberately trying to make a personality that is as contradictory as possible—how can such a disjointedContinue 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