Edward Wasiolek argues that from the time Dostoevsky wrote Notes from Underground , he had worked out a metaphysical outlook that centered on the dialectics of human freedom, free will and society, and nihilism. What he lacked was a plot to go with his metaphysic, but he found the plot by focusing . . . . Continue Reading »
Dostoevsky is sometimes accused of being an indifferent artist. As long as it sprawls, it must be good. Several essays in Richard Peace’s collection, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment: A Casebook (Casebooks in Criticism) , prove the opposite. I give only a few highlights. Several . . . . Continue Reading »
It’s all in the name. Raskolnikov is from the Russian raskol’nik ,which I’ve seen glossed as meaning “divided” or “separated.” It’s the word for schismatic or heretic. And it is Raskolnikov: A double personality who is alienated and split off from . . . . Continue Reading »
Commenting on the “models” that Dostoevsky used for Stavrogin, Girard says “Knowledge of oneself is perpetually mediated by knowledge of others. The distinction between the ‘autobiographical’ characters and those that are not is thus superficial; it grasps only the . . . . Continue Reading »
From Notes from Underground : “Man loves creating and the making of roads, that is indisputable. But why does he so passionately love destruction and chaos as well? Tell me that! . . . Can it be that he has such a love of destruction and chaos . . . because he is instinctively afraid of . . . . Continue Reading »
Joyce Kerr Tarpley’s Constancy and the Ethics of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park is not only an excellent study of Austen’s deepest and most important novel, but also a thorough vindication of the thesis that Austen was no mere spinner of fluffy romances but a thinker of the first . . . . Continue Reading »
Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is sometimes an almost unbearably bad novel, but it keeps selling. I just finished rereading it trying to find what can be redeemed from it beyond the obvious fact that it opposes the evil of collectivism. I need more because it is easy to find a more concise and . . . . Continue Reading »
A brief preview of the David Foster Wallace collection at the University of Texas Harry Ransom Center ( Newsweek , 11/29) shows that Wallace was not actually the “purely pomo author” that he might seem. The collection contains notes and files for his unfinished and forthcoming Pale King . . . . Continue Reading »
The day a man reads his last new Sherlock Holmes mystery is a sad one. The stories decline in quality, but to the very last retain some echo of what made the early tales classics of the detective genre.The best Holmes can be reread, but still a man likes to have something new to read during his free . . . . Continue Reading »
In a long and penetrating review of Martin Amis’s The Pregnant Widow in a recent issue of TNR (July 22). It’s more a review of Amis’s entire career and corpus, and along the way William Deresiewicz borrows a distinction from Michael Wood between “style” and . . . . Continue Reading »
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