caffeine and curiosity

Dethpack Day 6: p. 206 (end of Part I)

2007-11-06T16:36:00.000-06:00

Maybe it's that I don't have a television or any sort of social life, but unlike most of the other members of the Dethpakt I am not frustrated by the pace of the book so far.

Anyway, the pace seems to be picking up with the entrance of Nikolai Stavrogin and Pyotr Verkhovensky. I think I can see where the nihilism will come in.

I'm more confused by the Dasha story-arc, and I have to say that I do feel pretty rotten for her.

One plot summary of the book says: "At the end of Book I all of the major characters have been introduced, but very little has been resolved. Dostoevsky uses this tension and confusion to build upon in Book II. Book I is typical of Dostoevsky in that he focuses on the character development, which is then incorporated to produce a scandalous climactic scene. He also creates a sense of disarray that sets the scene for the chaos that is to follow."

Tangentially related, here is Charles Bukowski's poem Dostoevsky:

against the wall, the firing squad ready.
then he got a reprieve.
suppose they had shot Dostoevsky?
before he wrote all that?
I suppose it wouldn't have
mattered
not directly.
there are billions of people who have
never read him and never
will.
but as a young man I know that he
got me through the factories,
past the whores,
lifted me high through the night
and put me down
in a better
place.
even while in the bar
drinking with the other
derelicts,
I was glad they gave Dostoevsky a
reprieve,
it gave me one,
allowed me to look directly at those
rancid faces
in my world,
death pointing its finger,
I held fast,
an immaculate drunk
sharing the stinking dark with
my
brothers.

Dethpakt days 2-3-4

2007-11-03T14:41:00.000-05:00

Hi! I'm in Panama City Beach, watching my little brother compete in the Ironman Florida. Guess what's not with me? Yup, in my rush out of work yesterday I left Demons sitting on my desk. D'oh!

Dethpakt Day 1: pages vii to 27

2007-11-02T11:33:00.000-05:00

As if on cue, all sorts of distractions arrived in the mail on November 1st, which combined with my World Series-induced sleep debt to limit my progress. This weekend, however, I should have plenty of down-time while watching my brother compete at the Ironman Florida.

So far, there hasn't been much action, but I am getting a good mental image of Stepan. I found myself giggling at quite a few points, two of which I've excerpted below.

Having been involved in academia in some manner for almost my entire life, this passage rings particularly true:

"Later -- though by then he had already lost his lectureship -- he managed to publish (in revenge, so to speak, and to show them just whom they had lost), in a monthly and progressive journal, which translated Dickens and preached George Sand, the beginning of a most profound study –- having to do, apparently, with the reasons for the remarkable moral nobility of some nights in some epoch, or something of the sort. At any rate, some lofty and remarkably noble idea was upheld in it. Afterwards it was said that the sequel to the study was promptly forbidden, and that the progressive journal even suffered for having printed the first part. That could very well have happened, because what did not happen back then? But in the present case it is more likely that nothing happened, and that the author himself was too lazy to finish the study." (p.9)

I really like the phrase "civic grief" (and, for that matter, spleen is a word that has fallen into terrible underuse, IMHO):

"In the course of his twenty-year-long friendship with Varvara Petrovna he used to fall regularly, three or four times a year, into a state known among us as "civic grief" – that is, simply a fit of spleen… Later on, besides civic grief, he also began falling into champagne..." (p.13)

Regarding "civic grief" the endnote says: "The phrase "civic grief," meaning an acute suffering over social ills and inequities, was widely used in Russia in the 1860s; the disease itself became fashionable in Petersburg, where the deaths of some high-school students and cadets were even ascribed to it." How positively emo!

But really, Dethpakt has a better ring to it:

2007-10-30T09:47:00.000-05:00

Reading Room - Sunday Book Review - New York Times Blog: The illustrious Dr. Baker points out that the New York Times currently has its own online club reading the new translation of War and Peace.

Dostoevsky's Demons Dethpakt

2007-10-29T21:43:00.000-05:00

Last spring, some friends of mine held an online book club of sorts for the reading of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. It was known as the Gravity's Rainbow Death Pact.

Recently discussion arose about having another such reading event, and I proposed that a suitable book might be Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsy (also translated as The Possessed and The Devils). I mentioned this work because it has occupied a place on my shelves for several year and thus far has resisted my attempts to read it. I have read and enjoyed all of Dostoevsky's other major works and would like to complete the list.

I initially became interested in Demons after seeing the amazing documentary The Stone Reader. I actually met the subject of that film, Dow Mossman, and talked with him about what he'd been reading, and this is one of the things he recommended.

Dethpakt II officially kicks off on November 1st. For the rules, such as they are, see the link about the original and substitute Demons for Gravity's Rainbow in your reading of it. We also have a Flickr group, and a list of participants and their blogs (for commiseration) will be posted somewhere.