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Date:         Wed, 26 Aug 1992 14:20:37 EDT
From:         Sonia Kovitz <skovitz@MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Totally Inappropriate Dostoevsky
Comments: To: LITERARY@ucf1vm.cc.ucf.edu
              "S1MBM@ISUVAX.BITNET" at Aug 26, 92 12:33 pm

Actually, Our Friend Fyodor would have loved that.
I'm jumping in to respond to Ruth Smith's troubles with Bros. Karamazov, a book
she says is "totally inappropriate for today's life."

First off, although everybody has the constitutional right (unless you're a
poor downtrodden stoodunt) to toss a book over the railing if it seems truly
useless and boring and to loudly proclaim, "I don't want to read this ----," if
you DO choose voluntarily to keep going, in that case you need to hold off on
passing judgment quite so quickly.  (Remember old Keats and his "negative
capability"?)

"Reading this book makes me feel like I'm crazy."  OK, that's interesting, that
has possibilities.  Maybe the opportunity to feel crazy is one worth pursuing.
"Fyodor is a complete buffoon, I can't see why anyone would give him
credibility."  So why is credibility so all-tootin important?  As far as
"today's life" goes, isn't everybody always saying, "that's incredible."
Sensation mongers that we are, we WANT things to be "incredible."   We are
looking for things to wrest us from our sudden lives.  Dost. will do that.  Why
is Fyodor such a buffoon?  A buffoon = a clown.  Clowns wear masks.  What is
behind his mask?  the meeting at the monastery is a public gathering of a bunch
of private people and their masks collide; you start to get peeps of what's
behind the masks.  The measuring rod of falsity and truth (a big theme in the
novel) is present in the person of Father Zossima; note that he doesn't judge
people either, Ruth.  He withholds judgment, and lets these crazy people reveal
themselves.  He doesn't jump to conclusions... but this is not to say that the
time won't come when some judgments are ready to be made, but not yet, not
yet...

Feeling crazy...maybe Dost. is allowing out into the open all those little
nagging voices and outrageous urges and stupid thoughts and wild hypotheses and
bottomless fears and made desires that most of us keep hidden beneath our
respectable wood-grain facades.

Here's an anecdote (TRUE) to keep you interested in Dost. (maybe) a bit longer.
 When he was a young man (after developing epilepsy) he was obsessed by the
fear that he would fall into unconsciousness after an epileptic fit, people
would think he was head and bury him, and then he would wake up INSIDE THE
COFFIN!  There he would be banging on the inside of the coffin... This image is
a very interesting one to keep in mind while reading Dost's books... he knows
inside out that state of "death in life" (start with the Underground Man for
Death-in-Life 101)... you're neither completely alive nor completely dead.
Dost. knows about living in several worlds at once and about pounding on the
coffin lid hoping someone will hear you.  Now think about Fyodor, Ivan,
Dmitry... could such a state possibly apply to them?  to today's life?
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