No holy fool II
Following up on the Karamazovs, an obvious remark. It is said that Dostoevsky’s portrayal of women was lacking next to his male characters. It is not generally true – The Idiot is a counterexample – but The Brothers Karamazov is…
Winterings in Trans-Scythia
Fragments of a blog
Winterings in Trans-Scythia
Fragments of a blog
Tag Dostoevsky
No holy fool
On Hope by Tara Isabella Burton in the Hedgehog Review: In order to accept our lives as a comedy, we must accept that none of us are the heroes we imagine ourselves to be. This is the truth understood by…
The Underground Man as Richard Thaler’s nightmare
From Britannica’s entry on Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground: The views and actions of Dostoyevsky’s underground man demonstrate that in asserting free will humans often act against self-interest… When he turns to reason for salvation, it fails him, and he…
Quadrillion
Three tweets from the same thread related to the insane lawsuit filed by the Texas Attorney General (himself under indictment for securities fraud) against four other states, seeking to have Trump anointed as the winner despite his loss to Biden…
Jack the Giant Killer or King Legume?
And now for a lighter note. While Googling “John Bayley” & “Wuthering Heights” yesterday, I stumbled on this: The greats we hateSpectator writers and others on the classic books they most dislike Christopher Howse, The Spectator‘s religion columnist, confesses: I…
A nasty anecdote
Some three weeks ago, Himadri (the Argumentative Old Git) wrote about the change in his perception of Bruckner’s symphonies, which he used to love as a young man: But it struck me recently that it has been a long time…
Houellebecq and the Karamazov family
In a review of Michel Houellebecq’s H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, Lee Rourke quoted the opening lines of the French author’s 2001 novel Platform: Father died last year. I don’t subscribe to the theory by which we only become…