DOSTOEVSKY *********************** Whenever I run out of readable new books I reread old favorites. At one time or another I have reread – sometimes more than twice – not only Mann, Sartre and Nabokov but also Raymond Chandler, Simenon and Saroyan. But not Dostoevsky. The initial impact at the age of fourteen was so electrifying that I doubt if it can be duplicated. But I still enjoy reading a new biography. I find that the lives of 19th-century Russian writers are even more fascinating than their novels with all their unexpected turns, twists and depths, perhaps because reality is always more complex than fiction. In fiction, as in all writing, reality is reduced by a careful process of selection, simplification and elimination, and sometimes there is more truth in what gets eliminated than it what is retained and analyzed. #
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 18:23:18 +0000