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Dostoevsky: A Writer In His Time (2009)

by Joseph Frank(Favorite Author)

4.53 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0691128197 (ISBN13: 9780691128191)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Princeton University Press

review 1: After reading this book my understanding of Russian literature, Russia, and the causes of the Russian Revolution were clear and extended to an understanding of totalitarian governments, and why the Russian Revolution carried the seeds of its own failure. I finished reading this book. Many facets of Russia and why it is Russia stay with me from the book. I am sorry that the literature created under the crucible of a totalitarian state seems to have died with it. Russia has been through so many changes, difficult changes, and her idealism seems in retreat from what I have read on the subject. Anyone interested in literature, how it is made, what pressures add/detract from its formation would like this study.
review 2: This is an almost perfect book: Frank combine... mores fascinating history, insightful biography and above average literary criticism perfectly. I'm literally speechless; the only book I can think of to put beside this is MacDiarmid's 'Christianity: the first three thousand years,' which is similarly clear, stimulating, beautifully written and finely structured. Aside from giving us a model for literary biographies, Frank also manages (possibly without knowing it) to write a perfect guidebook for writing novels: combine a deep fascination with your own time, an interest in human psychology, deep moral convictions, and a concern for the Big Ideas of human life in general. Then work your butt off. I'd like to think someone out there has managed to do that without being quite the twat that Dostoevsky became (yes- Russia (and by 'Russia' he of course means 'Orthodox peasants') will save the world). But I have no evidence of that as yet. If you like Dostoevsky's novels at all, this is well worth the effort. Fun things that Dostoevsky said:"You feel that one must have perpetual spiritual resistance and negation so as not to surrender, not to submit to the impression, not to bow before the fact and deify Baal, that is, not to accept the existing as one's own ideal." (376)"The people are always the people.... but here you no longer see a people, but the systematic, submissive and induced lack of consciousness." (378)"It is necessary to assume as author someone omniscient and faultless, who holds up to the view of all one of hte members of hte new generation." (480)"'it is not worth doing good int eh world, for it is said, it will be destroyed.' There's something foolhardy and dishonest in this idea. Most of all, it's a very convenient idea for ordinary behavior: since everything is doomed, why exert oneself, why love to do good? Live for your paunch." (843) less

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