FAVORITE BOOK:
I'll
read anything by a Russian, dead ones especially. Sure, some people
write prettier. Most at least write far more succinctly. But when it comes to raw humanity—that scope of life from gore to glory—there's no comparison.
Thirty years before The Brothers Karamazov,
Dostoevsky was arrested together with other members of the Petrashevsky
Circle and sentenced to death. After eight months in prison, Dostoevsky
was taken out to what he thought would be his execution—only to have
the order reprieved at the very last second, blindfolds already
tightened, guns at the ready. Instead, Dostoevsky was assigned to four
years of hard labor in Siberia, and in a later letter to his brother
described the day's turn of events and his new sentence. He wrote what I
often feel after reading his writing:
Brother, I'm not
depressed and haven't lost spirit. Life everywhere is life, life is in
ourselves and not in the external. There will be people near me, and to
be a human being among human beings, and remain one forever, no matter
what misfortunes befall, not to become depressed, and not to falter—this
is what life is, herein lies the task. I have come to recognize this.
This idea has entered my flesh and blood . . . Never until now have such
rich and healthy stores of spiritual life throbbed in me.
I loved Dostoevsky first for his words (one commentator remarked that The Brothers Karamazov
"seems to have swallowed a small library"). I still love those words, but more now for what they combine to mean: I love Dostoevsky for his
grace and his hope, his
understanding of both the redemptive quality to suffering and the
incomparable experience of life despite all the darkness and doubt and the downright depravity. Like I said, raw humanity. No one does it better.