I seem to be on a bit of a Russian kick these days. Many years ago, I read several Dostoyevsky novels but I really don’t remember a thing about them. I decided to revisit Crime and Punishment not only because it is, perhaps, the best known of his novels but also because it’s less than 300 pages long. Turns out, it’s also quite the page turner — a psychological drama involving a murderer whose physical and mental health deteriorate as an investigator closes in on […]
A review almost as long as a Russian novel
As the nights grow longer and temperatures begin to drop, atmospheric conditions become right for reading some Russian literature, with its deep snows, howling wolves, tragic lovers, wars and revolutions. Given their lengthiness, if you’re stuck at home with nowhere to go, a classic Russian novel will keep you occupied for a good long time. Plus, if the unthinkable happens on November 8th, it’s not a half bad idea to be on cultural speaking terms with our new overlords. CBR8’s recent survey of classic novels […]
Theology 101
All ways of living can be sanctified, and for each individual, the ideal way is that to which our Lord leads him through the natural development of his tastes and the pressure of circumstances. ~ Tielhard de Chardin Another step along my literary walk of shame. How am I only just now reading this Pulitzer and National Book Award winner that Spielberg made into a movie starring Whoopie and Oprah? While it deals with hard subject matter (rape, incest, racism, misogyny — just like the […]
An American Horror Story
Our envy of others devours us most of all. ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn At one point in Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel The Bluest Eye, a character reflects on jealousy and envy. As a child, she was familiar with jealousy — that feeling that someone else has gotten something that rightfully belongs to you. Envy, when it comes, is a new and unsettling feeling, a perception that somehow, one is lacking something. In The Bluest Eye, that something is beauty, beauty as defined by others, beauty […]