Live Q&A on Dostoyevsky's 'The Idiot' TOMORROW (Monday) at 7:00pm ET!
Make sure to read the book and join the stream to ask me questions live and discuss the book.
Join me at 7:00 pm ET tomorrow on June 29 for a livestream in which we will discuss Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. Make sure to read before joining and come with questions to put in the chat.
We will pull questions and comments from the comment section of this Substack post, and live on YouTube during the stream. To comment here, you must be a paid subscriber — see you on June 29!
I am so thrilled about this! I read it once when I was 18 and once when I was 70. Dostoyevsky's parlor scenes are amazing, and like Van Gogh, D seems to be constantly channeling cosmic, crazy energy. It will be so cool to listen to someone who has gotten under the hood of this strange novel and has some sense and insight about how it works. Hedges is probably the best in the world right now (at least in English) at laying out reality on this planet. He truly pulls open the curtain and shows us how Oz works. What Dorothy saw when Toto pulled back the curtain was not an opinion but a fact, about how that world operated, and what she learned in that moment enabled her to regain her freedom.
Good Morning Chris, Just finished off the reading this morning! The phrase that keeps coming back is the one that Clara Mattei uses to describe for capitalism, "a prison we build for ourselves." Seems to me that's a good way to describe out world of conventions and social norms in general, but in spades for the rich, because they have little to work with besides the thin tread of their wealth. And as Dostoevsky explains, if you're dull, you think you're a genius and can't see the cage, but if you're bright, loke Aglaya and Natasya, you become insanely neurotic. The billionaires are a pretty dull-witted lot (see recent interview the Bezos), but I would say their islands and yachts are more like prisons than the freedom they imagine for themselves. Looking forward to q & a tonight. Thanks for doing it. Breathe of fresh air!
Dan Lumpkin
News Blues, at upreadinglate@substack.com