How To Tell If You Are in a Dostoevsky Novel -The Toast

How To Tell If You Are in a Dostoevsky Novel

BySummer Block

on June 9, 2015 in How To Tell If You’re In a Novel

Previously in this series.

You love a prostitute with your whole heart but you respect her too much to touch her, talk to her, or learn her name.

You are in love with an earnest, loyal young man who adores you, so you’ve decided to marry a dissolute cad you despise in order to teach yourself a lesson.

You’ve been sitting in this tavern for hours hoping no one notices your clothes are covered in blood.

You are crippled by gambling debts, but that hasn’t stopped you from spending every penny you have buying brandy for itinerant musicians.

Every night Pontius Pilate berates you in a dream.

You dream of a contemplative life in a monastery, but first you just have to talk some sense into this violent, impoverished stranger you met on a footbridge.

Your feelings about peasants are warm, passionate, and a little condescending.

You’ve been standing in the snow on Nevsky Prospect for hours now, just waiting to say something really cutting to a bureaucrat.

At least once each day you stop in a stairwell to clutch the banister and cry out, “My god, how loathsome it all is!”

You have committed a grave crime and you are being sent to Siberia.

You have committed no crime and you are being sent to Siberia.

You live in abject poverty, but abstract moral principles prevent you from spending the large sum of money you have hidden underneath your floorboards.

You appear extremely agitated.

You’d gladly lecture an illiterate carriage driver about Schiller.

You are offered a place at university but you don’t show up because you are too ashamed of your boots.

Right now you’re busy getting dressed for a dinner party to which you were pointedly not invited.

An army captain has insulted you and so you will drink yourself to death to have revenge on him.

You sleep feverishly or not at all.

All of your happiest childhood memories include your mother convulsively crying.

You’ve often laughed out of indifference, contempt, or spite, but not once out of joy.

You are a beautiful young woman with flashing eyes about to send your lover a terrible letter.

You have thrown yourself at the feet of a dishonorable young cadet in order to save your little sister from consumption.

Absolutely everything in your life depends upon you boarding a train to Odessa, but it looks like you’re not getting on that train.

You have been run over by a coach and are suffering massive internal injuries. You plan to treat the injuries with nothing but a rag soaked in vinegar and water.

You bear a deep, expansive love for all of mankind, except for merchants, Jesuits, and Jews.

You’d murder your father without blinking an eye, but you’re moved to tears by the sight of a peasant boy kicking a horse.

You’ve become so worried about The Great Schism that you’ve developed brain fever.

God is dead and everything is permitted.

Summer Block has published essays, short fiction, and poetry in McSweeney's, The Awl, The Rumpus, PANK, The Nervous Breakdown, and many other publications.

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+13 Vote up Vote down

deleted7541601 123p · 512 weeks ago

Thank God, now I never have to read any Dostoevsky. I drew the line at Bulgakov.

2 replies · active 509 weeks ago

+102 Vote up Vote down

Frumiosa 141p · 512 weeks ago

Yourself and everyone you know each has sixteen fucking complicated multi-syllabic names that are used interchangeably and without any apparent context to foreign readers.

18 replies · active 511 weeks ago

+37 Vote up Vote down

Garrett · 512 weeks ago

You showed great promise as a divinity student, but the Donation of Pepin has driven you to a life of maddened vagrancy. Your father despises you.

You are in love with the beautiful woman that runs the orphanage, but are sent to war with the Cossacks before you can tell her. She marries your bourgeois oaf of a brother and has seven children.

+14 Vote up Vote down

Amphora 112p · 512 weeks ago

See also: Virgin Soil, in which aristocratic youths spend an entire novel enacting Pulp's "Common People"

+59 Vote up Vote down

grantimusmax 123p · 512 weeks ago

You aren't at all worried that someone will stop listening during your multiple-page screeds debating moral relativism.

3 replies · active 512 weeks ago

+17 Vote up Vote down

mendoza2355 67p · 512 weeks ago

Wait was the Great Schism in Lemony Snickett books based on Dostoevsky? Mind blown!
p.s. Crime and Punishment is one long male novelist joke

+2 Vote up Vote down

floridagal1 102p · 512 weeks ago

Wonderful.

+48 Vote up Vote down

decembrian 134p · 512 weeks ago

Upon meeting a charming new acquaintance, it takes you half a page to decide whether to use French or Russian to address them because the casual form of "you" would be overly familiar, but the formal form would make you seem too cold and distant. You decide upon French and the two of you converse in that language (which the translator chose not to translate) until you part. American readers will skip to the next chapter and miss the symbolic significance and subtle wit of the dialogue, which will definitely prove important later in the book.

2 replies · active 512 weeks ago

+44 Vote up Vote down

cuminafterall 108p · 512 weeks ago

You interrupt a party with a dramatic reading of a 15-page essay outlining your reasons for committing suicide. Then you try to commit suicide, and fail. Later on you die of consumption.

1 reply · active 512 weeks ago

+74 Vote up Vote down

winterbymorning 133p · 512 weeks ago

At least once each day you stop in a stairwell to clutch the banister and cry out, “My god, how loathsome it all is!”

Is it aesthetically acceptable to do this in an elevator if I'm too lazy to take the stairs?

4 replies · active 511 weeks ago

+48 Vote up Vote down

jimminysausage 0p · 512 weeks ago

'You come across a dead bird in the street. It is a corpse. It is utterly dead. This makes you fall on your hands and knees, raise your hands to the sky, and doubt the miracle of the crucifixion.'

+30 Vote up Vote down

uemmak 101p · 512 weeks ago

Every night Pontius Pilate berates you in a dream.

Is this not how all of Russia spends their sleeping hours? Russian literature has LIED to me.

2 replies · active 500 weeks ago

+16 Vote up Vote down

rolotomassi5 103p · 512 weeks ago

You fear seizures with a massive dread, but at the same time you can't stop and won't stop talking about how badass and enlightening/borderline orgasmic it is to have a seizure.

+31 Vote up Vote down

floridagal1 102p · 512 weeks ago

You tell everyone you murdered your dog, for unclear reasons, and then got another dog that looks exactly the same but vehemently deny that it is the same dog. Later, you reveal that it is the same dog, but nobody is sure if they believe you or not.

+43 Vote up Vote down

nousername · 512 weeks ago

You suffer from ennui, but like, violent ennui.

2 replies · active 500 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

hannahcliff 0p · 512 weeks ago

I'm doing Russian literature this semester and this entire post had me laughing out loud in the library like a lunatic. Spot on!

+10 Vote up Vote down

captainbartlet 89p · 512 weeks ago

You lowkey revere Napoleon and would defend him to the ends of the earth..
Everything has a yellow tinge. This is indicative of the sickness within yourself.
You're going to take a trip to America.
You do not have to go to Siberia, but you are going to go anyway for a man who has never said a single nice word to you.

+6 Vote up Vote down

speakingofcake 119p · 512 weeks ago

A lot of these apply to Tolstoy novels too, especially the bit about the peasants (I'm looking at you, Levin)

+10 Vote up Vote down

aniktwo 79p · 512 weeks ago

I took an entire course on Dostoevsky and it coincided with getting a bad concussion. Let me tell you that the combined fever dreams of these two afflictions still haunt me to this day.

0 Vote up Vote down

Sister Carrie · 512 weeks ago

Hold on. Is that Captain Kirk?

1 reply · active 500 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

Sasha · 500 weeks ago

You were once a fragment of a character in The Life of a Great Sinner. In the novel in which you now appear, that character has been split into yourself and another more sinister character, to whom you feel a sinister attraction.

+3 Vote up Vote down

Priskill · 479 weeks ago

You are madly in love with a simple, pure-hearted, and likely consumptive prostitute. You refer to her as "the whore" repeatedly and with affection. Philosophy has driven you mad. Poverty has driven you mad. St. Petersberg has driven you mad. The color yellow has driven you mad and it's everywhere, dammit, even the wallpaper is subtly jaundiced and mocks you. The Neva beckons, you stomp around in the cold waiting, just waiting for it all to make sense. You are superior to everyone so of course you must commit heinous acts of violence requiring punishment followed by redemption. You are redeemed. There is hope.

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