Fyodor Mikhailovich, it had to be you! Dostoevsky didn’t became my letter D favorite by default, but the pool of Russian D-writers is so small and Dostoevsky is so worth reading (and rereading) that deliberations were quick and easy.
Dostoevsky and I have been acquainted since my senior year of high school, when my English class read Преступление и наказание (Crime and Punishment). (mentioned in this previous post) Though I haven’t reread C&P since, I feel like it’s always with me because its characters and themes are so ingrained in Russian culture that they seem to pop up in every soapy TV series I watch to keep from falling off the treadmill.
I’ve long recommended two all-time Dostoevsky favorites to anyone interested in Russia or Russian literature: Записки из подполья (Notes from the Underground) and “Легенда великого инквизитора” (“Legend of the Grand Inquisitor”), a self-contained story within the gigantic novel Братья Карамазовы (The Brothers Karamazov). Записки из мёртвого дома (Notes from the House of the Dead), an account of prison camp, is another favorite: the scenes at Christmas are beautiful.
Sergei Dovlatov endeared himself to me so much with Компромисс (The Compromise) (previous post) and certain parts of Заповедник (The Reserve) that I can’t leave him out. Though some of his writing about emigration is good, for my taste, Dovlatov is at his best when he writes about Soviet absurdity.
Off-topic honorable mention goes to Vladimir Dal’ for his nineteenth-century Russian dictionaries. I have a mismatched four-volume set that I bought in the early ‘90s that seems to suck lots of time out of my schedule whenever I look up a word or expression.
The D-List for Future Reading: I have a few Dostoevsky rereads in mind, particularly Notes from the Underground and Crime and Punishment, plus some novellas/long stories that I’ve never read: “Вечный муж” (“The Eternal Husband”) and “Скверный анекдот” (often translated as “A Nasty Story”). Dovlatov’s Зона (The Zone) is on my shelf, too, and I have high hopes for Iurii Dombrovskii’s Факультет ненужных вещей (The Faculty of Useless Knowledge). Dal’, of course, never leaves my office!
Dostoevsky on Amazon
Dovlatov on Amazon
Dombrovsky on Amazon
