book club -- first reading

Much as TV series and seasons often start and end with double episodes, The Brothers Karamazov began when its first and second books were published together in the January 1879 issue of The Russian Herald.

Imagine yourself there: a St. Petersburg winter, a nation without elections or free speech or good dentistry, a bottle of vodka on your table and a Georgian prostitute in your filthy bed. Then the mail arrives, and with it your favorite "thick journal," the Herald. You light your third cigar of the morning and pour yourself a fourth vodka. You are fifteen years old.

Turning the pages, you see a piece about the Tsarina, and how lovely she looks in ermine. Then there's another piece, something on France and its political failings -- you skim it, knowing you'll need a bon mot on the topic for Anna Scherer's soiree tonight. Next you see a full-page advertisement from a company that leases charwomen: "Does your divan smell like Dianka? Try our women, who always use soap ... " You turn more pages, passing over an article about the new Mussorgsky opera -- who cares, you hate Mussorgsky, you met him at a restaurant and he stank like a goat -- still more pages turn, and then ... Double Dostoevsky! What a treat.

Members of the book club are now invited to read "From the Author" and Books One and Two ("A Nice Little Family" and "An Inappropriate Gathering"), which together in the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation constitute the book's first 91 pages. (We can skip Pevear's introduction for now.) I'll post something around August 16.