Central European literary life
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Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Literary roundup: Dostoevsky’s warning from the other world and the Usedom Prize
Photo - Świnoujście by Night, by Alan Zomerfeld
The usefulness of Russian literature
Tolstoy for doctors, Dostoevsky for political scientists …
Dostoevsky’s The Gambler: Modern and loosely based
In the 1974 film The Gambler, James Caan plays a Jewish college professor in New York named Axel Freed with an addiction to risk that causes him to fall into major gambling debt to some heavy-handed loan sharks. In the first classroom scene we see him in Freed waxes poetic about the issues in Dostoevsky’s work.
Births and deaths in Russian literature
February 10 was the date of possibly the worst of the tragic and premature deaths that have haunted Russian literary greats over the past two centuries.
Books on Film: Dostoevsky’s The Gambler
A look at three adaptations of the novella and how Dostoevsky is one of the most filmed novelist of all times (after Dickens).
Photo - Dostoevsky being interrogated by the police in a too beautifully-lit office in The Demons of St. Petersburg.
A mythical meeting of literary titans
The story of Dickens baring his soul Russian-style to a visiting Dostoevsky looks to be as invented as any of their respective novels
Photo - Pot Belly, Harmony Kingdom Crushed Marble Great People Historical Collectables of the two writers concerned
Russian autocrat + Russian novelist = ?
The story begins with a vain, preening, autocratic ruler of Russia willing to manipulate the forces of law and order to strike out against even the slightest traces of disloyalty. For him no charade of justice is too cruel or too absurd if it helps prevent dissension.
Photo - Reader of Dostoevsky by Emil Filla, 1907
John Banville on the The Book of Evidence:
“The prevailing presence in this book is Dostoevsky. This book owes a great deal to Dostoevsky’s Notes From the Underground.
I have no idea what attracts me to any kind of character. I write, as I imagine, and I have no, or very little, control over my imagination. So I can’t account for where they come from, any more than we can account for where our dreams come from.”
- speaking at The Franz Kafka Society after having received the 2011 Franz Kafka Prize
When Russian novels make it to the big screen it is usually because they either already have enough melodrama to turn them into marketable films (Doctor Zhivago) or because screenwriting assassins can be found to cut out the wordy parts and stick to the scenes of carriage rides, furtive kisses and duels.
Portrait of Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
