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Small post that is not about the X-Men but rather Dostoevsky's House of the Dead.
I read about 1/3 of The House of the Dead and could easily have enjoyed reading all of it if I had the time to read these days, which I haven't. At about 20 minutes/day of reading time, the time investment involved in an almost non-fiction text with little "story" was not worth it. That said, I do recommend the book.
The House of the Dead is a lightly fictionalized account of Dostoevsky's experiences in prison in Siberia. He frames the narrative as the chronological notes of a former inmate, arrested for killing his wife, who served ten years and died not long after his release. I'm sure various names and details are fictionalized, but the basics of prison life are clearly intended (and were seen at the time) as a realistic exposé.
The basic message is that prisoners are people. Each one is unique: some nasty, some very nice (one is clearly an Alyosha prototype), some intelligent, some dull, some leaders, some followers, some clownish, some quiet. Almost all more or less "behave" in prison. They bicker, swear, steal, smuggle in vodka, and so on, but they don't seriously injure or terrorize each other; they're not a great "danger" to live with. The circumstances don't favor it.
In this particular prison, they were also an enormously diverse bunch: gentlemen and commoners, soldiers, civilians, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Muscovites, tribesmen from the Caucasus, Poles, young, old. Overall, the narrator observes, a greater percentage were literate than in the general Russian population.( Read more... )
I read about 1/3 of The House of the Dead and could easily have enjoyed reading all of it if I had the time to read these days, which I haven't. At about 20 minutes/day of reading time, the time investment involved in an almost non-fiction text with little "story" was not worth it. That said, I do recommend the book.
The House of the Dead is a lightly fictionalized account of Dostoevsky's experiences in prison in Siberia. He frames the narrative as the chronological notes of a former inmate, arrested for killing his wife, who served ten years and died not long after his release. I'm sure various names and details are fictionalized, but the basics of prison life are clearly intended (and were seen at the time) as a realistic exposé.
The basic message is that prisoners are people. Each one is unique: some nasty, some very nice (one is clearly an Alyosha prototype), some intelligent, some dull, some leaders, some followers, some clownish, some quiet. Almost all more or less "behave" in prison. They bicker, swear, steal, smuggle in vodka, and so on, but they don't seriously injure or terrorize each other; they're not a great "danger" to live with. The circumstances don't favor it.
In this particular prison, they were also an enormously diverse bunch: gentlemen and commoners, soldiers, civilians, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Muscovites, tribesmen from the Caucasus, Poles, young, old. Overall, the narrator observes, a greater percentage were literate than in the general Russian population.( Read more... )
