Beauty will save the world
Me and the dead white male Russian novelists, we don’t agree much. I’d love to finish a novel from Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, but they always defeat me. I tried reading The Brothers Karamazov in college, but gave up. Same thing with the Idiot, which was a gift from a priest who went to Peru, I think. And Anna Karenina, just thinking about it makes me tired. Is it the never-ending winter? The torturous relations? The labyrinthine 17th-century political drama? The funny thing was I adored the characters in the two novels. Alyosha and Prince Myshkin, the world mocks them, but they’re still good. They don’t open fire at shopping malls or kill themselves with prescription drugs. I’ll heave a sigh here. Nobody writes this kind of heroes anymore.
Recently, I vowed to finish a Dostoevsky this year. Thanks, to Janko Tipsarevic, who made me want to read Dostoevsky again. Tipsy was the one who almost beat Roger Federer in the third round of Aussie Open. According to commentators, he has reread The Idiot several times. (He also wears glasses on court, another plus, although Ira said they were visors. I don’t care, I like living in denial-land.) I envy people who finish a DWMR book, they got the stamina and the discipline to see it through: there was Anna in the fiction class, Trixie who wrote about Anna Karenina and then, Tipsy, who, to prove it, has quote from The Idiot tattooed in his arm: Beauty will save the world. You got to hand it to the Dostoevsky: he can sentimental and sincere but never cloying. That's hard to pull off. Maybe it’s all those years in the Siberian gulag and the perpetual gambling itch mixed with Russian Orthodoxy. I should feel excited about this. If I don’t have a Dostoevsky book in my end-of-the-year list, please feel free to yell at me. I’d be disappointed in myself too.
And to Tipsy: Hope you win a Grand Slam soon. I like you more than I like the Djoker, even though he does mean impressions.
Next topic: John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let the Right One In. Music geeks alert: the title was taken from a Morrisey song. Guess what? It’s a vampire novel/love story/social commentary/urban fantasy. For me, the more slashes, the better. And it’s from Sweden, of all places. (So, they don’t just write about crimes there huh?) Oh, and it’s got a movie coming out this year and I heard it’s good.