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I'm reading 'The End' by Karl Ove Knausgaard which is the last in his 6-volume account of his own life in microscopic observational detail.

the guy is a definite candidate for a bit of remote spectrum diagnosing if you ask me

Yes, and the same goes for epilepsy, doesn't it?

Epilepsy plagued his own life and his first wife died of tuberculosis - a slow and painful death - so he was well acquainted with both conditions. A lot of situations and relationship dynamics between people (in his books) are heavily inspired/rooted in his own personal experiences and give a raw authenticity and "vividness" to his characters and their motivations. His profound compassion and understanding of extreme suffering and deprivation were also born out of his own experiences. "Never have I seen on a human face such an expression of accumulated suffering..." writes a French diplomat after meeting him.

Yep. Epilepsy, too. Wasn't Mishkin, in "The Idiot," an epileptic?

Myshkin was an epileptic, as was Smerdyakov from Brothers K. Smerdyakov is one of the most underrated characters in the Dostoevsky canon; I think he, Alyosha Karamazov and Prince Myshkin are the best three examples of the profundity of Dostoevsky's psychological insight mentioned earlier.

He was - his courtship of Aglaya and a few other details are also inspired by Dostoevsky's own experiences.

I bet a lot of aspies loved Myshkin if they read the book!

I certainly liked him.

I don't understand those who make the superficially obvious link between Myshkin (or Alyosha) and Christ; Christ was capable of vindictiveness and even malevolence (in the etymological sense of "ill-will"), while the former two were unimpeachable examples of the perfectly altruistic, benevolent character. A better figure to compare them to would perhaps be the Buddha, though presumably Dostoevsky wouldn't have considered him Russian enough.

Dostoevsky himself writes in his notebooks about Myshkin as a Christ-like figure. I never heard that about Alyosha, considering The Brothers Karamazov was meant as the first part of a trilogy, his fate was not determined and some of Dostoevsky's plans didn't sound particularly... Christly.

Keep in mind that he was deeply religious and believed in the messianic mission of Orthodoxy.

This week I finished four books. Rated out of five.








+


(bonus star for being Emily)

The Long Walk by Richard Bachman, aka Stephen King.

Our Father - Reflections on the Lord's Prayer
by Pope Francis

Ruth, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1853)



Mrs Gaskell was Charlotte Brontë's friend and first biographer. I read Ruth in University, but it deserves a reread.

I highly recommend it!

I'm reading "Anything is possible" by Elizabeth Strout.

I Read another one of her books "Olive Kitteridge" and really enjoyed that so I'm giving another one of her books a go. I'm enjoying the novel but still prefer Olive Kitteridge, where nothing much happens but the characters are great.

^
I really enjoyed "Olive Kitteridge" too.

Anybody here likes re-reading books? More than once?

I reread my books multiple times, some of them with rituals about where and when.