Intellectual Curiosities and Provocations

September 2002

Nikolai Gogol

Russian
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was born in the Ukraine in 1809, only two months after the birth of Edgar Allan Poe across the world. He was a natural observer of the Russian and Ukranian people (the Ukraine was then part of the Russian empire), and his first story, 'Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka' was published before his twentieth birthday.

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

Russian
You have only to look at Solomin. A head as clear as the day and a body as strong as an ox. Isn't that a wonder in itself? Why, any man with us in Russia who has had any brains, or feelings, or a conscience, has always been a physical wreck. Solomin's heart aches just as ours does; he hates the same things that we hate, but his nerves are of iron and his body is under his full control. He's a splendid man, I tell you! Why, think of it! here is a man with ideals, and no nonsense about him; educated and from the people, simple, yet all there . . .

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fiction,
Russian,
Transgressive
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born in Moscow on Oct 30, 1821. His father was a doctor who aspired to improve his family's modest standings in Russian society. Young Fyodor (the name is the Russian equivalent of "Theodore") was brought up to be a religious and hard-working young man, and began training to be a military engineer at a school in St. Petersburg.

Jay McInerney

Breakfast Club


Jay McInerney was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1955. He graduated from Williams College, a prestigious liberal-arts school in Massachusetts, and allegedly used his social conventions there to get a job at New Yorker Magazine, after which he slam-dunked a book contract and a ton of publicity for his first novel. But we don't hold this against him, because "Bright Lights, Big City" was actually a hell of a lot of fun to read.

On Being Beloved (for Raymond Carver)

Love,
Postmodernism
According to some definitions, prose was once considered tired, dull writing, without much consideration or thought in composition. No meter, no rhyme, not lyrical or classically pleasing. Later, prose was described as words in order, and poetry was words in their best order, or some such. Raymond Carver wrote prose. He distinguished himself by writing both prose and poetry very well. As he liked to do, we will use simple words here to describe a very complicated man desiring the basics.