why we love fyodor

"Loose women would gather in the house right in front of his wife, and orgies took place."
The Brothers Karamazov.

Apart from being a kickass writer in the truest sense of the word "kickass" reading Dostoevsky is always an exercise on regaining the pure, unadulterated joy of late-teenage reading. It brings me back to the time I first started reading Borges, Cortazar, Faulkner. Because, and this is something I don't hear people say nearly enough, reading Dostoevsky is a lot of fun. The kind of books you lose hours of sleep upon, reading into 3 or 4 in the morning for the sheer pleasure of the story, the language, the pathetic and unforgettable characters, the dry sense of humour, the humanity. 2007 saw me falling in love with Crime and Punishment. Last year I read The Idiot voraciously and loved every page of it. I decided to tackle elusive Karamazov (I remember trying to read it when I was 14 in an atrocious Spanish translation, I gave up after 100 pages or so). Sleepless nights to come.

Other cool things read this week:
- Andrew Borgstrom's "Stories with teeth in them" at Lamination Colony. Clever with great turns of phrase.
- JA Tyler interviewing Sean Lovelace for the new Chapbook Review.
- Jimmy Chen's "Check, please?" which I have no idea why I hadn't read before. Sometimes it's hard to be up to day with favourite authors. Also, May was a difficult month.
- Page 94 of Le Clezio's The Book of Flights, specially "let me see the reverse, the interior, life's red hollow, the fissure..."
- Bookslut's interview with Brandon Scott Gorell. I find it hard to talk about poetry, not because I don't read a lot, quite the contrary. What I mean to say, Scott Gorell is amazing.
- George Saunders' "Sea Oak" at the Barcelona Review. For some reason the line "It's Father Brian with a box of doughnuts." has stuck in my head.
- Adam Thirlwell's Miss Herbet, which I've been reading on and off in the uncomfortable couches of Foyles South Bank.
- Senses of Cinema's article on the Straubs & Cézanne. Quite rad. I've only started getting into Straub's and Huillet's work seriously this past summer, it's heavy stuff, even for us former film students but it's completely gorgeous and essential art. It makes me excited about cinema again. Also, glad to be reading Senses of Cinema once more. I had lost track.

Also, Blake Butler got a deal with Harper Perennial. That's really great news. I can think of few authors that feel more exciting than Butler nowadays and it's great to see cool people doing well.

Also, ML Press is going to publish an anthology with all their chapbooks. I am so tempted to pre-order like right this very instant. So many amazing stuff in there; Brandi Wells and Jac Jemc and Brian Evenson and Peter Markus and Johannes Goransson and Eugene Lim and... Well, you get the picture. I wish I wasn't broke (and/or saving for a trip to New York next spring). Maybe even so I will give into the temptation. It's damn cheap, too, if you ask me.

Question: Could buying another edition of Chris Killen's "The Bird Room" just because it has a different cover be considered a waste of money? If the answer is yes, I don't want to know. After all, I own 6 different edition of "Lolita", thank you very much.