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Title: The Gambler (Dover Thrift Editions) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Fyodor M. Dostoevsky ISBN: 0486290816 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: June, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.13333
Rating: 5
Summary: God as Lady Luck
Comment: The Gambler is primarily a book about obssession and mania, a topic that Dostoyevsky would go on to further explore using criminal, political and religious themes as a backdrop. The God in the gambler is not Christ, but Lady Luck and her spinning ways at the roullette wheel. This book written while FD was majorly in debt due to gambling losses explores his need to gamble. Moreover, it is a book that contains some of Dostovesky most memorable tertiary characters. Alexi the narrator is a young tutor and part of a Russian general's entourage in a Riviera. He falls in love with the General's neice, who is constantly tormenting, taunting and pathologically luring him. She makes Alexi, who is not only a compulsive gambler, but an impulsive cretin commit "unspeakable" acts to bourgeoise and lesser royalty in public.... Alexi's desperate failure to win the niece's attention's is marked by his increasing need to gamble his pitous funds. But Lady Luck does smile on Alexi for a while (although he is so agitated he doesn't know it), before taking everything away from him: money, love and his meager Russian pride. The novel sees the disintegration and paradoxic increased euphoria of Alexi's character, until he is at the end so depraved that one wonders what keeps him from going mad. It is, of course, the brilliance of the book. Gambling, which is his undoing, is also his ultimate salvation, his wheel spinning, silver ball bouncing hope. The more depraved Aleci becomes the more manic and inspired the prose becomes with Dostoyevsky's frenetic brilliance making the best of us get itchy palms. At the end you yourself will want to hit the roullette wheel with an inspiration that can only come from the poisoned and infectious mind of a religious man and great writer who once viewed God not as the Arbiter of Good and Evil and Creator of Worlds, but God as a roll of dice, a deal of the cards and a most terrible and remorseless spin of the wheel.
Although most people consider this book a minor work, it is Dostoyevsky at his inspired best. While it doesn't have the profound (and morbid) philosophy of Notes from the Underground, it has incredible characterization and a humorous, dramatic narrative
Rating: 4
Summary: I'm a Gambling Man
Comment: The hero of this book is complicated, a lover and compulsive. His obsession quite possibly stemming from his granmother who too, was a gambler in her day. As well, I strongly believe that this work is partially biographical, leaning on the life that Dostoyevsky led himself.
The light and energy that feeds from the words to your minds is incredible. The meloncholy man seems to light up when in the sounds and horrors, as the Russian Roulette plays before.
As the book follows his life, one cannot but help feel sorry for him, and loat him simultaneously. Reading this can make one wonder why people fall into this intoxication, however, completely understand gamblings grand appeal.
This was my first Dostoyevsky and thus started my love affair with him. The book is witty, charming, dark, tragic and passionate. A wonderful, well recommended read.
Rating: 5
Summary: God as Lady Luck
Comment: The Gambler is primarily a book about obssession and mania, a topic that Dostoyevsky would go on to further explore using criminal, political and religious themes as a backdrop. The God in the gambler is not Christ, but Lady Luck and her spinning ways at the roullette wheel.
This book written while FD was majorly in debt due to gambling losses explores his need to gamble. Moreover, it is a book that contains some of Dostovesky most memorable tertiary characters. Alexi the narrator is a young tutor and part of a Russian general's entourage in a Riviera. He falls in love with the General's neice, who is constantly tormenting, taunting and pathologically luring him. She makes Alexi, who is not only a compulsive gambler, but an impulsive cretin commit "unspeakable" acts to bourgeoise and lesser royalty in public. One instance has Alexi at her command bumping into a German baronesse's breast and not apologizing. Alexi's desperate failure to win the niece's attention's is marked by his increasing need to gamble his pitous funds. But Lady Luck does smile on Alexi for a while (although he is so agitated he doesn't know it), before taking everything away from him: money, love and his meager Russian pride. The novel sees the disintegration and paradoxic increased euphoria of Alexi's character, until he is at the end so depraved that one wonders what keeps him from going mad. It is, of course, the brilliance of the book. Gambling, which is his undoing, is also his ultimate salvation, his wheel spinning, silver ball bouncing hope. The more depraved Aleci becomes the more manic and inspired the prose becomes with Dostoyevsky's frenetic brilliance making the best of us get itchy palms. At the end you yourself will want to hit the roullette wheel with an inspiration that can only come from the poisoned and infectious mind of a religious man and great writer who once viewed God not as the Arbiter of Good and Evil and Creator of Worlds, but God as a roll of dice, a deal of the cards and a most terrible and remorseless spin of the wheel.
Although most people consider this book a minor work, it is Dostoyevsky at his inspired best. While it doesn't have the profound (and morbid) philosophy of Notes from the Underground, it has incredible characterization and a humorous, dramatic narrative
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Title: The Double (Dover Thrift Editions) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Fyodor M. Dostoevsky ISBN: 0486295729 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: April, 1997 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
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Title: Notes from Underground (Vintage Classics) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Richard Pevear, Fyodor M. Dostoevsky, LuAnn Walther, Larissa Volokhonsky ISBN: 067973452X Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: September, 1994 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: The Idiot (Oxford World's Classics) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Alan Myers, Fyodor M. Dostoevsky ISBN: 0192834118 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: May, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: First Love and the Diary of a Superfluous Man (Dover Thrift Editions) by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Constance Garnett ISBN: 0486287750 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: November, 1995 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
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Title: The Overcoat and Other Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions) by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol, Nikolai Vasil'evich Gogol ISBN: 0486270572 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: February, 1992 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
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