All the elements of Dostoevsky's genius come through in this hodgepodge of literary forms. Kenneth Lantz is an extremely good translator. I don't know why he didn't translate Dostoevsky's other works.

This book and its companion volume present the contents of a journal written, edited, and published by Dostoevsky over a period of eight years. It is a fascinating collection. There are stories; there are literary discussions; there are commentaries on current events, especially court cases and international developments. There are jaw-drop-inducing vamps on the harmful effects of the Jews on decent Christian people. As time passes and Dostoevsky grows older and sicker, most other topics are abandoned in favor of eschatological Slavophile ruminations on the "Eastern Question" and the coming triumph of Russian Orthodoxy. All of this will be much more than the casual reader will want to wade through. Yet for the serious student or fan of Dostoevsky's novels, the diaries provide a unique and amazing window into the author's thinking. For the student of 19th century history, they are an unforgettable presentation of one side of the passionate arguments over the future of the Balkan countries. For the student of Russian history, they provide eyewitness commentary on the struggles that accompanied the introduction of Western-style legal reforms, such as trial by jury. They are unique and amazing volumes, enhanced by a superb editor's introduction and useful endnotes.

I bought this just because it was Dostoyevsky; I had no clue what it would be like. I thought that perhaps it was actually Dostoyevksy's personal diary. In fact, it is a journal Dostoyevsky wrote entirely himself and put out on a monthly basis. He muses on variety of subjects such as social-political issues of Russia at the time and criminal cases that have attracted his interest. In addition, he includes a few skeletons of short stories he is working on. Highly recommended for Dostoyevsky fanatics; newcomers would be better off reading Crime and Punishment.

This is a book of romance and forbidin love. I recomend this book to anyone who loves to read. You can find your own way to realate to this book no matter what type of book or lititure your in to. I would have to say that this book is for a higher reading level. To end my review I give this book a 5 star rating!

The works of Mikhail Bakhtin which are presently available in English are quite uneven because of subject matter, different translators and translations, and because only some were meant to be published by Bakhtin himself. Also Bakhtin's focus and interpretation changed from his early writing to late in his career, thus creating conflicts. The whole of Bakhtin's work is well analyzed by Morson and Emerson in this coherent and comprehensive study. This is not an easy task. The Key Concepts are interpreted as being: Prosaics, Unfinalizabilty and Dialogue and are discussed in Part One. Part Two deals with the Problems of Authorship. Part Three, is in my opinion the most important, and is the Discussion of Theories of the Novel. Of particular interest here is the discussion of the Chronotope and its relation to the Bildungsroman and sense of becoming. As Bakhtin himself never defined the term "Chronotope", the authors here explore its relationship to Bakhtin's Bildngsroman fragment, and the concept of Time in the development of the Bildungsroman. They are correct in this assessment, but do not carry the idea far enough. In order to really understand Bakhtin one must read the books he cites from this genre. No study of Bakhtin seems to have done so thus far.

This book is useful to both readers fammilar with Bakhtin's work, or to those who want to use it as an introduction. Highly recommended.

The thesis of the Book is the title of this Review. I can hardly believe that no one has written a review for this book before this, as it really deserves more notice than it has received. Morson, a leading Slavic scholar has also written on Bakhtin, Dostoevsky and other works on Russian Literature. In this book he uses the expertise of his previous work, and also draws on works by writers as divserse as Cervantes, George Eliot and Stephen Jay Gould, as well as Television and Movies, to try illustrate the complex relationships between literature, philsophy and time, with uneven, yet often fascinating results. I have not read anything this original lately, pertaining in particular to Literature and Time. It somewhow reminds me in tone of Bergson's "Time and Free Will", yet is totally different. There is also, especially in the discussion of the role of the Narrator, a kinship to Umberto Eco, especially: "Six Walks in the fictional Woods". Yet Morson creates his own concepts of which the most fascinating, each receiving a Chapter of their own, are Foreshadowing, Sideshadowing and Backshadowing. It is not always convincing, but when it works it is very good. It incidentally works best when Morson uses examples from Dostoevesky, Tolstoy and Bakhtin. For example, the foreshadowing in "The Idiot" is quite interesting, as is his discussion of the role of the Narrator in "The Demons". The Chapter on "Bakhtin's Indeterminism" may be one of the most original Bakhtin interpretations I have read to date. The main thesis of the Book, on the openness of time, comes appropriately form Bakhtin's: "Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics". - Read the Book.

I read this book for one of my instructional design classes - which focuses on how people learn - it is one of the most interesting books that I have ever read. It gives you alot to think about. I think the best way to learn about a non-fiction book is through a series of quotes of what the person found interesting. So here are some quotes from the book:

"In effect, once she decided to see their situation as one of betrayal, she didn't need to see it any other way. Aspects of the relationship between the two people unrelated to betrayal, or that contradicted the notion of betrayal, were forgotten. Seeing a particular story as an instance of a more general and universally known story causes the teller of the story to forget the differences between the particular and the general.
....In other words, the concept of betrayal becomes what she knows about this situation. It controls her memory of the situation so that new evidence of betrayal is more likely to get admitted into memory than contradictory evidence."(P.148)

"...Is this relationship, however, an example of betrayal? Certainly, the teller relates the story so that betrayal is an accurate description. But betrayal was used as a skeleton story around which the actual story was constructed.
In other words, by using a skeleton story for betrayal, the teller could only construct a story of betrayal. All other aspects of the story were left out. But why, for example, could the teller not have told a story of "devotion"? Only small changes would be needed to make this a story of devotion - a statement that he still loves her and hopes that she will return to her former self or one that shows he values and will support her in her role as mother. ....We want to see the situations that we encounter in terms that are describable to others. We only have a short time in which to tell these stories. So, even if the fit with those stories is not exact, seeing and describing complex stories in terms of standard stories provides an easy shorthand method for communication." (P.148-149)

"The key point here is that once we find a belief and connected story, no further processing, no search for other beliefs need be done. We rarely look to understand a story in more than one way." (p.73)

"The skeletons we use indicate our point of view. Storytelling causes us to adapt a point of view. With this adaption comes a kind of self-definition, however. We are the stories we tell. ...As we come to rely upon certain skeletons to express what has happened to us, we become incapable of seeing the world in any other way. The skeletons we use cause specific episodes to conform to one another. The more a given skeleton is used, the more stories it helps form begin to coher in memory. Consequently, we develop consistent, and rather inflexible points of view." (P.170)

"An incident is remembered in terms of how it is seen in the first place. That is, labeling is in many respects an arbitrary process. ...And, of course, even that last categorization is arbitrary since one person might characterize the victim as being blond, while the other might characterise him as being fat." (P.222)


"We would like to imagine that we learn from the stories of others, but we really only do so when the stories we hear relate to beliefs that we feel rather unsure of, ones that we are flirting with at the moment, so to speak. When we are wondering, consciously or unconsciously, about the truth, about how to act or understand some aspect of the world, then the evidence provided by others can be of some use." (P.78)


"A good memory, then means an attentive labeling facility during processing or you aren't going to remember what you don't find interesting, so the more that interests you the better memory you are likely to have." (P.223-224)

"Yet what we learn is still entirely up to us. No one teaches us how to index after all. We make up our own way of seeing the world,..." (P.113)

"Knowing a great deal about a subject means being able to detect differences that will reflect themselves in differences in indexing. In other words, intelligence depends on clever indexing. Our expert is intelligent about military history. He sees nuances where others would not. He analyzes new stories well enough to be able to relate them to old stories that might not obviously be the same." (P.113)

Gary Morson was a professor of mine at Northwestern University, and his classes on Russian Literature are outstanding. This is his book on the many themes Tolstoy uses in War and Peace, and it's a great way to make sure you're getting the most out of one of the best novels of all time. . ....

I am paraphrasing horribly, but here are some of the themes that Morson illustrates in this book about "W&P" that I found really interesting:

- "Unexpected Influence" - War & Peace is one of few novels that is written to represent real life. Characters you may feel at the beginning of the book are really important may get killed off unexpectedly halfway through. Other characters that you thought were minor or side characters end up being very influential later on. Tolstoy keeps you guessing. . . Just as in life, you never know who is going to be really important to you when you first meet them.

- "Flexibility is key to success/survival" - Tolstoy shows that many of the most successful people in life are those that adapt to changing circumstances as they occur. Morson helps you compare some of the "strong" characters to some of the "bendable" characters, and watch how they thrive (or do not thrive) throughout circumstances.

- "History is not made by big, historical figures." Tolstoy's view is that it is crafted by the decisions of thousands of 'little people' over many, many instances. (e.g., Napoleon may think he won the war, but it was really thousands of soldiers that made the right fighting decisions over thousands of instances that got the job done.) This is a theme that (according to Morson) Tolstoy is really interested in, and is reflected in other Tolstoy novels as well.

- "What is 'history'? Not what we think." Tolstoy reflects that "history" as we think we know it is not really "REAL history". History as we know it is written by historians, who act as a filter and put their own spin on events. Tolstoy shows in W&P that you can't really know history unless you were present, and even then, 'your history' will differ from everyone else's.

- and many other really interesting themes. This is a great treatise on a great novel that deals with life philosophies. Enjoy! ...