Dostoevsky: Demons discussion

If anyone would like to introduce themselves, their frame of reference for this book and maybe how they got interested in reading it, this would be a great place to do that! It would also be interesting to hear if anyone has a particular area of interest or expertise related to the author or his works.

I'll try to start:
* Books/stories by Dostoevsky that I've read:
The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, Notes from Underground, The Double.
* Other Russian Lit (some on my own and some as part of a class): Fathers and Sons by Turnegev, Anna Karenina & The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy, Doctor Zhivago by Pasternak, A Hero of Our Times by Lermontov, The Overcoat by Gogol, Eugene Onegin by Pushkin.
* I've been interested in expanding my knowledge of Dostoevsky's work and also interested in other Russian works. The Master and Margarita has been on my "to read" shelf for a while.
* Demons/The Devils seemed like an important work to read by Dostoevsky because it is one of the major four works he produced before his death. I came to appreciate his humor and insight and the philosophical/religious concepts he wrestled with in his work, so this seemed to be a good one to experience.

Welcome and Happy Reading!

Hi! I’m Mark. I’m retired and live with my wife and our house full of cats on the East coast of the USA. I think over the years I’ve read almost everything Dostoyevsky published. I was asked just the other day to rate the big four and after some thought decided the task was impossible. Of the four, The Devils gave me the most trouble. I put it down two different times about a third of the way through. On a third try, most determined I succeeded, and of course my efforts were rewarded.
Camus in the preface to his redaction of the book into a play, calls it one of the 4 or 5 best novels ever written.
(view spoiler)[For me the reunion of Shatov and his estranged and most pregnant wife in the middle of the ferocious storm is the coolest scene in the book. Especially since this one brief light is immediately extinguished with Shatov’s murder in the next scene. In away the pedagogue is responsible for everything. His over liberal education of Stavrogin and his total rejection of his own son turns both of them into monsters. (hide spoiler)]
Do seriously consider picking up Master & Margarita. It is one cool, cool book. And if I might suggest another worth looking into: Bely’s strange but ultimately fun Petersburg.

Mark wrote: "Hi! I’m Mark. I’m retired and live with my wife and our house full of cats on the East coast of the USA. I think over the years I’ve read almost everything Dostoyevsky published. I was asked just t..."

Nice to hear from you, Mark!

(I also live on the East Coast, trying to fight my lapses of reason in order to keep my number of cats to 2, matching the number of human occupants of our household.)

I appreciate your point of view of the role of the pedagogue Verkhovensky. I do agree that a great deal of the book is a criticism of liberal attitudes. I've had some difficulty in the past few years with sympathy for Dostoevsky's anti-revolutionary stance in The Devils, but recently I think it was in the introduction a collection of his short stories that I read a simple explanation that connected the dots about his position... How his time in prison in Siberia demonstrated for him the depths of the unsavory nature of the criminal mind, and made him give up the idealistic position he had previously held of the basic goodness of humanity. It also definitely makes sense in his ability to describe the sometimes self-destructive tendencies of human psychology.

I've never heard of Bely's Petersburg but it sounds great! Thanks for the tip!

Also, I definitely need to check out Camus' version of Devils! Some good ones to add to my ever-growing to-read list. :)