The Gambler/Bobok/A Nasty Story
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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The stories in this volume demonstrate Dostoyevsky's genius for fusing caricature, irony and the grotesque to create a powerful dark humour. The Gambler is a breathtaking portrayal of an intense and futile obsession. Based on Dostoyevsky's own experience of financial desperation and the compulsive desire to win money, it focuses on the characters that take their places at the gaming tables of 'Roulettenburg'- the outspoken, aristocratic 'Grandmamma', the mercenary Mademoiselle Blanche, the show more cool, mysterious Polina and Alex, the author's self-portrait; a man gripped by exhilaration and hopelessness. Bobok is a blackly comic satire in which a desolate writer becomes drawn into the conversations of the dead, and A Nasty Story is a humorous look at the disparity between a man's exaggerated ideal of himself and the sad reality. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
What an interesting way to end the book. So vague but satisfying as well. We do not know what will happen to the main character and while it may seem positive, we know how human nature is.
While some of the book was hard to comprehend due to the french, overall, it was quite enjoyable. The way it displayed addiction was well described and as someone who knows nothing of gambling, it was quite entertaining nonetheless. The internal dialogue of Alexei was also nice and pleasant to read after having read Notes from the Underground. Alexei was quite the character and the way he had degraded himself for Polina was pretty funny considering how proud Alexei had been portrayed. The open ended nature of the ending reinforces this idea of show more addiction and what people will do for their dreams, regardless of their practicality. show less
While some of the book was hard to comprehend due to the french, overall, it was quite enjoyable. The way it displayed addiction was well described and as someone who knows nothing of gambling, it was quite entertaining nonetheless. The internal dialogue of Alexei was also nice and pleasant to read after having read Notes from the Underground. Alexei was quite the character and the way he had degraded himself for Polina was pretty funny considering how proud Alexei had been portrayed. The open ended nature of the ending reinforces this idea of show more addiction and what people will do for their dreams, regardless of their practicality. show less
Published in 1862 in the Dostoevsky brothers’ journal Time, A Nasty Story is one of Dostoevsky’s shorter, funnier and crueller comedies.
Actual State Councillor Ivan Ilyich Pralinsky is on his way home somewhat the worse for drink after a small birthday party with some of his colleagues, when he passes by the house of one of his subordinates. A wedding is in progress in the house, and he remembers that his subordinate, an unassuming, beaverish man named Pseldonimov, is getting married there. Pralinsky decides to gatecrash the wedding, to scatter his largesse among the crowd and then leave in glory. It all goes horribly wrong, in a series of absolutely toe-curling solecisms, terrible even by Dostoevskyan standards...
Read the full show more review on The Lectern:
http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2009/04/nasty-story-dostoevsky.html show less
Actual State Councillor Ivan Ilyich Pralinsky is on his way home somewhat the worse for drink after a small birthday party with some of his colleagues, when he passes by the house of one of his subordinates. A wedding is in progress in the house, and he remembers that his subordinate, an unassuming, beaverish man named Pseldonimov, is getting married there. Pralinsky decides to gatecrash the wedding, to scatter his largesse among the crowd and then leave in glory. It all goes horribly wrong, in a series of absolutely toe-curling solecisms, terrible even by Dostoevskyan standards...
Read the full show more review on The Lectern:
http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2009/04/nasty-story-dostoevsky.html show less
A deep view into the mind of the mentally deranged and obsessed. No other writer I know of comes close in reflecting the imagery of the shadow world of the mad and insane.
The destructive force of gambling. Human passions and the difficulty of controlling them. This is the primary focus of The Gambler, a short novel with big themes by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. For a full review see http://the-iceberg.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-gambler-by-fyodor-dostoyevsky.html
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1,425+ Works 179,549 Members
One of the most powerful and significant authors in all modern fiction, Fyodor Dostoevsky was the son of a harsh and domineering army surgeon who was murdered by his own serfs (slaves), an event that was extremely important in shaping Dostoevsky's view of social and economic issues. He studied to be an engineer and began work as a draftsman. show more However, his first novel, Poor Folk (1846), was so well received that he abandoned engineering for writing. In 1849, Dostoevsky was arrested for being a part of a revolutionary group that owned an illegal printing press. He was sentenced to be executed, but the sentence was changed at the last minute, and he was sent to a prison camp in Siberia instead. By the time he was released in 1854, he had become a devout believer in both Christianity and Russia - although not in its ruler, the Czar. During the 1860's, Dostoevsky's personal life was in constant turmoil as the result of financial problems, a gambling addiction, and the deaths of his wife and brother. His second marriage in 1887 provided him with a stable home life and personal contentment, and during the years that followed he produced his great novels: Crime and Punishment (1886), the story of Rodya Raskolnikov, who kills two old women in the belief that he is beyond the bounds of good and evil; The Idiots (1868), the story of an epileptic who tragically affects the lives of those around him; The Possessed (1872), the story of the effect of revolutionary thought on the members of one Russian community; A Raw Youth (1875), which focuses on the disintegration and decay of family relationships and life; and The Brothers Karamazov (1880), which centers on the murder of Fyodor Karamazov and the effect the murder has on each of his four sons. These works have placed Dostoevsky in the front rank of the world's great novelists. Dostoevsky was an innovator, bringing new depth and meaning to the psychological novel and combining realism and philosophical speculation in his complex studies of the human condition. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Fyodor Dostoyevsky has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.
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Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Penguin Classics (L179)
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Gambler/Bobok/A Nasty Story
- Original publication date
- 1867 (original Russian) (original Russian); 1966 (1st Penguin edition) (1st Penguin edition)
- Important places
- Russia
- First words
- At length I returned from two weeks leave of absence to find that my patrons had arrived three days ago in Roulettenberg.
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Statistics
- Members
- 670
- Popularity
- 42,724
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (4.12)
- Languages
- 5 — Dutch, English, French, Greek, Norwegian (Bokmål)
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 13
