If you wake up one day and find that you are a character in a Dostoevsky novel, it might occur to you to wonder whether you are a major character who will feature in the foreground of the book or a minor character who may be much discussed but stays in the background. Here is how you can know: Are people calling you by a single name or by your full name? If people are calling you by a single name, especially by a nickname for your complicated Russian first name, then you are a main character. If people are calling you by your first and last name together, and if your full name is being used in places where people would commonly use pronouns, then you are a minor character. Not only that, but you may not survive for the duration of the novel. Sorry about that, Ilopetryona Ivaskovnavitchnakov.
This reminds me of a question that's been plaguing me. Maybe you've been wondering about it too. Here it is: If there were an Olympics of Pathology — a contest in which the most pathological person wins — would a Dostoevsky protagonist beat an Edgar Allan Poe protagonist? Would it be a tie? Which one would fall apart on the gold medal platform and which one would collapse into a trembling meltdown on the silver medal platform? I've been wondering this. You?
As you can undoubtedly tell from this post, the writers' strike is over.
Hello, friends. How are you today?
Love.
