At last - a novel.

Finally, I have a chance to indulge in one of my favorite pleasures - immersion in a thick, exquisite novel. I have gone without this far too long, foregoing my normal Winter read in favor of teaching myself Hebrew. Now that Hebrew is proceeding well, and Spring break has come, I have permitted myself a return to the luscious land of the 19th-Century Russians, those "loose, baggy monsters" of Henry James' phrase. Having finished the fourth of the Big Four (Crime and Punishment, War and Peace, Brothers Karamazov, and Anna Karenina) last year, I turn now to one of FMD's two remaining major works, The Idiot. In fact, I'm rather enjoying it more than BK. I have barely gotten in enough to say anything intlligent about it, but I'll share more as I get closer to finishing. Though it's ambitious, I believe I can finish FMD's Demons as well as IST's Fathers and Children in 2005, paving the way for 19C Russian women's novels in 2006, and then a return to glorious WP in 2007, when the new Pevear-Volokhonsky translation is due out. As you can tell, I'm quite happy.