Dostoyevsky

“The thought, when written down, becomes less oppressive, but some thoughts are like a cancerous tumor: you express it, you excise it, and it grows back worse than before.”

--Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov’s greatest flaw was his hatred of Dostoyevsky. He said he “lacked taste” and was “a prophet, a claptrap journalist, and a slapdash comedian.” He called Crime and Punishment “ghastly” and The Brothers Karamazov “rigmarole.”  Overall, he abhorred Dostoyevsky’s obsessive way of writing and thought that it was, in his own words, “incredibly banal.”

I should have punched him just for that. 

Despite that, I cannot help but admire the man. There is something so beautiful about his writing, about the way his words make the tip of the tongue take a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, on three, on the teeth. He was a true artist, someone who not only respected literature, but put it on the sacred pedestal which it deserved. 

Elsa disagrees with me. She’s always thought that Nabokov is, and I quote, “one pretentious sonofabitch.” I tell her one can’t be pretentious without having read The Brothers Karamazov, which Nabokov clearly didn’t do, or else he would have liked it. 

“Shut up,” Elsa responds. “Or I’ll stop revising your stories.”

Elsa is, in her own words, my freelance editor. She gives me feedback on my short stories in exchange for a small fee. I could definitely get better advice for free, but I continue to pay her anyway. She’s proven herself to be worthy not only of giving feedback, but of starting fascinating literary conversations. Unfortunately, she only does so after she’s given me scathing reviews on my work. 

She does the same now, reading a story that had been particularly bothersome to write and whose ending I had rewritten dozens of times. She arches back on her chair and puts the manuscript that she was holding back on the table. She stares at me disapprovingly. I only stare back at my own coffee, untouched. 

“It sounds too much like Salinger,” Elsa finally says. 

“It was supposed to sound like Dostoyevsky,” I reply.

“Dostoyevsky? Why? Because she goes crazy and murders someone with an axe? Or because of the prostitute in the story?”

“Well--”

“There’s a prostitute in The Catcher in the Rye too, you know. Hell, there’s a prostitute in every story in literature ever. It’s not the most Dostoyevskian thing. Neither is madness. A good writer knows that.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“Stop trying to plagiarize.”

“I’m not plagiarizing.”

“Yes you are. Worse than Nabokov.”

“Nabokov?”

“He plagiarized the entirety of Kafka’s work in Invitation to a Beheading and then claimed he’d never read him. Bullshit.”

“It must have been a coincidence.”

“Alice. You don’t accidentally plagiarize all of Kafka’s work. It’s an atrocity. And you’re committing the same one, except you somehow seem to plagiarize all of literature.”
 “Literature is plagiarism,” I say, just for the sake of arguing.

“Bullshit,” Elsa repeats, then takes a drag of her cigarette and just like that, the conversation’s over. She blows the smoke into the air, and the wind redirects it to my face. I wrinkle my nose in distaste. 

“The main problem is the ending,” she says. “Let’s review: one night, a man hires a prostitute. They go to a hotel room, have sex, and it’s so mind-blowingly bad that the prostitute goes crazy and decides to kill the man. Is that right?”

I nod. 

“Ok,” Elsa says, rifling through my manuscript. “But she’s a prostitute. She has bad sex all of the time. What is it about this specific man that makes her go insane?”

“It’s a metaphor,” I say. “It’s supposed to be feminist.”

“But it’s a faulty metaphor,” Elsa replies. “If this is supposed to be feminist -- which I have no doubt it is -- then she’s killing the wrong person. If her madness is a culmination of the suppressed feminist rage within her, she’s aiming it at the wrong person. In other words -- how can I explain it -- she’s killing the vessel when what she really wants is to kill the monster within. Do you get what I mean?”

“So she’s supposed to kill her pimp?”

Elsa shrugs. “If that’s what you want. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend it. What she needs to kill is the thing that’s responsible for her situation. Whether that’s lust, or greed, or capitalism is up to you.”

I nod, deep in thought. 

“Who was she supposed to kill? In the original version, I mean.”

My eyes darken as I remember the gruesome thought that had first appeared to me, like a bad omen in a dream. I had tried to write it various times but always stopped before the last few words. “It was sadistic. I was a bit afraid of that ending, to be honest.” 

“If there’s anything that I’ve learned from writers, is that the ending you’re afraid of is always the right one,” she says, releasing another plume of smoke. “You’ve got to bleed for your art, Alice. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it's that all good art always has a little bit of blood on it.” 

I nod, thinking about our earlier conversation.

 “Elsa,” I say, “if literature isn’t plagiarism, then what is it?”

Elsa thinks for a while, her eyebrows scrunching up in her face. Finally, she gives me the following answer:

“Literature is the thing that stands between salvation and damnation. Dostoyevsky knew that, I think. Nabokov-- I’m not so sure.”

***

When I leave the café, my head is thumping. I can’t stop thinking about Elsa’s definition of literature.  Salvation and damnation. Something Dostoyevsky knew but Nabokov didn’t. What did she mean?

Literature is dangerous, I think. That must be what she meant. Dostoyevsky knew that; he almost got executed for it. Literature has the power to heal and to damn. Perhaps Nabokov wasn’t aware of that. 

I sure am, though. I think of that as I hear the sound of my footsteps on the pavement, that soft tapping of the soles.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

I am reminded of the final scene of the story I was working on, where the prostitute stands outside the man’s door, her heels clicking as she drags the axe on the floor.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

I can’t get the sound of those footsteps out of my head. They overwhelm me, they come from everywhere, from the clacking of the subway to the jangling of my keys to the click of my door as I enter my apartment. 

Thump. Thump. Thump.

I have to kill the person responsible for the prostitute’s suffering. The entity that’s responsible. I take out my laptop and open the document with my original first draft in it. Only the final words are missing.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The entity responsible. Is it love, is it lust, is it greed, is it sex?

Thump. Thump. Thump.

No. I know the answer. I’ve always known the answer.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

You’ve got to bleed for your art, Alice.

My heart is beating quickly. I know how to end the story. It’s sadistic. It’s cruel. It’s dangerous.

It’s perfect. 

I take a deep breath.

And as I begin to hear the faint clicking of heels outside my door, I cannot help but think that my greatest flaw is my love of Dostoyevsky.