"THE GAMBLER"

I just finished Dostoevski's book of the same name.  I had anticipated a read/ride that would be of minimal interest to me, since I rarely if ever gamble, and don't really understand this disease except by the medical model.  I mean, personally.

Well I am not a murderer either, at least not by the common wordly terms by which it is ok to hate your brother.  But I should have remembered my experience with "Crime and Punishment" when I read it for college.  I have never yet read any author who could make an "innocent bystander" feel like the protagonist--and most of all, to feel the constant and lowering oppression that is common to  addicts and idolaters everywhere, transculturally.

For the first time in my life, through this book, I feel I know what it must be like to be a compulsive gambler. Of course, as with the prison story, it helped that the author had had his own gambling problem, so personally experienced what it is to be a loser; as all gamblers are, who cannot quit on their own. As I learned in AA, liberation from our cheap idols comes only by a power higher than ourselves--and I don't mean  our wives, guys!

("Wive's Guys" eh? Unpack that!  I have been thinking about volunteerism and have realized that getting married is often our biggest and hopefully best volunteer mission.  What is love if not voluntary? And the same of course goes for the wife--but if we marry not to be a servant but a mere sucking machine  for personal gain--if servanthood is not mutual--then it is no wonder that half our marriages fail, because we so despise servants and service--even when we are being served! This makes about as much sense as gambling itself--and "The Gambler" is also a picture of love and relationships missed and/or ruined. As we see in the climactic scene with the protagonist and his love interest.)

At any rate, this is another example of Dost being "differently abled" than the philosopher/economist Tolstoy.
I think it interesting that I have never forgotten the name Raskolnikov; because I became him for a while. I would wake up at Shimer happy, and almost immediately the thought came to mind, "Yes, you are happy for the moment--but what about that old woman you murdered?"

But I can't recall the name of a single Tolstoy character, except Anna Karenina; but only because it is the famous name of a famous book and I am slogging through it at the moment.  But I don't feel a thing for Anna or the disreputable men with whom she carries on--and Tolstoy was pretty bad at male-female relationships anyway, and despised his own wife--so sympathy for the devil I no-do-feel!!!

"Good writing is good writing," said Norman Mailer--so writing--esp. to aggrandize the author--may be satisfactory to many--but I can't agree that this is an adequate excuse for writing whatever theories come to mind, even if based on personal experiences. I have yet to read a line in which Dost brags on himself--but he can put one's mind and even soul in a fictional character like no one I have ever read. Flannery O'Connor went back to Dost in her later years, and I too find myself returning to that which so fascinated me in college; and now I have some insights as to why. Maybe I am ready to go "underground"--? (Brrrrrr...)