the idiot fyodor dostoyevsky — 1 explainer, sort of

the idiot, by fyodor dostoyevsky, is approximately 667 pages depending on the translation. i counted, partially, because i needed a break from q3. reading a russian novel from a desk is, in my professional estimation, the closest a person like me ever gets to literature without spilling something on it.

at the desk, second monitor pretending to load a spreadsheet. carla is upstairs in the q3 review. the boss is in another meeting on a different floor — i can hear, from somewhere, a printer that nobody is going to claim.

so. the idiot fyodor dostoyevsky. that’s the order. the standard english order. the order on the spine, the order on the listing, the order librarians use when they are too tired to argue. it’s a 1869 novel by a russian gentleman whose name has been transliterated, in my counting, eight different ways across two centuries. the english-speaking world has, for once, settled. they settled on dostoyevsky with a -y at the end. that’s the version i’m going to defend, briefly, from this desk, in the time before carla returns.

the idiot fyodor dostoyevsky is the canonical english search order for fyodor dostoyevsky’s 1869 novel about prince myshkin, a man whose kindness reads to the petersburg salons as stupidity. the title comes first, the author second, the -y spelling closes the surname. that ordering is what english catalogs, libraries, and bookstore shelves quietly agree on. i did not invent it. i only obey it.

this post is not, technically, about whether the book is any good. the idiot abroad pillar over here handles the wider category of idiots in transit. this one is about the title, the order, the -y, and the strange peace that settles when you stop fighting a transliteration. there are five of them in active use. there is only one i type into a search bar without thinking. that one is the one we’re discussing.

DOSTOYEVSKY. WITH. THE. -Y.

what the idiot fyodor dostoyevsky refers to, formally

let me lay it out flat, the way a person who has not actually finished the novel would lay it out — which is, full disclosure, the way i’m laying it out. the idiot fyodor dostoyevsky, as a phrase, refers to a specific 1869 novel published originally in serial form in the russian messenger, written by a man whose given name was fyodor mikhailovich dostoyevsky, and whose surname has been transliterated in english as dostoyevsky, dostoevsky, dostoievski, dostoievsky, and on one regrettable spine i saw at a charity shop, dostowewski. the -y ending — dostoyevsk-y — is the one english publishers, english catalogs, and the search bar of every honest reader have, by a slow consensus, agreed on.

the title comes first because that’s how english readers search. they remember the noun, then the author. nobody googles “fyodor dostoyevsky the idiot” on their first try. they google “the idiot dostoyevsky” and then, if they are being thorough, they add the first name. the canonical order is title, first name, surname-with-y. the bookstore shelf knows this. the spine knows this. a 1958 french film adaptation, listed as “the idiot”, knows this — it indexes the novel’s title first, the author second, exactly like every search-bar user in the english-speaking world.

the novel itself is about prince myshkin, who returns to russia after a long stay in a swiss sanatorium, and who is, according to the salons of petersburg, an idiot. he is not an idiot. he is just kind. that distinction — kind reads as idiot in a room of clever people — is the entire 667-page argument of the book. i find it bracing. i find it, possibly, the only piece of literature that takes my exact career situation seriously.

the boss is in another meeting, again

(in the org chart i drew on a napkin once, that role is filed the_boss with the underscore — the structural designation, not the person.) the boss has not been at his desk all morning. the boss is, in some technical sense, in a meeting. which meeting i could not tell you. the meeting situation on this floor is a closed system. carla is in q3. the boss is in something else. i am at my desk reading a 1869 russian novel on a tab i have positioned slightly behind the spreadsheet tab, in case anyone walks past. the spreadsheet has not refreshed in forty minutes. neither have i.

this is, in my reading, the perfect environment for dostoyevsky. you need partial attention. you need a meeting somewhere else. you need a tie that was bought for a different occasion still hanging from a hook on the back of your chair — the tie i own, the navy one, slightly too short, has been on this hook for a year. the russians wrote for circumstances like mine. they wrote for the salaried man who has fifteen unread minutes between two corporate distractions. they wrote, possibly, for me specifically. i can’t prove it. i can only feel it.

why sundays should end at 6 PM, applied to russian lit

i’d like to invoke, here, a take i’ve defended in other rooms. sundays should end at 6 PM. i’ve said this. i’ll say it again. i’d like to apply it, briefly, to russian literature, which is a thing i did not expect to do this morning. but the boss is in another meeting, and carla is upstairs, and i have approximately forty minutes left on this lease.

here is the application. you cannot read dostoyevsky on a sunday evening. this is not literary advice. this is logistics. the sunday evening, in its current configuration, runs from approximately 4 PM until midnight, and during that window the body is preparing for monday in a way the mind cannot override. you can hold a 667-page novel. you cannot read it. the words go in. the meaning leaks out the side. you finish a chapter, look up, and realize you are, technically, still on page 41. that’s the sunday tax. that’s why i hold the position that the sunday should end at 6 PM. the russian novel deserves better than the sunday’s leftover hours. the russian novel deserves a monday morning, a tuesday at 10:14, a thursday at the desk while the boss is, again, elsewhere. that’s where prince myshkin lives. he is a workday character.

i mentioned this to a colleague three rows over who once asked if calling someone a moron was technically grammatical, and he said something about how the morons of literature usually win. he is a stefan-type. he reads, allegedly, four languages. he uses none of them in the kitchen. but he was right about the morons. the salons of petersburg called myshkin an idiot. the salons of petersburg are, in my reading, the original group chat. and the moron, in this case, does not lose. he just goes quiet. that’s the book’s whole move. that’s also, on a slower scale, my whole move. i go quiet. i wait for q3 to end. i emerge with a tie i have not worn in 14 months.

examples of titles longer than my reading

a quick survey, for the record, of titles that are, statistically, longer than the time i have spent reading them.

• the idiot, by fyodor dostoyevsky, 667 pages. i am, generously, on page 41. i have been on page 41, with minor variations, since 2019.
• the brothers karamazov, also dostoyevsky, 796 pages. i own it. i have read the back. the back is, in my private opinion, sufficient for casual conversation.
• war and peace, tolstoy, 1,225 pages. i’d like to say i’ve read it. i would be lying. i have read three pages, in 2014, on a flight i cancelled mid-boarding. the book has been on the shelf since.
• infinite jest, david foster wallace, 1,079 pages. a book that, in my private accounting, performs a kind of literary q3 review on the reader. i made it to the footnote about the entertainment. then i closed it. it stays closed.
• moby-dick, melville, 635 pages. read it in college. understood approximately 22% of it. the rest was about whales. i nodded at the whales. the whales did not nod back.

the pattern is clear. the titles are, in every case, longer than my engagement with them. that’s the syllabus. that’s the unread shelf. it is, technically, an investigation in itself, and one i will probably never publish, because publishing it would require admitting the page count. the unopened mail pile, on my kitchen counter, has more in common with these books than the books have with each other. they are all things i intend to handle. they are all, currently, leaning.

verdict from desk, signed

so here’s where i land, from this desk, with the boss still in another meeting and carla still in q3. the idiot fyodor dostoyevsky — that order, that spelling — is the canonical english order. the title leads. the first name follows. the surname closes with a -y. that is the version every english-speaking reader has, by quiet consensus, agreed to type. it is the version on the spine of the penguin classic. it is the version in the catalog of every public library that has not, yet, automated its way out of dignity. it is the version i, an idiot at a desk, type when i need to feel as though i’m taking a literary break from a corporate one.

the alternative spellings — dostoevsky, dostoievski, dostoievsky — exist. they are, in some sense, not wrong. they are simply not the order. the order is the version english readers find first, last, and most reliably. that’s the agreement. the agreement is the only useful thing english catalogers have ever produced, and i’d like to thank them, briefly, in the voice i use to thank carla when she leaves a meeting early and drops a note on my desk that says nothing.

the boss has emerged from his meeting. he walked past the desk without looking. he was carrying two folders and a bottle of water. he did not see the russian novel. the spreadsheet remained convincing. small mercies.

my idiot type certificate, in its sleeve in the drawer, designates me, by my own assessment, as a particular subtype of idiot — one who reads russian novels in 41-page increments while the q3 review proceeds without him. the certificate has, on the back, a serif font and a watermark i designed myself. it would not survive a real audit. it survives the only audit that has ever been conducted on it, which is mine. karl pilkington, a different idiot, in a different format altogether, has a similar relationship with the books on his shelf. he has, on tape, said he did not finish them either. the tape is real. the tape is, in some quiet way, a comfort.

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