fyodor dostoevsky the idiot — a thorough investigation from a wedding i did not attend

i did not attend tom and maggie’s wedding. i was not invited. i was busy reading about a russian novel i have not read, about a man so good he is mistaken for an idiot. the tie i own was clean and folded. it remained that way. fyodor would understand the absence.

at the desk, in a chair the building bought used. carla is up in the third floor budget review. the boss is in another meeting on a different floor. forty-five minutes, give or take a coffee i won’t walk out for.

so. fyodor dostoevsky the idiot. that ordering — author first, title second, surname spelled with the -e- — is the bibliographic version. the formal version. the version a librarian writes on the catalog card before she goes home. the wider idiot-abroad pillar over here covers the broader category of people who travel and report back. this post is about the order on the spine when the spine is being serious.

the english-speaking world has, for two centuries, argued about this man’s surname. there are five active spellings. there is one canonical order, and that order is the one libraries print on the index card: last name, first name, title, which collapses, for the reader, into fyodor dostoevsky the idiot. that’s the search string of a person who already owns one academic-looking edition. that’s the search string of a person who is, in some quiet way, performing.

writing this from the desk on a wednesday. the spreadsheet tab is open behind the russian-novel tab. the tie i own is hanging on the hook on the back of the chair, where it has been hanging since approximately march of last year.

FORMAL. ORDER. AUTHOR. FIRST.

what fyodor dostoevsky the idiot refers to, in the formal sense

fyodor dostoevsky the idiot, as a phrase, points at a 1869 russian novel originally serialized in the russian messenger, written by fyodor mikhailovich dostoevsky, and titled, in the original, idiot. the canonical english title is the idiot. the author-first ordering — fyodor dostoevsky the idiot — is what library catalogs, footnotes, and citation pages use when they want to be taken seriously. the title-first ordering — the idiot, by dostoevsky — is what bookstore shelves and search bars use when they want to be quick.

i did not know any of this until i looked it up, on a tab i’d like to admit i have minimized seven times this morning. i did not look it up at home. at home, the third yoga mat would have judged me. i looked it up at the desk, where the spreadsheet provides cover and the boss is, by his own arrangement, perpetually elsewhere. a 1958 french adaptation, listed as “the idiot”, indexes itself with the title-first convention, which is what the screen demands. the screen demands brevity. the spine demands gravity. fyodor dostoevsky the idiot is, in this taxonomy, a spine phrase.

the novel itself follows prince myshkin, who returns to russia after years in a swiss sanatorium and proves, page after page, that being kind in a clever room reads as being simple. the salons of petersburg call him an idiot. he is not. he is just earnest in a setting that has no use for it. i find that situation, on a tuesday, increasingly familiar.

the wedding venue, mentioned, never visited

tom and maggie were married, last weekend, at a venue i did not visit and will not name, because i was not there to confirm any of the details i could otherwise invent. tom is the friend with the volvo and the kids and the pension he understands. maggie is, in this telling, his wife now. they had, by all secondhand accounts, a lovely time. there was a band. there was a sit-down meal. there was a moment, before the speeches, when someone tapped a glass and the room went quiet — i’m told. i was not in the room.

i was, instead, in my apartment, with a copy of the idiot open at page 41, where my copy has been open, with minor variations, since 2019. i had the tie i own laid out on the bed. the tie was navy, slightly too short, and i did not put it on. i did not put on the suit. i did not put on the shoes. i sat on the couch in a t-shirt and pretended, for ninety minutes, that i was the kind of person who skips weddings on principle, when i was, in fact, the kind of person who was not invited to this one and was filling the time with russian literature as a defensive measure.

why credit cards are a personality trait, applied here

i’d like to invoke a take i’ve defended in other rooms. credit cards are a personality trait. i’ve held this position for years. i’d like to apply it, briefly, to the question of weddings i did not attend, which is — in my private accounting — also a question about money i did not spend.

here is the application. a wedding, for the guest, is a credit-card event. the flight, if there is one, goes on a credit card. the hotel goes on a credit card. the gift goes on a credit card. the suit, for the guest who does not own one, goes on a credit card. the meal at the airport, on the way home, goes on a credit card. by the time the wedding is over, the guest has, in some technical sense, told the world a story about himself in five line items, all of them visible to a bank in a different state. that’s the personality trait. that’s the take. the credit card is the only document at the wedding that is, in plain language, honest about what the wedding cost the guest.

i was spared this entire performance. i was, in some private sense, free. the tie i own remained on its hanger. the suit remained in its bag. my line of credit stayed exactly where it was, which, in my case, is a place i’d rather not describe in detail. fyodor would, again, understand. fyodor was not, on the historical record, a man with a settled relationship to money.

examples of formal events i declined

a quick survey, for the record, of formal events i have, in recent years, declined or otherwise failed to attend. each one is filed, in my mental drawer, under the idiot type certificate, which i printed myself in a serif font and which lives, in a sleeve, in the second drawer of the desk.

• tom and maggie’s wedding, last weekend. not invited. did not attend. read four pages of a russian novel instead. counted, in my private metric, as a productive saturday.
• the office holiday party, three years running. invited. did not attend. carla went each year and reported, on monday, that “you didn’t miss anything”, which is, i believe, the kindest sentence anyone in that building has ever said to me.
• a baby shower, in 2022, for someone i had not seen since 2018. invited via group text. did not attend. sent a card with a check inside. the check cleared. the friendship did not survive the year. i am not sure these two facts are related.
• a funeral, in late 2023. i’d rather not describe this one. i did go. it is the only formal event in this list i actually attended, and i did, technically, wear the tie. the tie has not been worn since.
• a stefan-type colleague’s housewarming. the stefan-type — three rows over at the office, allegedly fluent in four languages — invited me on a wednesday by leaning slightly into my cubicle. i said i’d think about it. i did not think about it. i did not attend. stefan, on monday, did not mention it. stefan is, on this question, a gentleman.

the pattern is clear. the formal event, for me, is a thing that happens to other people, in rooms that have a specific relationship to credit cards, in clothes that, for the most part, hang in my closet on the off chance. that’s the syllabus. that’s the social ledger. it would not survive a real audit. it survives mine.

verdict, the tie i own remains

so here’s where i land. fyodor dostoevsky the idiot is the formal bibliographic ordering — author first, surname with the -e-, title trailing. it is the version on the syllabus, on the citation, on the index card behind the librarian’s counter. it is not the version i type into a search bar at 10:38 in the morning. but it is the version that, on a saturday afternoon when a wedding i was not invited to is happening across town, looks back at me from the cover of a paperback and reminds me that the kind man, in 1869, was also not in the room he was supposed to be in.

the tie i own remains, on its hanger, where it has remained for fourteen months. the suit bag has not been opened. the credit card has not been swiped on a gift, a flight, or an airport sandwich. tom and maggie are, by all accounts, married, and that fact has not, on this end, been ratified or contested by my presence. fyodor would have understood. prince myshkin would have understood. i am not stupid. i am, in fact, the opposite. i am unattended.

budget review must be wrapping. carla is back in the corridor — i can hear two heels on linoleum and a third pair shuffling. closing the russian-novel tab. the spreadsheet, mercifully, has not refreshed itself either.

the wall of insults — the digital one, the one i maintain in a folder on the desktop, where i collect, for archival purposes, every email an internet stranger has sent me about a post — has, this week, three new entries, all of them about a previous post on the idiot abroad in china, archived here as the china episode write-up. one of the strangers called me, in serif font, “a man who has not earned the right to discuss russian literature”. he is, in some technical sense, correct. i have not earned the right. i have only earned the desk, the chair, and the forty-five minutes between meetings i was not invited to. that, on the russian model, is enough.

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