TMoP: Pattern

[Bekah]

Actually,  imo, this book is totally fiction bred in Coetzee's  
troubled heart and mind which was grieving his own son.   It was  
rumored for awhile that Dostoevsky had dealings with child  
prostitutes in St. Petersburg but that idea was put to rest -  
probably started by Turgenev or someone.

Dostoevsky's writing on children as victims of abuse, including  
sexual abuse,  was more likely due to his experience as a child whose  
9 year-old playmate was brutally raped or his having heard a  
confession from an old man in Siberia.  And then there was his  
father's behavior and subsequent murder.  All of these things  
horrified  and plagued him all his life even as he searched for  
god.    How could a god of mercy and love allow such things to  
happen?  (The Grand Inquisitor).

Stavrogin's confession in "At Tikhon's"  had more to do with  
Dostoevsky's making radicals look as evil as he could -  possessed by  
evil ideas - the result of evil ideas.

I love Coetzee and TMoP is one of his best,  but one thing I'm not  
crazy about is the lack of hope - Dostoevsky always included the  
"other side" - the good in "good vs evil" -  and some kind of  
irrational hope.

Bekah

http://www.fyodordostoevsky.com/essays/m-tillier.html

On Sep 30, 2008, at 9:38 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:

> Regarding my certain slant of vision on everyone's fine obs...
>
> Is Coetzee having D. react to ingesting Death, so to speak, as in  
> the words
> about Pavel's felt Presence?....
>
> And, full of death, D. is so anti-life here?...(from wanting to  
> hurt/kill
> children---what D. said was the irreducible problem of evil  
> embodied in
> Brothers K. (thru Ivan).
>
> He is wrestling with evil...(death).
>
> Mark
>
>
> --- On Tue, 9/30/08, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: TMoP: Pattern
>> To: "Bekah" <Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
>> Cc: "Glenn Scheper" <glenn_scheper at earthlink.net>, "P-List"  
>> <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Date: Tuesday, September 30, 2008, 8:26 AM
>> These lines speak of a beastliness in D.  He admits just
>> earlier that
>> he's unfit for humanity, and just after this he says
>> that he's been
>> for a while beyond or without (I don't remember) shame
>> in his writing
>> and now in his actions.  The border between the two has
>> been breached.
>>  Is he acting like a character in one of his books?  Or is
>> he
>> observing his own now unfettered actions for material to
>> write about?
>>
>> In some sense in this small little scene he has just raped
>> a child,
>> and is in the process of cannibalizing his dead son.
>>
>> David Morris
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 11:14 PM, Bekah
>> <Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> D.  stares at her with "what can only be
>> nakedness" after which she "flees the room."
>> ...   "he will not forget and may even one day rework
>> into his writing."
>>>
>
>
>