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Constance Baxter

This book is for those who have the ability to feed off of the positivity of their thoughts.

Food For Thought

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Experiences

Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man follows the experiences of a man who decides that there is nothing of any value in the world. Slipping into nihilism he is determined to commit suicide. A chance encounter with a young girl, however, begins the man on a journey that reawakens a love for his fellow man.

Ryan Glass

Woodkeep Audio

Interactive Media

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Constance Garnett

Prince Alexey, aka Alyosha, the son of Prince Valkovsky is a naïve but loveable young man who is easily manipulated by his father. Alyosha runs away with his girlfriend Natasha and as a result, her father, Nikolai, curses her. The only friend that remains by Natasha's side is Ivan – her childhood friend who is deeply in love with her, and whom Natasha has rejected despite their being engaged. Prince Valkovsky tries to destroy Alyosha's plans to marry Natasha, and wants to make him marry the rich princess Katerina. Alyosha falls in love with Katerina, but still loves Natasha. He is constantly torn between these two women.

Humiliated and Insulted

The story presents itself as a childhood memory, when the speaker was nine and living with his father in Tula province. The boy frightened by apparitions of a wolf prowling the countryside finds refuge with one of his father's serfs, Marey.

The Peasant Marey

The Brothers Karamazov is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, judgment, and reason, set against a modernizing Russia, with a plot developing around the subject of patricide. It is a passionate philosophical novel entering deeply into the ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. The Brothers Karamazov is recognised universally as one of the supreme achievements in world literature.

The Brothers Karamazov

After teasing the crocodile, Ivan Matveich is swallowed alive. He finds the inside of the crocodile to be quite comfortable, and the animal's owner refuses to allow it to be cut open, in spite of the pleas from Elena Ivanovna. Ivan Matveich urges the narrator to arrange for the crocodile to be purchased and cut open, but the owner asks so much for it that nothing is done.

The Crocodile

A government official Golyadkin has a formative discussion with his Doctor Rutenspitz, who fears for his sanity and tells him that his behaviour is dangerously antisocial. He prescribes 'cheerful company' as the remedy. Golyadkin resolves to try this, and leaves the office. He proceeds to a birthday party. He was uninvited, and a series of faux pas lead to his expulsion from the party. On his way home through a snowstorm, he encounters his double, who looks exactly like him. A new evolving relationship is formed.

The Double

Unlike most people, who typically act out of revenge because they believe justice is the end, the Underworld Man is conscious of his problems and feels the desire for revenge, but he does not find it virtuous; the incongruity leads to spite towards the act itself with its concomitant circumstances. He feels that others like him exist, but he continuously concentrates on his spitefulness instead of on actions that would help him avoid the problems that torment him. He even admits that he would rather be inactive out of laziness.

Letters from the Underworld

A humorous story about a manipulative mother's attempts to arrange a marriage between her beautiful daughter and a wealthy elderly nobleman. The story provides an brilliant insight into the desperation, psychology, gossip, and rivalry of provincial merchants trying to better their position in life.

Uncle's Dream

Prince Myshkin having spent some time in Switzerland recovering from his illness is now returning to Russia. He is the central character of the novel, a young man whose goodness, open-hearted simplicity and guilelessness lead many of the more worldly characters he encounters to mistakenly assume that he lacks intelligence and insight. In the character of Prince Myshkin, Dostoevsky set himself the task of depicting the positively good and beautiful man and consequences of placing such a unique individual at the centre of the conflicts, desires, passions and egoism of worldly society, both for the man himself and for those with whom he becomes involved.

The Idiot

Our narrator loves St. Petersburg at night time. He no longer feels comfortable during the day because all of the people he was used to seeing are not there. He drew his emotions from there. If they were happy, he was happy. If they were despondent, he was despondent. He felt alone when seeing new faces. He also knew the houses. As he strolled down the streets they would talk to him and tell him how they were being renovated or painted a new colour or being torn down. He lives alone in a small apartment in Saint Petersburg with only his older, non-social maid Matryona to keep him company.

White Nights

Aleksandr Petrovich Goryanchikov, has been sentenced to penalty deportation to Siberia and ten years of hard labour for murdering his wife. Life in prison is particularly hard for Aleksandr Petrovich, since he is a gentleman and suffers the malice of the other prisoners, nearly all of whom belong to the peasantry. Gradually Goryanchikov overcomes his revulsion at his situation and his fellow convicts, undergoing a spiritual re-awakening that culminates with his release from the camp. It is a work of great humanity; Dostoevsky portrays the inmates of the prison with sympathy for their plight, and also expresses admiration for their energy, ingenuity and talent. This semi-autobiographical text is a loosely-knit collection of facts, events and philosophical discussion organised by theme. Dostoevsky himself spent four years in exile following his conviction for involvement in the Petrashevsky Circle.

Notes from a Dead House

Both a masterpiece of Russian populist writing and a parody of the entire genre, Poor People is an early example of Dostoevsky’s genius.

Written as a series of letters, Poor People is the tragic tale of a petty clerk and his impossible love for a young girl. Longing to help her and her family, he sells everything he can, but his kindness leads him only into more desperate poverty, and ultimately into debauchery. As a typical “man of the underground,” he serves as the embodiment of the belief that happiness can only be achieved with riches.

This work is remarkable for its vivid characterizations, especially of Dievushkin, the clerk, solely by means of his letters to the young girl and her answers to him.

Julia Emlen

John Lescault

Blackstone Publishing

Poor People

Do honest thieves even exist? Dostoyevsky takes us through a journey of psychological exploration and discovery.

An Honest Thief

Alexei is hopelessly in love with Polina, the General's stepdaughter. She asks him to go to the town's casino and place a bet for her. After hesitations, he succumbs and ends up winning at the roulette table. He returns to her the winnings but she will not tell him the reason she needs money.

The Gambler

The mysterious narrator is the owner of a pawnshop, and one of his repeated customers was a young girl of sixteen who always pawns items to earn money to advertise as a governess in the newspaper. The narrator could see that she was in a dire financial situation, and he often gave her much more for her pawned items than they were reasonably worth. The narrator slowly develops an interest in the girl.

A Gentle Creature

Dostoevsky describes a society of superrich and very poor similar to modern day circumstances. The story highlights the tragic economic and social conditions of the common people, and the moral responsibility of human beings to respond. The story is told the eyes of a little boy left standing in freezing cold observing Christmas festivities of the rich.

The Heavenly Christmas Tree

Our protagonist Arkady is 19 years old. He is a young intellectual of Dostoevsky's era, yet Arkady's ideas of life resonate surprisingly well with modern generation of millennials and overall rejection of consumerism. Arkady's form of rebellion against society and his father manifests through the rejection of attending a university, making of money, and accumulation of wealth and power.

The Adolescent

Ivan Ivanovitch is a frustrated writer. One day he attends the funeral of a casual acquaintance and falls to contemplation in the graveyard. He hears the voices of the recently deceased and buried, and he listens to their conversation. They discuss card games and political scandals. As the deceased prepare to entertain themselves by revealing all of the shameful details of their earthly lives, Ivan Ivanovitch sneezes. The dead go silent afterward.

The Bean

Dostoevsky was 27 years old when he wrote this story. It revolves around two young men, true soul mates, who live in each other's pockets, sharing a flat, social and emotional joys and setbacks. They are young professionals of the time contemplating life, happiness, unexplored joys. One of the two friends develops a vision of universal happiness conflicting with his individual pleasures, and preventing him from marrying a beautiful young girl.

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