The two year old's guide to Dostoevsky

okay, it was an ancient roman writing plays about the greeks. the little old green book is a 1929 edition of the 3 comedies of terence: andria, adelphi, and phormio. literally translated.

http://www.amazon.com/Three-comedies-Terence-translated-introduction/dp/B0013HNMFO

E5: what do you think the goo goo muck looks like?
E4: I dunno, a basilisk?

― Edward III, Monday, April 7, 2008 8:37 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol!

there are so many bizarro exchanges that go on in my household on a daily basis, I feel derelict in not being a better documentor of them

i love this thread.

i have taken to calling Dostoevsky "dusty-dusty" in my head.

This is awesome!

last saturday, cleaning her room, found 4 of the 5 scooby doo action figures...
E3: where's daphne?
E5: I threw her out.
E3: why?
E5: because all she cares about is her hair and not about other people.
E3: and what about velma?
E5: velma can stay.

Wisdom!

Thanks e5!

favorite thread

my fave thread. your kid is awesome. :-)

Recently:

Ophelia *coughs*
Me: Put your hand in front of your mouth when you cough, Ophelia.
O turns around, looks at me seriously and replies:"But I don't have anymore coughs!"
Grrrrr. :-)

When I play my music: "STOP PLAYING THAT MUSIC. NOT FUN! STOP DANCING!"

I get yelled at if I put on anything too slow or quiet... "THIS IS NOT ROCK N ROLL, PUT ON ROCK N ROLL"

Wise words!

Phew! Glad I saw this thread, I started reading "Notes from the Underground", now I don't have to.

^^^ don't even have to read the Cliff's Notes now

haha this thread is awesome. not least because i have the same copy of notes from underground!

Dusty Dusty!

Stop playing that music!

I <3 this thread.

E5 sounded out and wrote down her first word today

no, it wasn't cat, or moo, or run

'poop'

OMG, she's better than most of the posters here already! :-)

http://tinyartdirector.blogspot.com/

haha that's awesome

this is my favourite thread to revive. I think of it whenever I'm/her sad in her room.

awww, the 24th was her birthday

this morning...

E5: I can't get married. because one, I'm not growed up, and two, I'm craaaazzzzeeeee

You did actually name her E5, yes?

yes. I anticipate a dystopian future state and the name will help her fit in at school.

http://bp3.blogger.com/_TcFdN5N0RWc/R2NKcHnOrKI/AAAAAAAAAeY/0Gl3cVfx3B0/s320/fiveintro257.jpg

THX-11E5

dystopian future, just like in WE by Zamyatin! I actually managed to finish that one.

Would you be kind enough to summarize it for us two year olds, please?

Him sad in his glass room

Woo! Thx :-)

Ned, don't forget, lady make his pee pee feel funny, go bye bye in big machine.

Dear Santa,

Am I on the good or naughty list? Because I was wondering if I am good or bad.

sounds like an 1p3'er in training to me.

Ha! This thread reminded me of the mini-reviews two children gave the work of Bridget Riley:

One wrote: “Very interesting and I like it. But there is a bit too much lines to look at in one day.” The other wrote: “Could be boring. Very stripey.”

"could be boring" def. needs to find its way into more criticism.

was thinking the same about 'very stripey'

Not to be confused with "very Stipe-y," which is a criticism for a lot of late 80s indie bands.

Not to be confused with "very Stipe-y," which is a criticism for a lot of late 80s indie bands.

Or "very White Stripe-y," which is a criticism for a lot of 00s indie bands.

i literally cried laughing whilst thinking about the children's book title of 'Story of the Eye.'

This thread's is one of my favorite opening posts

cosign

Because I was wondering if I am good or bad.

Dear E5, this is the question that never ever goes away. But you are good, at least this year.

Ho ho ho ho ho ho!

i was looking for a dostoyevsky thread and obviously this one is the best, omg. presumably now that she's 7 she can recommend me a eugene onegin translation.

anyway i am rereading c+p after years of post-high-school nabokov-induced snobbery and one thing that is definitely getting me more into it than before is that now i owe people money.

the line on dostoyevsky i always think of is the one from the essay at the front of whatever cheap paperback i used to have: "'Suddenly' is one of the most frequently used words in Crime and Punishment."

anyone read demons? (or devils or the possessed or whatever your copy calls it?) farcical politics-and-love entanglements in a small russian town escalate veeeeeeeeeery slowly until half the town burns down while the now-near-insane provincial governor shouts THE FIRE ISN'T ON THE ROOFTOPS! THE FIRE IS IN THEIR MINDS! the demons are Ideas, see. big set pieces besides the fire include a secret meeting of revolutionaries who spend a few pages fighting over whether the meeting is or is not a meeting; a society party whose guests watch in stunned confusion while four dancers directed by a pompous trend-chasing writer dance an incomprehensibly symbolic "literary quadrille"; and a totally agonizing drawn-out confrontation between an apparent psychopath and the depressed nihilist he's trying to talk into committing suicide after taking written responsibility for all the psychopath's crimes. easily the funniest dostoevsky; also the scariest. i wanna adapt it.

also there's a minor unnamed character where the joke is that she's an intense revolutionary but all she cares about is "the plight of the students", which, heh.

Demons has been one of my favorites for a while now but now you are making me really want to revisit it. iirc I have two copies of it in storage--one the P&V translation, and another translated by Garnett I believe called The Devils...

when i was a kid the living room bookshelf for some reason had three copies, all with different titles (the possessed is the only really wrong one). the p/v one is the one i just read; i'd read half of the (totally serviceable) david magarshack translation before i lost it, appropriately, at the occupy portland camp.

the last ~200 pages of this were insanely tense. could not put down.

yah I remember being almost shaken by Shatov's murder. I was just talking on the main reading site about how I wanted to read the Magarshack translation sometime in the near future.

As wrong as The Possessed is, its probably my own personal favorite of the translated titles

Just started Demons the other day. First time. Majorly important writer to me on the basis of The Bros K alone, but it's been a few years since I've read any FD and I'm very much enjoying it.

sad man in him room is now an injoke between me and some of my record collector friends, used to describe a certain style of singer-songwriter music.

omg i did not know either, and now i do. but it so long past, so even now, the remembering is a kind of shame for me

Anyone read the new Katz Brothers K translation?

Demons an absolutely stunning book

My injoke with friends on singer-songwriters is saying “someone shoulda bought this bloke/lass a diary” halfway through the song. I’d say the same for dusty dusty, but he didn’t even spare us from his diary (diary of a writer, also great, well worth reading if you like dusty)

all time classic thread