The Idiot, Finally

I think Prince Myshkin and Aglaya could have been okay together, because they were both hippies. Hippies can survive with other hippies. But hippies will be eaten alive by a repressive army of bourgeoisie. And that's pretty much what The Idiot is about.

I don't know if I'll ever read Crime and Punishment or Notes From the Undergound now. I think I got a bad translation, but Dostoevsky wrote a book in which nothing happens for about 600 pages other than people are elated or offended by the way other people look at them. I suppose the theme is the inability of certain types to act. Near the end -- 3 months into my reading --Aglaya acts and it blows up in her face. When Roghozin acts, it destroys 3 lives, including the Idiot's, who is not really an Idiot but is (as I say) a hippie.

Well, after the hard work of reading The Idiot I thought I'd relax with a Dame Agatha. But Dame Fortuna, a.k.a. Goodwill's book section, could equip me only with Passenger To Frankfort. It's a terrible book, published in 1972 when AC was 82. It's not really an Agatha Christie mystery; it's an old woman using the James Bond motif to rail against the Young. Even taken as the ranting of a reactionary on her last legs, though, it fails because the actions of The Young she rails against were old hat by 1972. Don't bother reading it - I'll tell you right now that it has much to do with the possibility of Hitler being alive, because there is no possible explanation for young people not liking opera other than Hitler is secretly corrupting them.

Anyway, I've got a long bus ride tonight - have to go downtown and actually transfer once -- and today Goodwill coughed up Rootie Kazootie by Lawrence Kaumoff, which I'm looking forward to. I remember watching Rootie Kazootie on TV, or maybe I remember reading a comic book with a character named Rootie Kazootie. Either way, there's some childhood association. So I'm rooting for the book. ("Rooting" -- get it?).