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“Alyosha’s pathetic fate moves us to pity,” Clarence Brown said, “but most readers will wonder what exactly we are to do or refrain from doing as a result of reading about it.”

Right. We do wonder. We’ve seen such a cruel thing happen: a small life, with no pleasure in it, blossomed momentarily …

We can reduce all of writing to this: we read a line, have a reaction to it, trust (accept) that reaction, and do something in response, instantaneously, by intuition.

That’s it.

Over and over.

It’s kind of crazy but, in my experience, that’s the whole game: (1) becoming convinced that the…

Ivan’s speech is the stuff of an excellent essay: articulate, earnest, precisely expressed, supported with examples, infused with sincere intent. That’s why we believe it and why we’re moved by it. But then Chekhov makes double use of the speech by attributing it to Ivan. When Ivan, speaking throug…

So, one way to get a story out of “the plane of its original conception” is to try not to have an original conception. To do this, we need a method. For me (and, I like to imagine, for Gogol, when he was in skaz mode) that method is to “follow the voice.” But there are many methods. Each involves…

So, life is mostly rational, with occasional bursts of absurdity.

Or, maybe: an assumption of rationality holds under normal conditions but frays under duress.

Some stories show us the process of rationality fraying under duress (Kolyma Tales, set in a Siberian work camp; The Handmaid’s Tale,…