chunks of flommus
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weirdly, i do feel like injecting myself with bleach

Does anyone overseas have a dank cellar I can hide out in for several months to four years?

I’ll be very quiet and will only emerge to weed your herb garden and say hi to the moon. Please just think about it.

You know,
even though back in the day – when I fairly easily read giant tomes and was an avid Dostoyevsky fan – I don’t remember this.

But one forgets what one reads.

Here, (quite literally lifted from a recent article in the New Yorker) is a dream of Raskolnikov, from near the end in Crime and Punishment (1866).

I have to say, it does seem very familiar • • • •

He had dreamed that the whole world was doomed to fall victim to some terrible, as yet unknown and unseen pestilence spreading to Europe from the depths of Asia. Everyone was to perish, except for certain, very few, chosen ones. Some new trichinae had appeared, microscopic creatures that lodged themselves in men’s bodies. But these creatures were spirits, endowed with reason and will. Those who received them into themselves immediately became possessed and mad. But never, never had people considered themselves so intelligent and unshakeable in the truth as did these infected ones. Never had they thought their judgments, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions and beliefs more unshakeable. Entire settlements, entire cities and nations would be infected and go mad. Everyone became anxious, and no one understood anyone else; each thought the truth was contained in himself alone, and suffered looking at others, beat his breast, wept, and wrung his hands. They did not know whom or how to judge, could not agree on what to regard as evil, what as good. They did not know whom to accuse, whom to vindicate.

Just an interesting tidbit.

Also, it’s Banned Books Week, a good chance to explore dangerous writings both historically and today.

Oh and – goodbye September. I never did like you much.

—laura hohlwein