The Gambler - book

The Gambler, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Dover Publications, N.Y., 1996 {first published 1866})

I could not find a recently published book in our small library here in Bonners Ferry, and I have not had occasion to visit the North Idaho College library in Coeur d’ Alene for some time. A visit to our local book store was not much help either (they feature mostly used books). Being an avid reader I was getting desperate until I happened to notice an inexpensive Dover Thrift Edition of Dostoyevsky’s novella, The Gambler. As it has been at least fifty years since I last read Dostoyevsky, and as I had never read The Gambler, I thought I would try it.

This is an interesting tale, partly because it was apparently written during an interlude while he was writing Crime and Punishment (his greatest work), and partly because he hired a young stenographer at this time who became his second wife.

I always found Dostoyevsky somewhat hard reading even when he was being featured in Literature classes when I was in college. Reading him now after all these years did not seem to make it any easier, maybe even harder. After fifty years of reading mostly American and English prose that, while it does vary, also seems in general to be terse, sparse, tight, and economical when compared with Dostoyevsky and the other classic Russians who, to my mind are wordy, complicated, difficult to follow, and seem to revel in multiple names and a multitude of characters, while at the same time remaining fascinating.

The Gambler is no exception. It is wordy and consists overwhelmingly of conversation, characters, and psychology. There is virtually no description of scenes, countryside, surroundings, or Russian culture in general. Whereas Balzac wanted to record “the manners and customs of his time,” Dostoyevsky tells you virtually nothing of such things. It is true that inevitably you can infer some of the customs, and even some of the manners, but that is a task for you, the reader, rather than the author. Dostoyevsky is after the psychology of his characters, and you learn about them through their speech and opinions rather than their costumes or physical features. A few of them are drawn more completely than others, Aunt Antonida, for example, comes across as a truly dominating old woman who does what she wishes, but the primary love interest and sort of heroine, Polina, is more difficult to fathom.

Because of the title this book is generally considered to be about compulsive gambling, and it is, but it is also much more than that. It is a story of unrequited love, passion, interpersonal relations, greed, and Dostoyevsky’s different and revealing views of Poles, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Germans and Russians. It is also a story of money and what people will do for it. I think it helps if you already have some idea of the relations between France and Russia during this period of time.

Dostoyevsky was himself for a time a compulsive gambler. It almost destroyed his life. Thus he was in a good position to describe the compulsion to gamble and does it quite convincingly. The gambling scenes, however, occur towards the end of the book and serve as a kind of climax to the problems that are played out previously between the family members and their friends, some of which make you wonder if people at that time could really have behaved as they did. There is, for example, no explanation for why the main character, Alexey, follows Blanche to Paris and allows her to completely waste his enormous winnings on her every desire. His unrequited love for Polina is also difficult to understand as anything other than that, and I think the ending is not entirely convincing on this score.

I confess that in spite of the wordiness and seemingly endless conversation, and in spite of the complex Dostoyevsky psychological style, once you become immersed in this story it is compelling and you will want to finish it. It is not quite as dark as most of Dostoyevsky (think Crime and Punishment in particular), but it is not a happy or humorous tale by any stretch of imagination.

Reading The Gambler has made me want to return to Crime and Punishment, but I doubt I will have the energy. Besides, the garden is not only beckoning, but demanding. I will not be reading as much as usual until later, when the season ends, and the harvest is in the cellar and freezer, the weather turns cold, and it is time to sit by the fire and read once again.