The Friend of the Family, or Stepantchikovo and its Inhabitants.

New York, NY Macmillan Publishing Company, 1923. Paperback First Edition Thus [1923], unstated. Very Good: shows ijust a touch of wear to the extremities; asome dust-darkening and sparse foxing to the outside edges and a bit of foxing to the front endpapers through the title page; a former owner's name inscribed at the front pastedown endpaper; a touch of rubbing to the outline design at the front panel; the expected light tanning to the text pages due to aging; the binding is square and secure; the text is clean. Free of creased or dog-eared pages in the text. Free of underlining, hi-lighting, notations, or marginalia. A handsome, carefully-used copy, structurally sound and tightly bound, showing only mild wear and some minor, unobtrusive cosmetic imperfections. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 12mo. (7.55 x 5.15 x 1.45 inches). 362 pages. Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett. Language: English. Weight: 18.8 ounces. Navy blue cloth over boards with orange titles at the backstrip and sparse outline at the front panel. The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Volume 12. First Edition Thus [1923], unstated. Hardback: Lacks DJ. The Friend of the Family, is a novel written by Fyodor Dostoevsky and first published in 1859. Its title is more formal given as "The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants: From the Notes of an Unknown". This novel perhaps lacks some of the intellectual passion and narrative richness of the great classics of the Dostoyevsky oeuvre, but in other respects it is one of the most characteristic of his works. All his great novels have a construction that is dramatic rather than narrative. They can easily and without substantial changes in their construction be turned into plays. Stepanchikovo is the most dramatic of all (it was originally planned as a play). It is, of course, far too long for the theatre. It is also interesting for the way it displays what Mikhaylovsky called the "cruelty" of Dostoyevsky. Its subject is the intolerable psychological bullying inflicted by the hypocrite and parasite, Foma Opiskin, on his host, Colonel Rostanev. The imbecile meekness with which the Colonel consents to be bullied and allows all around him, his friends and servants, to be bullied by Opiskin, and the perverse inventiveness of Foma in devising various psychological humiliations for his victims produce an impression of intolerable, almost physical, pain. Foma Opiskin is a weird figure of grotesque, gratuitous, irresponsible, petty, and ultimately joyless evil, that together with Saltykov's Porfiri Golovlev and Sologub's Peredonov form a trinity to which probably no foreign literature has anything to compare.