The Gambler

Rating:
Summary: The loser takes it all
Review: Fyodor Dostoyevsky is not an easy writer --well, which Russian author can be called easy? -- but once you get into his books, it is difficult to put it down. One of the best ways to be introduced to his works is the short --and even funny-- novella 'The Gambler'. Working with fiction and reality, this is an addictive novel.

As the story goes, a gambler himself Dostoyevsky had been paid by his publisher and had a writer's block therefore couldn't write anything. He hired a stenographer to help him. So she did, and they ended up falling in love. And the world received one of the best novellas ever. On a lighter note, in 2003, this story was updated in a movie called 'Alex & Emma'. While it is a great plot, the film didn't succeeded for many reasons. On the other hand, there is a movie version, also called 'The Gambler', made in 1997, with Michael Gambon and directed by Károly Makk that is much closer to the novel and much better.

The book tells the story of a compulsive gambler named Alexey Ivanovitch that while in a German spa casino gets involved with a couple of people, and has the greatest gamble of his life. Alexey will find love and hate, friends and enemies and will learn a lesson he will never forget. To tell more is to spoil all the fun of discovering all the twists in this amazing book.

As someone who knows what he is writing about, Dostoyevsky paints a vivid portrait not only of Alexey but also of the casino and its gamblers. People win and lose in the question of minutes, and the more they lose the more obsessed they are. Just like life.

Dostoyevsky's prose is crafted and beautiful. This is one of the aspects that make this book so timeless. The other one that the novella deals with human nature, and it nave loses interest --no matter when or where. The human soul is the same everywhere. So are our wishes and failures. And to write about it, Dostoyevsky is first among equals.

Rating:
Summary: Wanna bet this is a good book?
Review: How can anyone with a taste for the comically grotesque (figuratively speaking) not love Fyodor Dostoyevsky? I've just finished reading The Gambler and I must say that even his short works are just a joy to pick up. With The Gambler, we get to meet a group of Russians staying in the German town of Roulettenburg (I live in Germany, just where is this town anyway?) as a melodramatic series of events plays out in their lives. It seems that a certain Russian retired general is trying to pay off his debts and entice a gold digging Frenchwoman into marriage. But mixed up in the party is his niece, sought by several men including our young hero, a gambling compulsive himself, who is just tagging along for some reason. All the while hoping that dear Granny will kick off soon and leave behind her inheritance and solve their problems. So one can imagine their consternation when she shows up and decides it would be nice to try that roulette wheel thing herself.

This is not as dark as the usual Dostoyevsky, but it's clearly his style. Aside from the certifiably insane character cast and the usual slowish start, there's not much I can say to define his style, but if you're reading this, you probably know it anyway. But on the off chance that a Dostoyevsky novice reads this, go ahead and jump in. It's only a hundred seventeen pages. But what wonderful pages they are.

Rating:
Summary: God as Lady Luck
Review: The Gambler is primarily a book about obssession and mania, a topic that Dostoyevsky would go on to further explore using criminal, political and religious themes as a backdrop. The God in the gambler is not Christ, but Lady Luck and her spinning ways at the roullette wheel.

This book written while FD was majorly in debt due to gambling losses explores his need to gamble. Moreover, it is a book that contains some of Dostovesky most memorable tertiary characters. Alexi the narrator is a young tutor and part of a Russian general's entourage in a Riviera. He falls in love with the General's neice, who is constantly tormenting, taunting and pathologically luring him. She makes Alexi, who is not only a compulsive gambler, but an impulsive cretin commit "unspeakable" acts to bourgeoise and lesser royalty in public. One instance has Alexi at her command bumping into a German baronesse's breast and not apologizing. Alexi's desperate failure to win the niece's attention's is marked by his increasing need to gamble his pitous funds. But Lady Luck does smile on Alexi for a while (although he is so agitated he doesn't know it), before taking everything away from him: money, love and his meager Russian pride. The novel sees the disintegration and paradoxic increased euphoria of Alexi's character, until he is at the end so depraved that one wonders what keeps him from going mad. It is, of course, the brilliance of the book. Gambling, which is his undoing, is also his ultimate salvation, his wheel spinning, silver ball bouncing hope. The more depraved Aleci becomes the more manic and inspired the prose becomes with Dostoyevsky's frenetic brilliance making the best of us get itchy palms. At the end you yourself will want to hit the roullette wheel with an inspiration that can only come from the poisoned and infectious mind of a religious man and great writer who once viewed God not as the Arbiter of Good and Evil and Creator of Worlds, but God as a roll of dice, a deal of the cards and a most terrible and remorseless spin of the wheel.

Although most people consider this book a minor work, it is Dostoyevsky at his inspired best. While it doesn't have the profound (and morbid) philosophy of Notes from the Underground, it has incredible characterization and a humorous, dramatic narrative

Rating:
Summary: I'm a Gambling Man
Review: The hero of this book is complicated, a lover and compulsive. His obsession quite possibly stemming from his granmother who too, was a gambler in her day. As well, I strongly believe that this work is partially biographical, leaning on the life that Dostoyevsky led himself.
The light and energy that feeds from the words to your minds is incredible. The meloncholy man seems to light up when in the sounds and horrors, as the Russian Roulette plays before.
As the book follows his life, one cannot but help feel sorry for him, and loat him simultaneously. Reading this can make one wonder why people fall into this intoxication, however, completely understand gamblings grand appeal.
This was my first Dostoyevsky and thus started my love affair with him. The book is witty, charming, dark, tragic and passionate. A wonderful, well recommended read.