Status Update

E.Y. Zhao is on page 450 of 796

One day after Father Zosima section, think I’m returning to vegetarianism.

After reading Spivak “The Burden of English”: finally sinking in that some strangeness in reading Dostoevsky derives from his (lack of) assumed reader. No legible racial or class assumption b/t us (either of connection or disconnect (w Tolstoy and Turgenev maybe I’m a cosmopolitan bourgeois “target audience”?))

— Mar 03, 2026 10:00AM

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E.Y.’s Previous Updates

E.Y. Zhao is on page 678 of 796

OK so read some of Bakhtin’s book abt Dosto and it confirmed what I felt about the reader’s lack of “place” in the polyphony (re: Spivak). SCOUNDREL NOT A THIEF! Not enough space for Dmitry’s speech before he goes to jail but…look it up.

— Mar 18, 2026 02:52PM

E.Y. Zhao is on page 527 of 796

Big identification with Grushenka this time. Have I judged Dostoevsky too harshly for all his heroines being “noble prostitutes” when he’s just externalizing the structural place of Woman…why has this taken me so effing long to come around to…internalized Puritan misogyny? Prudery (see previous entry)?

— Mar 08, 2026 07:37PM

E.Y. Zhao is on page 378 of 796

Fathers and teachers, I am pondering: “What is hell?” I think: “Hell is the suffering of no longer being able to love.”

— Mar 01, 2026 12:36PM

E.Y. Zhao is on page 220 of 796

Reread —

Paying closer attention to how nuts the plotting and characterization is. And how that rattles my brain so hard it creates openings for Dostoevsky’s philosophy to permeate. And how every crazed action we take toward our deepest desires only obstructs us…

— Feb 20, 2026 11:01AM

E.Y. Zhao is on page 500 of 796

Wish Dosto were here to write about Luigi Mangione…

— Dec 12, 2024 09:21AM

E.Y. Zhao is on page 420 of 796

— Dec 07, 2024 08:19PM

E.Y. Zhao is on page 337 of 796

— Dec 01, 2024 07:11PM

E.Y. Zhao is on page 200 of 796

— Nov 29, 2024 03:10PM

E.Y. Zhao is on page 80 of 796

Within each of us there are 3-4 Karamazovs…