Russian bandit capitalism — sorry, the joys of the free market — is reaching beyond the grave. Latest victim: Fyodor Dostoevsky. The novelist’s great-grandson Dmitri has called foul on the lottery company Chestnaya Igra (‘Fair Play’), and is suing for £5,000 damages after images of his ancestor started appearing on its lottery tickets. As he points out, it is not in the best of taste to use the image of a notorious problem gambler to promote a lottery. Why not use Turgenev instead, he wonders: ‘The guy gambled more, spent more, lost more and had much more spare money anyway.’ Devils! Idiots! As well have the Russian prison service adopt as its mascot the image of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn … Dmitri — who has now registered great-grand- pappy as a trademark — is further exercised by the behaviour of the Dostoevsky Hotel in St Petersburg. ‘They have a bed with the great writer’s name written on the bed,’ he complains. ‘This is plain dirty, and far too low to be tolerated.’
A thought occurs about Blink, the widely hyped new book by the frizzy-haired New Yorker wunderkind Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell’s thesis is that the unconscious mind arrives much faster and more effectively at the right conclusion than the conscious mind. If we learn to trust our snap judgments, he argues, we’ll all be much better off than if we waste time and confuse ourselves weighing evidence, following arguments, and thinking things through. Why, then, are his publishers bothering to send out review copies of Blink, and why are we bothering to read the reviews? Trust Mr Gladwell’s advice. Judge his book by its cover.
Authors, keep your minds open … Such, at least, seems to be the moral to be gleaned from the story of one lady writer whose agent had been beavering away to sell her book in South American territories.
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