Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Here in the “cool” mountains of Arizona, where people from the hot parts of the state like to come in the summer to avoid them triple-digit temps down in the low-lands, yep, here in that place, we had highs of 108 degrees at my front yard’s weather station. Maybe the thing is mis-calibrated or something, but I will tell you, it FELT like 108 all right. And we have no air conditioning or even a “swamp cooler”. Box fans is all.

“What,” I almost hear you say, “Are you reading now, big feller?”

I am glad you asked that, old sod! I am reading The Brothers Karamazov by that Rooshun feller, Dostoyevsky. Let me tell you, the thing about Rooshun novels is the names. Maybe they should change ’em all to, Smith, Jones, Bill, and Jane for to make it easier to read?

At any rate, the thing is strangely compelling. And even though I am about a third-way through, and still do not know what the book is about, unless it is about drunk people, crazy people, and drunk crazy people?

Somehow I had never read any Dostoyevsky except for a short excerpt from Notes from Underground in Walter Kaufmann’s Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre back in college 50 years ago. (It does feel funny writing that. Gawd!) Anyway, the paperback of Kaufmann’s book cost me $1.85 back then. Now it is $3.82 in Kindle ebook format, or $11.36 in Paperback new, with some used copies also for sale. Including one paperback for $987.38! Maybe it is signed by all the authors or something?

Well, you can get a copy of Karamazovfor free from Project Gutenberg, which can’t be beat with a stick.

You see, now that I am an old man, I am reading all those Classics that I didn’t have time for back when I was young and had energy and strength and stuff. And re-reading those I did manage to read somehow.

“A man has got to know his limitations.” Who said that?