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Brad Pearce and I will finish up with two stories from Stephen Crane today, “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” and “The Blue Hotel.” Also, some general thoughts on short story writing. Join us at:

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You can also find us on X, @mtaibbi or @waywardrabbler. See you soon!

Brad Pearce and I will finish up with two stories from Stephen Crane today, “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” and “The Blue Hotel.” Also, some general thoughts on short story writing. Join us at 12:30 PM ET at:

Substack

Rumble

YouTube

You can also find us on X, @mtaibbi or @waywardrabbler. See you soon!

Up Next: Live Show Thursday 8/26/26: Stephen Crane’s “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” and “The Blue Hotel”

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Reminder that Brad Pearce and I will be back to discuss Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat” this afternoon. Join us at 4:30 PM ET at:

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Having finished Dostoyevsky’s “The Demons,” Brad Pearce and I will be starting a new book today, a Stephen Crane collection that begins with the story, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. The tale is sometimes described as a pioneering work of American naturalism, sometimes called a satire, sometimes grumbled about as social commentary minus the solutions part. What do we think? Join us at 4:30 PM ET at:

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Join us at 4:30 PM ET at:

Substack

Rumble

YouTube

You can also find us on X, @mtaibbi or @waywardrabbler. See you soon!

Link Here: How to Listen to subscriber-only audio in your podcast app

Automated transcripts can be found on the web browser or app version below the byline.

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With this outburst at a provincial fête, Stepan Verkhovensky — one of the main characters of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Demons — seals his fate as the enemy of political progress, in the eyes of a movement he’s loved all his life. It’s one of a list of comic twists in a critical portion of the novel, which Brad Pearce and I will be back discussing today.

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With this outburst at a provincial fête, Stepan Verkhovensky — one of the main characters of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Demons — seals his fate as the enemy of political progress, in the eyes of a movement he’s loved all his life. It’s one of a list of comic twists in a critical portion of the novel, which Brad Pearce and I will be back discussing today. Join us at 4:30 PM ET at:

Substack

Rumble

YouTube

You can also find us on X, @mtaibbi or @waywardrabbler. See you soon!

Link Here: How to Listen to subscriber-only audio in your podcast app

Automated transcripts can be found on the web browser or app version below the byline.

Share the Free Episodes of Get Lit:

Watch Get Lit on YouTube below:

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“We’ll extinguish desire: we’ll get drinking, gossip, denunciation going; we’ll get unheard-of depravity going; we’ll stifle every genius in infancy. Everything reduced to a common denominator, complete equality.”

When Brad Pearce and I go on a livestream today at 4:30 PM ET, we’ll be starting with what I think is one of the most dramatic and surprising scenes in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Demons.” In part 2, chapter 8 — “Ivan the Tsarevich” — the two dominant revolutionary personalities collide and argue. Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky, the deathly serious, scheming, ambitious son of a never-was pseudo-activist, delivers almost a sermon on the goals and methods of his movement. He is going to “stir up trouble,” but on a grand scale, achieving equality through force. “Only one thing is lacking in the world: obedience,” he says.

Young Verkhovensky is trying to convince Nikolai Stavrogin, the aristocrat whose money and inspirational image is needed to round out the plan. It’s a crossroads moment in the book, but Pyotr’s speech could send chills up the spine of anyone following modern politics — even the politics of last week.

Join us at 4:30 PM ET at:

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You can also find us on X, @mtaibbi or @waywardrabbler. See you soon!

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“And there’s hatred there, too,” he said, after a moment’s silence. “They’d be the first to be terribly unhappy if Russia somehow suddenly got reconstructed, even if it was in their own way, and somehow suddenly became boundlessly rich and happy. They’d have no one to hate then, no one to spit on, nothing to jeer at!”

— From Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Demons.”

It was strange to read Demons during the most controversial Fourth of July in ages. Americans with money and/or education are more miserable than ever, and the gist of most of the public debates taking place contemperaneously with this past weekend’s fireworks was whether or not this self-loathing is warranted. I don’t remember this phenomenon in my lifetime, but another country went through something very similar once, and one of the world’s great authors captured it and preserved it in the form of an epic political thriller.

Dostoyevsky’s chief characters in Demons are not rich. Most are stragglers whose l…

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