note: I'm going through an emotional patch right now that I don't feel like sharing. So I'm going to start emptying the draft archives. This is about a month old.
Don't think for a minute that I've really read The Brothers Karamazov; I'm not that with it. But I'm re-reading the section entitled The Grand Inquisitor, a story Ivan tells his brother Alyosha, for work. Which is a fine thing to do before reading Kushner's Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy, an anti-war play based on the fact that Laura Bush claims The Grand Inquisitor as her favorite piece of writing.
Sometimes when his hands are on me I say to my lonesome self, "Laura Welch, this is not The Dread Spirit who is touching you, it's just dear, dear Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky," and he puts his whiskery mouth close to my ear and he hisses, "Sinner!" He knows, he's the only one who knows what that word means! SINNER! I like children! I really, really do! 600,000? Jesus Christ. A year from now, in what pit of hell will I awake!? I was a Democrat when I was a girl! This is what great literature can do! He weeps as he rattles me. I never shall be chaste except he ravish me. And I am rattled till my screws come loose, I am rattled like, like...the way, when I am in a mood, I attack and scour a sooty pot.
Check out The Nation for the whole scene.
