Thursday, December 31, 2020

Dostoyevsky Writes to the Coronavirus - weekly column

 The possibilities were good, but this is poor stuff. I hope someone will take the gag and make it funny:


Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Dostoyevsky Writes to the Coronavirus

 

More than one scribbler has re-written the first lines of famous novels as humorous takes on the covid-time. I go them one better in re-writing the first lines of famous Russian novels:

 

 

Alexey Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day and still remember among us due to his tragic death when his stockpile of hoarded toilet paper fell and crushed him.

 

-Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

 

 

Reveille was sounded, as always, at 5 a.m. – a hammer pounding on a rail outside Camp Fast-Track Vaccines H. Q.

 

-Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Live of Ivan Denisovich

 

 

On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K Bridge in search of P. P. E.

 

- Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

 

 

“Well, Peter, still no sign of the promised disinfectant aerosols?

 

-Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

 

 

On they went, singing “Rest Eternal,” and whenever they stopped there was a sign reminding them to maintain a distance of six feet from each other.

 

-Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

 

 

I am merely copying out here, word for word, what was printed today in the State Gazette: Glass rooms in glass buildings are not enough – you must also wear your glass masks.

 

-Zamyatin, We

 

 

“Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Microsoft Corporation.”

 

-Tolstoy, War and Peace

 

 

Happy viruses are all alike; every unhappy virus is unhappy in its own way.

 

-Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

 

 

Every day the factory whistle bellowed forth its shrill, roaring, shuddering noises into the smoke-begrimed and greasy atmosphere of the workingmen’s suburb where vaccines were developed.

 

-Gorky, Mother

 

 

The Melekhov farm was right at the end of Tatarsk village, next to Dr. Fauci’s house.

 

-Sholokov, And Quiet Flows the Don

 

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