The Greatest Book on Addiction Ever Written
A review of “The Gambler” by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky is an author that needs no introduction. He lived one of the greatest literary lives of all time and wrote some of the most famous and gripping texts ever penned.
Siberian exile, financial ruin, begging for scraps, and a even crippling gambling addiction that followed him throughout most of his life — Dostoevsky experienced the entire gamut of human experience. And it’s in this range of experiences that he was able to come closer to the core essence of the human soul and inner workings of our psychology than the author ever has.
Recently, I sat down and read The Gambler, a short novel he wrote under incredible circumstances. Dostoevsky found himself deeply in debt and agreed to enter a one-sided contract with publisher F.T. Stellovsky.
Per his contract, if he did not deliver a novel of 12 or more signatures (a common measure of literary length at the time) within a month he would forfeit all publishing rights to Stellovsky for the next nine years. Not just of this new work, but of Dostoevsky’s entire oeuvre.
The stakes of this novel for Dostoevsky mirrors that of his characters. Every action is a matter of life and death; there are no moments of inconsequence.
While writing the novel, there were times that it appeared as if Dostoevsky would not get it done in time, but luckily, he had the help of young Anna Grigoevna, one of the first stenographers in Russia.
Through her assistance (transcribing Dostoevsky’s words in real-time as he spoke them), the novel was able to be completed in 26 days, saving the Russian genius from nine years of absolute poverty. Shortly after The Gambler’s publication, the two married.
This rushed nature of publication is perhaps the leading reason why The Gambler is viewed as one of Dostoevsky’s lesser works, but I would argue that the real-life addiction seeps through and strengthens the overall text. It’s not as polished or thoughtful as Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov, of course, but that’s precisely why it works.
An addict’s life is that of fervor, of extremes. The Gambler is just the same.
I won’t go too deeply into the plot in this review (you’ll have to read the book yourself to get all the great details), but I will provide a general overview of what happened and highlight a few key events that made me think while reading.
The narrator, Alexei Ivanovich, in typical Dostoevskian fashion, is highly intelligent yet troubled. He finds himself working as a tutor for a Russian family living in a suite in a fancy German resort hotel in the town of Roulettenburg. A bit heavy-handed with the name, I know, but he only had 26 days.
We quickly learn that the man of the family, known as “The General” is indebted to a Frenchman, de Grieux, and has mortgaged some property back in Russia to try and start paying off this debt. The general has a wealthy aunt, known as “grandmama” who is sick in Moscow, and frequently sends telegrams back to Moscow hoping to hear that she has passed away so he will be able to pay off his debts and marry the beautiful Mademoiselle Blanche de Cominges.
This is only the beginning of the beautifully complicated mess that is The Gambler. Alexei is madly and obsessively in love with the General’s stepdaughter, Polina, to the point of being willing to do anything and everything to win her hand or even get her attention.
Alexei’s obsession bubbles as a sometimes comical yet deeply tragic and almost disturbing subplot throughout the novel, surfacing every ten or twenty pages in the form of passive conversation or flippant anecdote. It’s not the point of the novel, not at all, but it gives us a bit of that classic psychological depth we expect from a Dostoevsky piece.
The true beauty of this novel comes in the way he describes addiction. Some of the passages in The Gambler explore and describe addiction in such a beautiful yet harrowing way that, honestly, I never imagined possible. It’s breathtaking and elegant and horrific at the same time — it’s genius.
Dostoevsky focuses almost entirely on one central idea, addiction, and uses his page time to attack this concept from a variety of angles and perspectives. Pretty much everyone in the story is addicted to something in some way or another, whether it be love, gambling, control, or some combination of them all.
We see Alexei first addicted to Polina, the General to status, Grandmama to gambling, de Blanche to status, Alexei to gambling — the list goes on and on. No stone is left unturned; the concept of addiction is thoroughly investigated and interrogated throughout the text.
“We lost the second friedrich d’or too; we put a third on. Grandmama could scarcely sit still, her burning eyes were absolutely pinned on the ball, bouncing over the ridges of the spinning wheel. We lost the third too. Grandmama was losing her temper, she could not sit still, she even struck her fist on the table when the croupier proclaimed ‘trente-six’ instead of the expected zero.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Gambler
See what I mean? This, this right here, is the point of literature.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a work that describes addiction in such a compelling and honest, yet subtle way. Dostoevsky has the unique ability to make the throes of such a violent disease beautiful.
He demonstrates the destructive, all-consuming nature of addiction without relying on the gore, chaos, and destruction that so many other writers, myself included at times, resort to. This isn’t to say that those other ways are bad, not at all, just that this book is unique and different and well worth a read.
