Who is Dostoevsky?

A cranky old Russian who wrote a couple of good books, but was by all accounts a really terrible person.

What does that have to do with paintings?

Nothing! He was really into a couple of specific paintings, and incorporated one of them into one of his books and then never talked about visual art again, which is kind of interesting. I think.

Where are you getting your information?

Half from a lifelong obsession with Russian writers and their sad, sad biographies, and half from Joseph Frank’s five volume series on the life and work of Dostoevsky, which is very good, but very long, and mostly very boring.

This seems like a hobby that takes up a lot of your time but isn’t productive in any real way, and is mostly sort of pointless?

Yes!