'I'm not angry with you, Zack, I'm angry in general.Wodehouse Patricia Highsmith Ray Bradbury Raymond Carver Richard Bausch Richard Ford Sherman Alexie Sherwood Anderson Stephen King Stuart Dybek T.

Scott Fitzgerald Flannery O'Connor Frank O'Connor George Saunders Grace Paley Guy de Maupassant Haruki Murakami Henry James Isaac Babel James Joyce James Thurber John Cheever John O'Hara John Updike Jorge Luis Borges Joyce Carol Oates Junot Díaz Kate Chopin Langston Hughes Leonard Michaels Leo Tolstoy Lorrie Moore Maeve Brennan Maile Meloy Mary Gaitskill Mary Robison Nathaniel Hawthorne Neil Gaiman O. Popular Authors on SSMT Agatha Christie Alice Munro Ambrose Bierce Amy Hempel Ann Beattie Anton Chekhov Arthur Conan Doyle Barry Hannah Bernard Malamud Carson McCullers Clarice Lispector Donald Barthelme Edgar Allan Poe Edna O'Brien Edward P. “But he won’t bite you if you do dream of him,” the German retorted gallantly, and was the first to laugh at his own jest, but none of us responded.Īs always, join the conversation in the comments section below, on SSMT Facebook or on Twitter to the Short Story Magic Tricks Monthly Newsletter to get the latest short story news, contests and fun.

“How horrid that crocodile is! I am really frightened,” Elena Ivanovna twittered, still more coquettishly. “Come, don’t be cross, Karlchen,” said the German caressingly, gratified in his vanity. Then the treacherous monster, to show that it was alive, faintly stirred its paws and tail, raised its snout and emitted something like a prolonged snuffle. And that’s quite a trick on Dostoyevsky’s part. The commentary is broad enough to still translate, and the dealing with very serious issues through a nonsense plot is a nice bridge between Gogol and Kafka. Even without picking up the specific barbs, I still enjoyed the story. Don’t worry, though, he assures his wife and friend that he can continue his work as a civil servant from his new home – inside the crocodile.Īpparently, there are a lot of geo-political commentaries going on here that I would understand better if I knew anything of mid-19 th-century Russian history. But today’s story, “The Crocodile” goes a step further into absurdist fiction.Įssentially, a man visits the zoo and is swallowed alive by a crocodile. So we know Dostoyevsky can take his work to a lot of odd places. Yesterday’s SSMT feature, “Bobok,” used the voices of the dead at a cemetery to make a social commentary. The Crocodile by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1865īridging the gap between Gogol and Kafka with a nonsense plot that addresses very serious themes

The crocodile by fyodor dostoyevsky