Dost.

He then says something about Dostoevsky to his friends. But not just something that exhibits a cursory knowledge of Dost. - he always referred to the author that way. One of those shallow sort of ideas (the cursory sort, if you will) displayed in the same superficial manner an overzealous approval-seeking child may employ when using a newly acquired vocabulary word..."The gerund was eating breakfast next to me in the cafeteria."

No, this, in depth. He tells them of this story Dost. employs for Ivan in The Brothers K. The story, employed, according to our boy, by Dost. to shake one's faith in mankind: a bone-shivering display of punishment introduced by a general on a servant boy that has injured the paw of one of the general's hunting dogs...

After shutting the boy up for a night...

'The servants are summoned for their edification, and in front of them all stands the mother of the child. The child is brought from the lock-up. It’s a gloomy, cold, foggy, autumn day, a capital day for hunting. The general orders the child to be undressed; the child is stripped naked. He shivers, numb with terror, not daring to cry.... ‘Make him run,’ commands the general. ‘Run! run!’ shout the dog-boys. The boy runs.... ‘At him!’ yells the general, and he sets the whole pack of hounds on the child. The hounds catch him, and tear him to pieces before his mother’s eyes!...'

He had quoted the passage, verbatim. And by 'stands the mother of the child' he had risen off the couch to stand in front of the group of friends. His arms outstretched to the side, as if crucified. And speaking seriously and moving his eyebrows up and down with emphasis. And then hands together, interlocked with index fingers in a teepee touching bottom lip. A deep and throaty rasp for the general's speaking parts. 'At him!' - pointing and taking a sip of beer to pause. A bit of spittle falls when he carries on with the quote. He, our boy, was losing faith in MK himself...all was pedestrian and such.

"Th'fuck is wrong with you?" At least two of his boys say in stereo. And then from another, "First, Brothers K was written for reading in the winter, fuck, no one wants to think about that shit in the airy summer months. Second, keep that shit to yourself when we're sitting here drinking and third...turn up the Elliott Smith."

They were doing 'From a Basement on the Hill'