Gary Cox's Writings Page.
Gary Cox's books on Dostoevsky are out of print, but used copies are available at online bookstores. Tyrant and Victim in Dostoevsky (ISBN-13: 9780893571252) and Crime and Punishment: A Mind to Murder (ISBN-13: 9780805780420).
The first three texts here are stories for children. I wrote them for, and to some extent with, my son when he was little. He's grown up now, so don't tell him I'm offering them here. He'd probably be embarrassed, although in actuality I should probably split royalties [I'll put it in his college fund].
A 4-year-old goes to the beach with his older cousins. He's starting to learn their perspective.
A fable for children about divorce. When Princess Rowena and Prince Blanziflor split to separate castles, their kids Betty and Jack learn some hard lessons, but discover that life is still OK. "They lived just fine ever after, forsooth."
A boy and his dad spend the week together after Granddad dies. They learn about "the great chain a-bein'."
The next three pieces are about Dostoevsky. They're all cyber spinoffs from one of my real-world lives, the one where I used to be a Russian Studies professor. My other scholarly publications are listed on my Academic Résumé.
This really happened, sort of. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky never met, but almost did. I kind of jazzed it up with some "docu-drama" twists, and it's just chock with parody. I resisted the temptation to put in footnotes, though; write for documentation.
Turns out Woody Allen's movie Crimes and Misdemeanors is a parody of Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment. This rollicking sendup explains it all for you.
Dostoevsky and Serbia Dostoevsky was an ardent defender of the Serbs [in connection with his Orthodox religious beliefs and his pan-Slavist political ones]. I'm not pushing his political ideas -- far from it -- but there's something there that can help us understand recent developments in Yugoslavia, and maybe offer a chance at healing, too.
These next few are about human evolution and its ethical and spiritual implications. That's a topic that's been interesting me more and more. I've given several papers at scientific conferences on the subject, and I'm a member of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society. I'm working on a major project called Dostoevsky's Brain, which will look at Russian culture from an evolutionary perspective.
- The Golden Rule and Other Unnatural Acts
This was written as a sermon for a church I used to go to -- I'm a universalist, and my congregation lets lay people get on the stump in the summer. It's about the evolution of spiritual behavior [a.k.a. religion], and it addresses the issue of how natural selection works in the cultural and spiritual sphere. The instructions of the genome are never absent, but evolving human groups have invented some marvelous cultural mechanisms for manipulating the genome toward our own ends.
- Russia's Feminine Soul Revisited
This scholarly piece came out in
The New Zealand Slavonic Journal [vol. 35, 2001], so if the link doesn't work, it's so as not to violate copyright. What's it about? Well, how about the impact of widespread para-military gang rape on evolution [mostly cultural] in prehistoric east Europe? Ouch, that's hot!
- Selected Conference Papers on Cultural Evolution
I've given several conference papers at places like the Human Behavior and Evolution Society. Here are some of them.
This piece is a spinoff from another of my real-world lives, musical performance. Actually, it's at the interface between my musical self and my life as a Russianist. I've trained lots of choirs to sing Russian, not to mention individual singers and conductors. They've found this guide pretty helpful. Hope you will too.
Work in progress: Several half-completed projects include "Dostoevsky's Brain: A Natural History of Russian Culture", "Hero-King/Whore-Empress: The Impact of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great on the Institution of Kingship in Russia," "Pawn's Gambit: What it must feel like to be a terrorist, and why it's important for us to know". Now these will be chapters in a book to be entitled "Zed Rising: Bio-Cultural Evolution and Plebe-Power". Watch this space!
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Or you can contact me: garyduanecox@mindspring.com