The MagazineBring It On, Fyodor MikhailovichJoseph Epstein, finally well readJun 13, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 37
• By JOSEPH EPSTEIN
 At English department parties of many moons past, or so I have been told, once all had become properly snockered, a popular game commenced in which everyone confessed to what he or she hadn’t read. The game had a crescendo quality as the intellectual stakes rose. “I’ve never read Christopher Marlowe,” a Renaissance English specialist might admit at the outset. “That’s nothing,” a Romantic poetry man might add, “I’ve never read, and won’t allow in the house, Wordsworth’s Prelude.” “Paradise Lost—forget about it!” Finally, as things continued, escalating nicely, someone would admit to never having read Homer or Hamlet and everyone could go home.  DARREN GYGI What I thought interesting about the game is that everyone, no matter how well read, is certain not to have read something he or she ought to have read. As for that phrase “well read,” I long ago decided that no one is genuinely well read; there are merely some people who have read more than -others. I am probably one of the latter, or at least I am taken for one of them. Which is why, without the aid of alcohol or a boring English department party, I wish to confess that I have never read—wait for it, wait for it—The Brothers Karamazov. To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber We're Sorry,
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