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=Fyodor Dostoevsky=


 * Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky** (October 30, 1821 - January 28, 1881) has been a central figure in the formation of the modern sensibility. His works are fundamental to the Western tradition of the novel and a strong influence on modern literature in China and Japan. Dostoevsky formulated in fictional terms, in dramatic and even sensational scenes, some of the central predicaments of our time: the choices between God and atheism, good and evil, freedom and tyranny; the recognition of the limits and even of the fall of humanity against the belief in progress, revolution, and utopia. Most important, he captured unforgettably the enormous contradictions of which our common human nature is capable and by which it is torn.[1]

Dostoevsky is best known for his novels //Crime and Punishment//, //The Idiot//, and //The Brothers Karamazov//. Called the "best overture for existentialism ever written" by Walter Kaufmann[2], Dostoevsky wrote //Notes from Underground// (1864) with the embittered voice of the anonymous "underground man." Dostoevsky is often acknowledged by critics as one of the greatest and most prominent psychologists in world literature[3].

Family Origins


Dostoevsky's paternal ancestors were from a town called Dostoyev in Belarus, in the Guberniya (province) of Minsk, not far from Pinsk. Dostoevsky's mother was Russian. The stress on the family name was originally on the second syllable, matching that of the town (Dostóev). However, in the nineteenth century, the stress was shifted to the third syllable[4]. According to one account, Dostoevsky's paternal ancestors were Polonized nobles (szlachta) of Ruthenian origin who went to war bearing Polish Rodwan Coat of Arms. Dostoevsky (Polish //Dostojewski//) Radwan armorial bearings were drawn for the Dostoevsky Museum in Moscow[5].

Early Life
Dostoevsky's father was a staff doctor at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. Later he acquired an estate and serfs. In 1839, he was killed by one of his peasants in a quarrel. Dostoevsky was sent to the Military Engineering Academy in St. Petersburg, from which he graduated in 1843. He became a civil servant, a draftsman in the St. Petersburg Engineering Corps, but resigned soon because he feared that he would be transferred to the provinces when his writing was discovered[1].

Literature, Exile, and Marriage
After resigning from the Engineer Corps, Dostoevsky began to write his own fiction in 1844. His first novel, //Poor People// (1846), proved a great success with the critics; his second, //The Double// (1846), which followed immediately, was a failure. Subsequently, Dostoevsky became involved in the Petrashevsky circle, a secret society of anti-government and socialist tendencies. He was arrested on April 23, 1849, and condemned to be shot. On December 22 , he was led to public execution, but he was reprieved at the last moment and sent to the penal servitude in Siberia (near Omsk), where he worked for four years in a stockade, wearing fetters, completely cut off from communications with Russia. On his release in February 1854, he was assigned as a common soldier to Semipalantinsk, a small town near the Mongolian frontier. There he received several promotions (eventually becoming an ensign); his rank and nobility, forfeited by his sentence, was restored; and he married the widow of a customs official. In July 1859, Dostoevsky was permitted to return to Russia, and finally, in December 1859, to St. Petersburg— after ten years of his life had been spent in Serbia[1].

In the last year of his exile, Dostoevsky had resumed writing, and in 1861, shortly after his return, he founded a review, //Time// (//Vremya//). This was suppressed in 1863, though Dostoevsky had changed his political opinions and was now strongly nationalistic and conservative in outlook. He made his first trip to France and England in 1862, and traveled in Europe again in 1863 and 1865, to follow a young woman friend, Apollinaria Suslova, and to indulge in gambling. After his wife's death in 1864, and another unsuccessful journalistic venture, //The Epoch// (//Epokha//, 1864 - 1865), Dostoevsky was for a time almost crushed by gambling debts, emotional entanglements, and frequent epileptic seizures. He barely managed to return from Germany in 1865. In the winter of 1866, he wrote //Crime and Punishment// and, before he had finished it, dictated a shorter novel, //The Gambler//, to meet a deadline. He married his secretary, Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina, early in 1867 and left Russia with her to avoid his creditors. For years they wandered over Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, frequently in abject poverty. Their first child died. In 1871, when the initial chapters of //The Possessed// proved a popular success, Dostoevsky returned to St. Petersburg. He became the editor of a weekly, //The Citizen// (//Grazhdanin//), for a short time and then published a periodical written by himself, //The Diary of a Writer// (1876 - 1881), which won great acclaim. His last novel, //The Brothers Karamazov// (1880), was an immense success, and honors and some prosperity came to him at last. At a Pushkin anniversary celebrated in Moscow in 1880 he gave the main speech. But soon after his return to St. Petersburg he died, on January 28, 1881, not yet sixty years old[1].

Historical Context
//Notes from Underground// was first published in January and February of 1864 as the featured presentation in the first two issues of //The Epoch//, Dostoevsky's second journal of the 1860s. The novel was written at one of the lowest points of Dostoevsky's career. His first journal, //Time//, had recently failed, his new journal was threatened with failure, his wife was dying, his financial position was becoming ever more difficult and embarrassing, his conservatism was eroding his popularity with the liberal majority of the reading public, and he was increasingly the subject of attack in the liberal and radical press. On March 20, 1864, Dostoevsky wrote to his brother, Mikhail: "I sat down to work on my novel. I want to get it off my back as soon as possible, but I still want to do it as well as possible. It has been harder to write than I thought it would be. Still it is absolutely necessary that it be good: I personally want it to be good. The tone now seems too strange, sharp, and wild; perhaps it will not right itself; if not, the poetry will have to soften it and carry it off."

Many aspects of //Notes from Underground//— and especially, as Dostoevsky himself noticed, the tone— seem strange, sharp, and even bitter. To some extent, the bitterness of the novel is traceable to the many personal misfortunes Dostoevsky suffered while the novel was being written. Much more important, however, was the influence of his maturing world-view with its ever colder and more distant attitude toward the European liberalism, materialism, and Utopianism of his younger years. Dostoevsky had begun his career as a writer in the 1840s as a romantic idealist, even a dreamer. (See his portrait of the young dreamer in his early story "White Nights.") At that time he had devoted a great deal of attention to utopian socialism and its vision of a perfectly satisfying, perfectly regulated life for humankind. This perfection of life was thought to be achievable solely through the application of the principles of reason and enlightened self-interest. In fact, it was maintained that given the dominance of the rational and the spread of enlightenment, perfection of life must necessarily follow.

While Dostoevsky was in prison and in exile, these ideas of Utopian socialism were becoming stronger in Russia. They passed from the dreams of the 1840s to the basic revolutionary program of the late 1850s and 1860s. Dostoevsky, however, had concluded from his observations while in exile that there was more to "man" than reason and enlightenment. (Note that Dostoevsky, as did other writers of his time, used the term "man" or "men" to refer to all humankind.) He became convinced that men were capable of the irrational as well as the rational, and that, in fact, the irrational was in many ways man's essential element and the rational was often only a flimsy construction built upon it. More than any of his other fictional works, //Notes from Underground// clearly expresses this conclusion about the essential composition of the human mind.

In addition to expressing Dostoevsky's debate with the liberals and radicals of his time, //Notes from Underground// can also be seen as a specific and direct polemic with one of the most famous revolutionary novels of the 1860s, N. G. Chernyshevsky's //What Is To Be Done//. Chernyshevsky was the leader of the radicalist movement in Russia. In 1862 he was arrested, and during a solitary confinement lasting 678 days he wrote //What Is To Be Done//, which became his most famous work. This book has the general appearance of a novel but is really more a handbook of radicalism. The tenuous plot serves primarily to link one monologue or conversation on a point of radical policy with the next. The "revolutionary yo ﻿ uth" of the time used //What Is To Be Done// as a guide to behavior and ideology for the next twenty years. Rakhmetov, the hero of the novel, became the prototype of hard-headed materialism and pragmatism, of total dissatisfaction with the government, and of the self-sacrificing nobility of spirit that was the ideal of many of the radical intelligentsia.

Synopsis
__**Part I**__ //Notes from Underground// is divided into two parts. In the first part, the narrator known as the "underground man" introduces himself. He begins by stating, "I am a sick man.. I am a spiteful man." He was a civil servant and tortured petitioners who came to see him. He then seeming bi-polar changes his position claiming that he is not at all spiteful, but merely wanted to be. He could never become spiteful or anything else because his nature would not allow him to have any character. Only men of action who are not intelligent can have any kind of character. The Underground Man then tells us that he could never have character because his consciousness has become overdeveloped as a result of being too cultured. The "underground man" accepts the doctrine of determinism, which claims that all actions are determined by the laws of nature and therefore are not up to us. Consciousness causes humiliation by allowing us to recognize our powerlessness against the laws of nature. Eventually, the Underground Man came to find pleasure in humiliation.

The "underground man" then insists that he is very proud, but if someone slapped him, he would not avenge himself because of his weakness. People who take revenge do so without thinking. Such people are considered very stupid, but the "underground man" envies them. He has a overdeveloped conscience, and is incapable of carrying out any action of revenge. In his moment of decision, he is plagued by many doubts and is forced to retreat. The retreat always brings him shame, but it is unavoidable. Men of action will gladly stop when faced with the laws of nature. The "underground man" claims that he hates the laws of nature. Since these laws determine every action, there is never anyone to blame. The narrator uses the example of a toothache to explain why he hates the laws of nature. Like the laws of nature, a toothache causes pain and is uncontrollable. A man moaning with a toothache only does so out of spite and annoys himself and others. Powerlessness against the laws of nature is humiliating, and humans having consciousness can only act by deceiving themselves. Men of reason act because they think they have probably justification for their actions. When action based on consciousness are taken, one can see that there are never good reasons for the actions as when one thinks of justice they realize there really is no such thing. The Underground Man wishes that he did nothing not because of consciousness, but simply out of laziness. He would love to be a sluggard, or a glutton who sits around drinking to everything "beautiful and sublime." He would gratefully call himself a sluggard.

The "underground man" criticizes the idealists who claim that human beings only do bad things because they don't realize that it is always in their best interests to do the good. If human beings were enlightened as to their best interests and they used reason, they would always do good. The "underground man" claims that throughout history, human beings have done things that were obviously not in their best interests. There must be some other interest that is even more advantageous than peace and prosperity. He goes on to say that Utopian theories are just logical exercises with no grounding in reality. The Utopians argue that science will show that human beings are nothing more than piano keys under the control of the laws of nature and will teach them to act according to those laws. Once everyone is enlightened and utopia is attained, the crystal palace can be built. The "underground man" responds that such a world would be very rational and boring and someone would certainly destroy it despite all its advantages. What human beings need is not rational desire, but their own desire. Utopian theories ignore human needs in independent decisions, based on nothing more than one's free will.

The Utopians may reply that science will show that free will doesn't exist. Eventually, science will help explain the reasons for every action one makes. This will ensure that people only act according to mathematical tables of action. The "underground man" argues that human beings will never agree to act according to tables and they will destroy the utopia. Even if every action could be accounted for by reason, human beings would go insane to escape their reason. The "underground man" agrees that human beings are looking for the utopia, but this is only because they love to create. He says, however, that human beings are equally fond of destruction because they do not want to inhabit the structures that they build. Life consists of striving for existence and creation is part of survival. Once one reaches the end of their striving, life no longer exist and therefore death comes quickly. Humans are always searching for the greater good, but are afraid of what they might find. The "underground man" then questions the Utopian claim that well-being is always to one's best advantage, suggesting instead that suffering is the cause of consciousness and that human beings will never renounce it.

The narrator explains that he opposes the Utopian crystal palace because it satisfies only material needs. That in itself does not make it desirable. For now, he prefers to keep the underground, since there at least he can have consciousness and make his own decisions. Not being satisfied, the "underground man" will not accept any ideal that does not succeed in satisfying them. The "underground man" concludes Part I by explaining that he does not write his notes for anyone to read them. Someone writing an autobiography for an audience will always lie. He, on the other hand, wants to be completely sincere, so he will never let anyone read what he has written. He is not sure why he has the urge to write everything down, but it may be because what he has to say looks more dignified on paper. The "underground man" progresses into Part II by saying that it has been snowing for a long time and this reminds him of an episode in his life that he now wants to write about.

__**Part II**__

The "underground man" recalls his youth when he was working in an office. He hated his co-workers and thought they were repulsive. Though he felt superior to them, he also felt that he was unlike anyone else and that others hated him. He hated his face, though he wanted to be intelligent. Sometimes he would think that his anti-social nature was artificial and would attempt to befriend his co-workers, but this always ended quickly. Here the "underground man" digresses to talk about the Russian romantics and attack them for having ideals that they never actually act on. He says that these romantics are the most idealistic people, but they are also the most practical.

The "underground man", completely alone, finds himself bored. He reads a lot, but it gets boring and he goes out to taverns to get into trouble. One time he went into a tavern hoping to start a fight, but an officer moved him out of the way and passed by him without noticing him. The "underground man" was humiliated and decided to get revenge. He followed the officer around for two years. Noticing the man always walked straight toward people expecting them to move aside for him, the "underground man" decided to walk into him instead of moving. He borrowed money to buy better clothes so that he would appear to be the officer's equal. He then made many attempts to walk into the officer before finally succeeding. He felt completely avenged.

The "underground man" spent a lot of time fantasizing and dreamed of embracing all of humanity. When his fantasies got intense, he would go out and visit someone. His one lasting acquaintance only saw visitors on Tuesday, so the "underground man" decided to visit an old schoolmate instead, Simonov. When he arrived, Simonov and two other schoolmates were planning a dinner party for another schoolmate, Zverkov. Though he did not like any of his former schoolmates and they did not like hm, the "underground man" invited himself to the dinner party anyways. The "underground man" then went home and recalled his years at school. He hated his peers and they hated him, so he earned good grades in order to dominate them. He only had one friend, whom he dominated and then despised.

The next day, the "underground man" arrived at the dinner ahead of the others because they had changed the time. Everyone was rude to him, and Zverkov treated him with contempt. Finally, the "underground man" insulted Zverkov and challenged one of the others to a duel. From that point on they all ignored him, but he stayed and in order to annoy them, paced up and down the room for the next three hours. When the others stood up to go to a brothel, the "underground man" attempted to apologize to them and begged Simonov for some money. After getting the money, the "underground man" followed them. He fantasized that either they will all fall at his feet and beg for his friendship, or he will slap Zverkov in the face. Since he knew the former would not happen, he arrives at the borthel ready to slap Zverkov, challenge him to a duel, be arrested and sent away to prison.

None of his fantasies came true because when the "underground man" arrived at the brothel, he found that the others had already dispersed. A girl name Liza was brought out for him, and he slept with her. When the "underground man" woke up, he found Liza's presence oppressive and decided to dominate her. He gave her a lengthy moralistic lecture on why she should leave the brothel and get married. Though Liza appeared skeptical, the "underground man" told her about the importance of freedom and family, emphasizing the love between mother and child and husband and wife. Eventually, Liza broke down and began to cry. The "underground man" gave Liza his address and left, after she showed him a letter from a student who was in love with her.

The next day, the "underground man" was troubled by the fear that Liza might come to see him. He wrote a letter to Simonov apologizing for his conduct at dinner, blaming his behavior on alcohol and returning the money. He then began to quarrel with his servant, Apollon, who had excessive dignity and looked down on the "underground man". As the "underground man" was about to assault Apollon, Liza walked in. The "underground man" was ashamed to have her see his poverty and he was angry with her for having come to embarrass him in this way. To get rid of her, he first tortured her by refusing to speak, and finally insulted her saying that he only wanted to hurt her not to pity her. He told her that he was an abominable human being and that he hates her even more now that he has told her this and that she should leave. Instead, realizing his unhappiness, Liza ran up to him and embraced him. Tempted to respond to Liza's love, the "underground man" instead took advantage of her and then left her. As she was waling out of his apartment, he handed her some money so as to humiliate her even further. When she had gone, he realized that she had thrown the money back. Realizing what he had done, the "underground man" rushed out after her to beg for her forgiveness. In the street he stopped short and decided that if she forgave him, he would only hate her for it the next day. Deciding that it would be better for both of them if he did not catch her, the "underground man" returned to his apartment and never saw Liza again.

The "underground man" finalizes his Notes by saying that his work is not a novel because it presents an anti-hero and not a her. He also insists that what makes this work so distasteful is that his readers, like him, live in a fictional world of literature and fantasy, removed from reality.

**An Interpretation**
__**Part I** __ War is people's rebellion against the assumption that everything need to happen for a reason, because humans do things without reason, and this determines history. The narrator's desire for pain and paranoia is exemplified by his liver pain and toothache. This coincides with Raskolnikov's behavior in Dostoevsky's later novel, //Crime and Punishment//. He says, due to the cruelty of society, human beings only moan about pain in order to spread their suffering to others. He builds his own paranoia to the point that he is incapable of looking his own co-workers in the eyes. The main issue for the "underground man" is that he a point of ennui and inactivity. Unlike many people who typically act out of revenge, the "underground man" is conscious of his problems, feels the desire for revenge, but does not act upon his desire. He feels that others like him exist, yet he overly concentrates on his spitefulness instead of on actions that would avoid the problems he is so concerned with. He even admits at one point that he would rather be inactive out of laziness.

The first part also gives a harsh criticism of determinism and intellectual attempts at dictating human action and behavior by being rational, which the "underground man" mentions in terms of a simple math problem two times two makes four. He states that despite humanity's attempt to create the "Crystal Palace," a reference to a famous symbol of Utopianism in Nikolai Chernyshevsky's //What Is to Be Done?//, one cannot avoid the simple fact that anyone at anytime can decide to act in a way might not be considered good, and some will do so simply to validate their existence and to protest and confirm that they exist. For good as a general term is subjective and in the case of the "underground man", the good here he's ridiculing is enlightened self-interest. It is this position being depicted as logical and valid that the novel's protagonist despises. Since his romantic embracing of this ideal, he seems to blame it for his current base unhappiness. This type of rebellion is critical to later works of Dostoevsky as it is used by adolescents to validate their own existence, uniqueness, and independence (//The Adolescent//). Rebellion in the face of the dysfunction and disorder of adult experience that one inherits when reaching adulthood under the understanding of tradition and society.

In other works, Dostoevsky again confronts the concept of free will and construct a negative argument to validate free will against determinism in the character Kirillov's suicide in his novel //The Demons//. //Notes from Underground// marks the starting point in Dostoevesky's move from psychological and sociological themed novels based on existential and general human experience in crisis.


 * __Part II__**

Dostoevsky's story actually beings here and furthers the "underground man's" consciousness. His obsession with an officer who physically moves him out of the way without a word or warning leads the "underground man" to think he is unseen. He sees the officer on the street and begins to come up with ideas of how to take revenge against him following the officer for two years before deciding to bump into him, which he does, finding to his surprise that the officer still does not notice him. This incident brings the "underground man" to further humiliation and he then seeks higher social interaction.

After deciding to attend a dinner party with former schoolmates uninvited, the "underground man" learns of them making a change of time for the plans. Realizing he is being avoided, the "underground man" shows early. He then starts an argument after a short time, declaring to all his hatred of society and using them as the symbol of it. Trying to instill his solitary confinement to the unknown upon his schoolmates, he decides to join them in a secret brothel after he follows the four to confront Zverkov. He arrives being abandoned once again, but meets Liza, a young prostitute.

After sleeping with Liza, the "underground man" uses his humiliation and solitude to try and run Liza off, but she see's him for who he really is and embraces him. In trying to do good, the "underground man" tries to lead Liza to a better life through his words. He then falls back into his loneliness and runs Liza off after using her one last time. In the end, he realizes what he has done and tries to bring himself back to humanity, but in his dueling consciousness lets the better take him back into loneliness.

Novels and novellas[[image:180px-Fyodor_Mikahailovich_Dostoyevsky's_Handwriting_1838.jpg width="178" height="237" align="right" caption="Dostoevsky's handwriting."]]

 * //Poor Folk// (Бедные люди [//Bednye lyudi//], 1846)
 * //The Double: A Petersburg Poem// (Двойник: Петербургская поэма [//Dvoynik: Peterburgskaya poema//], 1846)
 * //Netochka Nezvanova// (Неточка Незванова [//Netochka Nezvanova//], 1849)
 * //The Uncle's Dream// (Дядюшкин сон [//Dyadyushkin son//], 1859)
 * //The Village of Stephanchikovo// (Село Степанчиково и его обитатели [//Selo Stepanchikovo i ego obitateli//], 1859)
 * //The Humiliated and Insulted// (Униженные и оскорбленные [//Unizhennye i oskorblennye//], 1861)
 * //The House of the Dead// (Записки из мертвого дома [//Zapiski iz mertvogo doma//], 1862)
 * //Notes from Underground// (Записки из подполья [//Zapiski iz podpolya//], 1864)
 * //Crime and Punishment// (Преступление и наказание [//Prestuplenie i nakazanie//], 1866)
 * //The Gambler// (Игрок [//Igrok//], 1867)
 * //The Idiot// (Идиот [//Idiot//], 1869)
 * //The Eternal Husband// (Вечный муж [//Vechnyj muzh//], 1870)
 * //Demons// (Бесы [//Besyi//], 1872)
 * //The Adolescent// (Подросток [//Podrostok//], 1875)
 * //The Brothers Karamazov// (Братья Карамазовы [//Brat'ya Karamazovy//], 1880)

Short Stories

 * "Mr. Prokharchin" ("Господин Прохарчин" ["Gospodin Prokharchin"], 1846)
 * "Novel in Nine Letters" ("Роман в девяти письмах" ["Roman v devyati pis'mah"], 1847)
 * "The Landlady" ("Хозяйка" ["Hozyajka"], 1847)
 * "The Jealous Husband" ("Чужая жена и муж под кроватью" ["Chuzhaya zhena i muzh pod krovat'yu"], 1848)
 * "A Weak Heart" ("Слабое сердце" ["Slaboe serdze"], 1848)
 * "Polzunkov" ("Ползунков" ["Polzunkov"], 1848)
 * "The Honest Thief" ("Честный вор" ["Chestnyj vor"], 1848)
 * "The Christmas Tree and a Wedding" ("Елка и свадьба" ["Elka i svad'ba"], 1848)
 * "White Nights" ("Белые ночи" ["Belye nochi"], 1848)
 * "A Little Hero" ("Маленький герой" ["Malen'kij geroj"], 1849)
 * "A Nasty Anecdote" ("Скверный анекдот" ["Skvernyj anekdot"], 1862)
 * "The Crocodile" ("Крокодил" ["Krokodil"], 1865)
 * "Bobok" ("Бобок" ["Bobok"], 1873)
 * "The Heavenly Christmas Tree" ("Мальчик у Христа на ёлке" ["Mal'chik u Hrista na elke"], 1876)
 * "The Meek One" ("Кроткая" ["Krotkaja"], 1876)
 * "The Peasant Marey" ("Мужик Марей" ["Muzhik Marej"], 1876)
 * "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" ("Сон смешного человека" ["Son smeshnogo cheloveka"], 1877

Non-Fiction

 * //Winter Notes on Summer Impressions// (1863)
 * //A Writer's Diary// (Дневник писателя [//Dnevnik pisatelya//], 1873–1881)
 * Letters (collected in English translations in five volumes of //Complete Letters//)

1. What does the fact that he refuses medical help out of spite tell us about his attitude toward freedom?

 * 2. ** What evidence is there that he is acutely self-conscious about how he appears to others? Is he aware of having any need for human affection? Is he able to tolerate such affection?
 * 3. ** How can you illustrate already his thesis that "unhappy nineteenth century intellectuals" like himself are too "abstract and premeditated?" What does he mean by this?
 * 4. ** What evidence is there that he is a masochist? (Look the word up if you aren't familiar with it.)
 * 5. ** What does it mean to be "guilty in the first place?" Is it possible to feel guilty without being aware of any specific wrongful act that caused the guilty feelings? Look for elements in his story later that might have led him to grow up feeling guilty, or— as people say today— with low self-esteem.

**1.** The Norton Anthology: World Literature, ed. W. W. Norton, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2009 ISBN 9780393933031 p. 542-547

 * 2. ** Existentialism: from Dostoyevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufmann, Penguin Books, 1989 ISBN 0452009308 p. 12
 * 3. ** Encyclopedia Britannica . Retrieved 2008-04-11 . "Dostoyevsky, who is generally regarded as one of the supreme psychologists in world literature, sought to demonstrate the compatibility of Christianity with the deepest truths of the psyche."
 * 4. ** B.O. Unbegaun, //Russkie familii// (Moscow: "Univers"), pp. 28, 345.
 * 5. ** Aimée Dostoyevsky, "FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY: A STUDY" (Honolulu, HAWAII: University Press of the Pacific, 2001), p. 6