Category: literature

Take a drink when:

• the hero looks up at the night sky
• a fashionably westernized Russian has a debate with the hero
• the institution of marriage is criticized
• someone doesn’t understand what’s going on at the theater
• someone’s at the theater but is only staring at the audience
• a peasant imparts simple wisdom
• a very beautiful person is also very bad
• French is spoken
• a child has the same name as a close relative
• an unsuccessful marriage proposal is made
• the hero stutters or otherwise speaks poorly
• somebody is always mentioned by one of their body parts, e.g. “white hands”, “little mustache”, and the like
• doctors are being useless (take an extra drink if they’re German)
• a woman falls gravely ill after a personal trauma

Finish your drink when:

• a successful marriage proposal is made
• a child is born
• all the families are related to one another by the novel’s end

Take a drink when:

• a son has a strained relationship with his father
• the word “sensualism/-ity” appears
• crosses are exchanged
• there is a dream sequence
• a crime is committed against a child (mentioned or actual)
• money is refused (take an extra drink if an attempt is made to destroy the money)
• a character has an epileptic fit
• someone recounts watching a condemned man during the moments before his execution
• a prostitute has a heart of gold
• Russia’s holy world-historical mission is alluded to
• two people of unequal station scandalously appear together
• an allusion is made to another Russian writer (take an extra drink if it’s Pushkin, Tolstoy, or Gogol)
• a first-person narrator reveals himself in what is otherwise third-person omniscient narration
• false newspaper articles appear
• the spread of modern ideology is compared to a disease
• someone considers fighting a duel
• a character struggles with debt (take an extra drink if it’s from gambling)
• a character announces a lack of faith in God
• a seemingly impoverished character has a servant (I still don’t understand the economy of the Russian Empire…)
• a character “flies at” someone else
• a religious conversion is finally made
• a character has a “speaking name”

Finish your drink when:

• a character is murdered
• a character commits suicide
• a child dies for any reason