Mack the Knife

pages] within the space of four months, forming two separate novels, of which I will write one in the morning and the other in the evening, and to finish them by a fixed deadline. Do you know, my dear Anna Vasilievna, that even now such eccentric and extraordinary things utterly delight me. I simply don't fit into the category of staid and conventional people . . .” In this typically ebullient fashion, Dostoevsky described to a friend the predicament he found himself in during the summer of 1866