News items in creative research

Unlike Baudelaire, who was writing in the 1860s, Dostoyevsky considered the Press an indispensable tool with nothing sordid about it. In this field he was the initiator of the great American and European literatures of the twentieth century, where the newspaper, even in its raw form, is an integral part of the novel.

Dostoyevsky could not live without the Press, especially abroad, where he needed to keep in touch with his native country. In Geneva, in 1867 and 1868, he found true ‘happiness’ in reading the Russian Press from cover to cover: The Voice, The Moscow Bulletin, The St Petersburg Bulletin, and the foreign papers. He is always mentioning his newspaper reading in his letters. And the two hours, from five to seven, which he spent on this daily activity in some café, were so enthralling to him that, while he was walking in the evening with his young wife, he loved to tell her what he had been reading about, so that she could keep up with ‘everything that was happening in Russia’.