I love Russian literature.  Much of it is pessimistic, of course.  If a bright future lies ahead, it will come in another lifetime.  Certainly, that’s the view of Anton Chekhov. (Click) At the very least, I find this point of view eccentric.  A Russian countess in Dostoevsky’s

I AM A SICK MAN…. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. So begins Fyodor Dostoevsky’s narrator in, Notes from the Underground. Certainly, the author has developed one of the most unpleasant characters in literature — not the most