Chapter 86: The Insulted and the Injured

If nothing unexpected happens, Mikhail will soon be living in a small villa. Although Mikhail had already withdrawn a portion of the money earned from publishing his collected works to give to the financially struggling Belinsky, Belinsky had already thrown himself wholeheartedly into his work.

In his own words: "I never thought I would have a day when my luck turns! Now I feel I have regained the energy to work; my mind has become clear again, as if it were previously stuffed with chopped straw."

To realize his personal ambitions and to be worthy of the salary he received, Belinsky did not need Mikhail or Nekrasov, these shareholders, to urge him at all; he treated himself like a beast of burden. In short, he was busy spinning in circles. Fortunately, the money given to him had indeed reached his wife's hands. It might not mean living in a large villa, but it would certainly allow Belinsky to escape his current life of hard labor.

As for Nekrasov

Before he left, Mikhail jokingly asked, "Nikolai, where are you moving to next? Tell me; I'll come find you when I have time."

It was a very simple question, but after hearing it, Nekrasov's eyes wandered, and he even dared not look Mikhail in the eye. Only after rushing to the door did he say vaguely, "It hasn't been decided yet; I'll tell you once it is."

Watching Nekrasov's figure rush away and thinking about his various small moves and reactions at recent gatherings, Mikhail could only say, "Old Pa, old Pa, you are indeed a true man."

Although after Panaev married his wife, his playboy side quickly made him grow cold toward her, even so, being able to tacitly approve of his wife's relationship with Nekrasov, Panaev was indeed quite open-minded.

And Nekrasov behaved rather stingily in this relationship, often getting angry out of jealousy. In short, let's wish them happiness.

This truly counts as the Russian version of "Our Three Living Better Together is Stronger Than Anything Else."

After seeing Nekrasov off, Mikhail sat back down at his desk and then checked the long novel he had basically finished writing.

In this current era, due to issues such as binding costs and promotional costs, long novels mostly appeared in magazines as serialized installments. Only after the serialization was complete, if the reputation among readers was still good, would there be a possibility to consider binding it into a book to sell for more money.

And this serialized form is actually especially prevalent in current Britain and France; Dickens became a national writer whom even Queen Victoria admired by means of serialization in newspapers, step by step.

At this current point in time, Dickens is considered to be in his prime, but he has not yet written his best works. If Mikhail has time to go abroad later, he will most likely be able to meet this great writer in person.

Returning to Russia, since long novels nowadays mostly adopt the serialized form, then in a sense, to attract readers, one must write the work with enough twists and turns to be engaging. At the same time, if one wants to earn more money, extending the length is a good choice.

Dostoevsky's works do indeed have a bit of such intention. Due to constant gambling and advances on manuscript fees, before he truly quit gambling and before his last wife helped him manage the finances, Dostoevsky's manuscript fees were never enough. This, to a certain extent, made some of his works look chatty and unbearably wordy.

Simply put, earning manuscript fees through filler content.

Of course, apart from this reason, Dostoevsky's style is indeed just that style. Even in "The Brothers Karamazov" from his later period when money was no longer lacking, there are still large sections of psychological description and analysis. It looks tedious, but when gathered together, it becomes a fierce impact on the human spirit.

At the same time, Russian novels also have a habit of favoring debate; one can see this point in the works of many Russian writers. Simply put, the book censorship system made it difficult for many books spreading ideas, culture, philosophy, and revolution to be published, so writers spread their ideological concepts through novels.

Simply put, building politics openly through novels.

As for long novels, as mentioned before, they are indeed not easy to choose. For works as grand as "War and Peace," Mikhail is still too young, and with his background, depicting the very top upper class is currently indeed not enough to be convincing.

After all, the highest-ranking official he has currently come into contact with is indeed the General with the unique way of thinking.

Dostoevsky's later works are also not suitable; the span would be too great. And it must be said that the style of those works indeed walked ahead of the times, but for that very reason, they would only receive their due praise in the later period.

In this situation, to both continue the previous themes and not have too great a span, the most suitable choice is naturally this "The Insulted and the Injured." Of course, for some of the content within it, some simple processing is indeed still required.

After checking it once again and finding no major problems, Mikhail did not delay any further and immediately packed this part of the manuscript and sent it off.

And after a few more days passed, the subscription work for "The Contemporary," taken over by Mikhail and his group, officially launched. However, before Mikhail could receive the specific data, Kraevsky, who was also paying attention to this matter and had asked many people to inquire about the news, knew this data a step ahead.

All in all, after Kraevsky learned about "The Contemporary," what he had been doing these days was spreading rumors that the publisher was unable to repay debts, speaking ill of it in front of many people, and paying special attention to the quality of the next issue of his own magazine. He spent a large sum of money to secure manuscripts from several renowned writers and prepared to publish them all in the next issue.

Before officially entering the ring, Kraevsky naturally hoped his other actions would yield results, but upon hearing that subscription figure, Kraevsky could not help but shout out:

"The annual subscription fee is seventeen rubles, and now there are already fifteen hundred subscribers?! What are these subscribers thinking? They actually look so favorably on a new magazine? Don't they fear their money will go down the drain?!"

It is probably because of Vissarion and his friends, and the reputation of that young man.

Thinking about the discussions heard on the streets recently, the editor Nikodin, who was responsible for telling Kraevsky this matter, had roughly a guess in his heart.

Speaking of it, since the previous few contacts, he had vaguely felt that the young man was not as easy to fool as Belinsky, but to be honest, he never expected the other party to pull off so many big moves in such a short time, even now almost standing on top of Mr. Kraevsky.

After all, when you think about it, where does one find such a young publisher?

Moreover, looking at the current data, the other party seems to be really close to success.

Looking at Kraevsky, who was still angry, Nikodin suddenly remembered some rumors he had heard recently, which were roughly that "The Contemporary" magazine seemed to be preparing to increase authors' remuneration and treatment and so on.

From this, it seems that the days when Kraevsky could get manuscripts for free are probably gone forever.

(End of this chapter)