A little sloppy?

I am presently reading a popular science book (reference 1) about what it is like to be a dog, a book which contains (so far) lots of anecdotes about dogs and sea lions, not unlike the sort of material you get on afternoon television programmes about animal rescue centres in far flung places like New Zealand. I shall return to it in due course.

In the meantime I air a complaint about the use of an extract from 'The Idiot', by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, illustrated left.

It so happens that I own quite a nice copy of this book (reference 3) and I thought it would be interesting to see if I could track the quotation down. Maybe even read the book, with Dostoyevsky, along with Dickens, being one of the famous writers with whom I do not get on: I think that the best I have ever done is to struggle through 'Crime and Punishment'. But flipping through a book which I did not know was not going to work, so I turned to Project Gutenburg and loaded up their online version (reference 2).

Despite Dostoyevsky being billed online as an important source of first person material about epileptic fits, this book, in this translation, contained the word 'epileptic' exactly six times, with three of them from Chapter V of Part II. I eventually worked out that what was sold by Berns as a quotation was actually taken from no less than four different places in this chapter, quite widely separated. So the first paragraph is drawn from two places, the second and third from a third, and the fourth from a fourth. Even that is not simple.

Berns' endnote refers to a Gutenburg edition of 2012, although I wonder whether he has not actually pulled his material from an abridged school edition for young adults. In any event, quite some way removed from the version at reference 3.

All of which seems a bit sloppy to me. The quote does not bear on the story about sea lions in which it is inserted, but if you are going to include it, perhaps for the purpose of flapping your literary credentials, you might at least do it properly.

But there is an upside. I learn that certain kinds of epileptic fits are 'often preceded by an ecstatic aura', some kind of important spiritual experience. The sort of thing that some people would talk of dying for. Or to try to obtain which, would take recreational drugs.

Reference 1: What it's like to be a dog: And Other Adventures in Animal Neuroscience - Gregory Berns – 2017.

Reference 2: The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Translator: Eva Martin. Release Date: May, 2001. Last Updated: May 13, 2017.

Reference 3: Heineman. The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Translator: Constance Garnett. First published 1913.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/midwife.html. Being notice of a book about the husband of Constance Garnett.