Bakhtin's explications on Dostoyevsky attribute the author's genius to the multivocality of his text. Dostoyevsky, Bakhtin asserts, allows history to speak for itself, allows the characters within his novels to interact with one another and express their individual opinions, thereby creating a rich and lifelike plot, rather than a hackneyed story imposed upon a set of flatly defined characters.

While talking about Dostoyevsky's style, Bakhtin inadvertently raises certain issues about the nature of history. History books, after all, hardly resemble such works as War and Peace or Crime and Punishment. They are less convincing, less Shakespearean, less multidimensional, less ..... hypertextual?

One can only wonder what brilliant observations Bakhtin might have made if he had reviewed his particle physics notes more frequently. Perhaps he would have been able to see the connections between quantum theory and Dostoyevsky.

I kid you not.