Alexander Kuprin - Yama (The Pit) - Parts II and III

Yama (the reason for the transliteration being the word play behind the original toponymy), Kuprin's opus magnum and most controversial novel, remains controversial to this day — albeit less due to the taboo topics it touches and more so due to the casual cruelty it depicts. It's not "graphic" or "explicit" in the immediate sense of those words, though; what strikes in it is, rather, the ease at which its characters — from the authorities to the casual observers and from the educated class to the women in the trade themselves — accept the commodification of intimacy that is sex work.

Much like "The Sound of Freedom", "The Pit" is based on sound original research of then-contemporary "adult" industry and human trafficking. Like Dostoyevsky working on his crime novels, Kuprin himself delved into police archives and traveled to the localities mentioned in the novel. The principal questions asked in the novel, however, have nothing to do with sex itself or commodification of it. What is dignity? Is it possible to offer an objective standard of it? And, absent such objective standard, is it possible for two different people to mention it and mean the same thing?

We started with Part I in October; the recommended reading goal for this meeting is the rest of the novel.

Links:
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4706/pg4706-images.html — public domain text on Gutenberg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yama:_The_Pit — novel creation history on the Wiki.

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