Prince Myshkin and Hold the Relish by Harlan Ellison

Prince Myshkin.

Not gonna lie, the quirky title pulled me in immediately. What does the protagonist from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot have to do with a hot dog condiment? Turns out, quite a bit. Our narrator is a bona fide hot dog connoisseur who spends his late nights deep in conversation with his hot dog vendor buddy—dissecting Dostoevsky, the man, the myth, the literary giant. Among the topics on the menu: Was Dostoevsky a misogynist? Can we separate the art from the artist? It almost feels like Harlan Ellison himself is preemptively responding to allegations about his own less-than-stellar behavior toward women. Could he be aligning himself with Prince Myshkin, the naïve yet tragic figure of The Idiot? Or am I just completely out to lunch? (Pun absolutely intended.)

But wait, it gets weirder. Enter one of the hot dog stand’s more flamboyant regulars: a mysterious man dressed like a pimp. This guy sidles up to the narrator and with zero prompting, launches into a wild monologue about the many women he’s been involved with over the years, each of whom has met a ridiculous Final Destination-style demise (one gets crushed by a falling cinder block. Yikes.) Is he cursed? A walking bad omen? The Grim Reaper moonlighting as a stylish raconteur? Who’s to say. All we know is that once his tragicomic tale wraps up, he vanishes into the night, leaving our narrator to ponder life, death, his relationships with women and the colorful characters drawn to a good late-night hot dog stand.

And then comes the kicker at the end. The narrator turns back to his friend and deadpans: "There are some guys who are strictly no goddamned good for women." A self-aware moment from Ellison? A guilty confession disguised as fiction? Or just another absurd gem in this bizarre and darkly humorous fever dream of a story? Either way, I walked away mildly entertained with a sudden craving for a hot dog.