/lit/ - Literature

>>19722654
Tolstoy is too stupid for you.

>>19722654
It's okay to be stupid, OP. It's not a moral failing.

>>19722654
You should be glad Apu, stupid people tend to be far happier in life. You might even enjoy relationships with women.

>>19722658
>X doubt
No anon, I think it's me.

I'm too stupid for this board, yet I participate and shitpost my skimmed information.

>>19722654
Unlikely. Probably just a combination of too young, too not-Russian, too not-nineteenth-century and too not-educated-from-youth-to-enjoy-long-novels.

>>19722654
In what ways are you too stupid? Let /lit/ help you change your ways.

>>19722654
>tfw had to read the entirety of War and Peace in school
Russian schools are torture

>>19723060
>he read in school
What the fuck. How did you have time to apologize to niggers for being born then? They didn't even let us take breaks to go to the bathroom here in the US

>>19723066
Are they teaching any classics in your schools anymore? Or it's just socially relevant stuff now.

>>19722710
>too young
26
>too not-Russian
Not Russian at all, but I liked Dostoevsky's crime and punishment and brothers karamazov. I liked Tolstoy's death of ivan ilyich too
>too not-nineteenth-century
Monte Cristo and 20000 leagues under the sea are 2 more of my favorites from the 1800s
>and too not-educated-from-youth-to-enjoy-long-novels.
I read all the harry potters tho!! But really, I prefer long books when they keep me engaged.

>>19723066
Serious question - the entire literature course in Russian schools is filled with Russian literature only, and it always frustrated me that we didn't read any foreign authors at all. Also all literature we studied was relatively old, like the most modern book we discussed was "The Master and Margarita". Is it the same in the US, is it only American literature? Are there any modern books, or at least books that were written in the second half of the 20st century in the curriculum?

>>19723060
I have failed reading it twice now :(

>>19723097
I had to write a couple essays about it in school.

>>19723115
Rip anon.

>>19722654
those who get filtered, are filtered each in his own way

>>19723079
Depends on the school, states vary widely and wealth also changes things. Some states still have more or less "normal" education in terms of content, but that content is usually still shallow and doesn't give children a broad sense of their history, culture, or the world. Even in areas with normal educational content, so many of the students are half-retarded hispanics and blacks that school can become a joke regardless, even if the other children wanted to care and would have thrived in a better environment.

Most inner city schools are a nightmare, it's comparable to a juvenile detention center or prison. Just a place to dump teens during the workday. Just hispanics and blacks who do whatever they want, all in various stages of failing or dropping out, and the schools see them as the default and not the white kids.

Many white people go to great lengths to make sure their kids go to a "good" school, like moving to the edge of a more expensive neighborhood so they can send their kids to that neighborhood's school. This is periodically denounced as racist and segregationist. But lots of white trash don't care either way and send their kids to any public school figuring it's all the same, and then their kids become mexinegro zoomer trash.

Rich schools have a wider variety of curricula and many still maintain the veneer of elite education in culture and history but most of those are the most poisoned by woke culture because all the teachers have advanced degrees from woke universities and the kids are enabled to "dream." Patriotic and national history are not common. It's more common to read great classics like Locke and Nietzsche but usually in a shallow way that just acquaints rich people with their names. It's the same in the universities in the USA, you can go through the whole process of getting your degree without learning anything at all.

Basically to get a good cultural education for your child you have to send them to a select boarding school and educate them yourself in parallel.

To me the biggest difference between a "first world" country especially the USA and a more traditional country is that first worlders are very used to being lazy and having no standards. There is always a way around standards so standards disappear over time. Nobody really expects to be fired or kicked out or given failing grades in the USA, there are so many safety nets. You don't fail anymore, you just get a C, and there are lots of psychologists and administrators to rush to tell you that getting a C is good too. Also the whole system is 90% focused on making hispanics and blacks not feel bad about failing. It barely has any time to focus on the normal population. It's a free for all.

If you are from a third world nation (like I originally am) you have more advantages than you think. Any country that dares to teach children actual history, even just its own history, is already miles ahead of a $45,000 a year private high school in the USA.

>>19723089
>too stupid for Tolstoy
>enjoy one of his novels
Does not compute.

>>19723095
Most of what the average wealthy private high schooled person knows is a few great European names like Voltaire, and the rest is 20th century Americana like Faulkner and a boatload of modern shit like Bell Hooks. Most of the books are feminine too, there is a preference for Bell Hook type "personal stories" and memoirs of people who suffered oppression. America is fetishistically obsessed with oppression narratives to the point that almost nothing else exists now.

In an increasing number of schools they don't even read, it's literally state school educated mid twenties women teaching twitter activism to children sometimes now.

>>19723180
That's a novella. I failed reading war and peace twice and was bored all the way through The Cossacks. I'm thinking I don't have the attention span required to read his real work.

>>19723180
>>19723208
Also, that was the second time I read the Death of Ivan Ilyich. I hated it the first time I was forced to read it for school. I came back because I suspected there was something more to it than I remembered. It is frustrating to know that I don't have the reading comprehension required to understand good writing beyond a certain threshold.

>>19722710
>not-educated-from-youth-to-enjoy-long-novels.
War and peace was the first 'long' novel I read, and it was probably the 20th book I read as an "adult" (during highschool and university I was thrown off literature). I loved it, I don't get how you couldn't "understand" it, it's pretty easy to follow and the ideas presented don't require much cognition.

>>19723060
I've heard about that, a little silly because I doubt 16 year olds would fully relate to most of the book. Apparently you guys also have to read Gulag Archipelago now, which would be worse because that book is so extremely boring.

>>19722654
Just read anon every detail and connection you think you missed your subconscious has already soaked up. Just read and enjoy the rest will follow.

what exactly is your problem? I thought AK and war and peace were pretty straight forward and smooth experiences. dostoevskys novels were WAY more dense and difficult reads

>>19722654
War and Peace and Anna Karenina are masterpieces

>>19722654
What's not to get? I think you just lack historical context because his writing is not that complicated. If you really want to understand, you need to educate yourself on Russian history a little bit, especially the big events of the 19th century. Abolition of serfdom, social reforms, Napoleonic Wars, Decembrist revolt, Nihilism etc etc.