/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.10015613]

the best writer

[Anonymous No.10015619]

wrong

[Anonymous No.10015625]

>>10015613
It's astonishing to me how few people have heard of Shakespeare on this board.

[Anonymous No.10015634]

>>10015613
Why create a thread to just restate what everyone knows is fact

[Anonymous No.10015636]

kek

[Anonymous No.10015641]

>>10015625
Los angloparlantes dejenmelos a mí.

[Anonymous No.10015660]

>>10015613
He is a good author but he constantly makes his books worse by implementing political statements that are unnecessary and out of the place. You end up with whole chapters of political critique in a book that has nothing to do with it. It is what bothers me the most about his works, but I haven't read all of his books yet.

Good example is the beginning of the fifth part of Crime and Punishment, he goes on for 20 or 30 pages about modern day thinkers and even introducing a new character (that doesnt really have any other major role) just to critique modern ideology. The book is about the psychological effects of murder and being poor, not a political critique. Another example would be the whole 2 + 2 equals 4 critique of socialism in notes from the underground - it is a good analogy and critique, but it doesnt fit the story nor the characters and just seems out of place.

It is a major flaw I see in Dostoyevsky's writing. I do not mean that political critique is necessarily bad in a book, but Dostoevsky does it in a seemingly random way and without much meaning to the rest of the book.

What I would consider a good way of political or ideological critique would be The Kreutzer Sonata by Tolstoy - the old man has a discussion with a woman in the beginning in which he ridiculed the idea of women being the same as men and throughout the book he continuous to make remarks that fit this believe. The critique that Tolstoy wanted to make fits the rest of the books, but most importantly it fits the character and the way he acts in the story, it is not just a random political statement thrown randomly in a chapter, but it has a whole character built around it.

[Anonymous No.10015719]

>>10015660
No actually they're perfectly fine where they are, it is you who is out of place. Dostoevsky writes about Russia and that is his only responsibiity

[Anonymous No.10015737]

>>10015719
Weak argument. What I stated is a major flaw in his books, and shows that he is not the greatest writer ever, Tolstoy does what Dostoevsky does just better.

[Anonymous No.10015748]

obligatory

[Anonymous No.10015761]

>>10015613
thats not john williams

[Anonymous No.10016882]

>>10015613
yeah, if you are a teenager

[Anonymous No.10016888]

Is the Idiot good?

[Anonymous No.10016891]

>>10015613
moralist tripe, ayn rand of "classier" people

[Anonymous No.10016893]

>>10016888
No. It goes beyond being good, it's a masterpiece.

[Anonymous No.10016916]

When I first read Dostoevsky I thought he was the best writer I'd ever read. Then I read Chekhov.

Don't get me wrong I can understand why people would prefer the former but for me Chekhov has him beat for writing ability and competes in pathos, albeit in a more subdued and less shamefully lurid way. Chekhov mediates his thoughts with greater subtlety through his characters whereas with Dosotevesky it is always clear which words are coming directly from the horses mouth.

[Anonymous No.10016965]

>>10015619
Proust is a bad writer, not to mention a jew, and that picture of him holding his chin up with no support under his elbow is retarded. Take it to reddit.

[Anonymous No.10016979]

>>10015660
i do agree. it does feel a bit forced and comical when he does this. feels like he was being held at gunpoint.

[Anonymous No.10016986]

>>10015619
he trying to do an einstein

[Anonymous No.10017094]

>>10016965
>not to mention a jew

go back to pol and read some Ebola

[Anonymous No.10017107]

>>10015613
"He Was A Prophet, A Claptrap Journalist And A Slapdash Comedian" Nabokov btfo Dostoyevsky a long time ago. This is /thread stillborn.

[Anonymous No.10017200]

>>10017107
GHASTLY RIGMAROLE

[Anonymous No.10017362]

I know 95% of thw posts in this retarded board are memes, "just preteding to be retarded" and baits but there is no such things as "the best author", "the best book" etc. This is basic to anyone that have read more than 10 (good) books and /lit/ doesn't meet the criteria

Also OP is a faggot

[Anonymous No.10017381]

>>10015613
babys first "real" literature

[Anonymous No.10017409]

*Lee Corso voice*

not so fast my friend!

[Anonymous No.10017415]

>>10015660
All of his major works are essentially political. Crime and Punishment was written in the midst of a political debate about whether crime was a social or individual issue. Notes from underground was a direct parody of and response to Chernyshevsky.

CnP is also about the source of murder.

I think it would be unfitting if the contrarian underground man didn't mention the fact that no political or social structure would satisfy him.

None of it is random. It all has basis in real things people really said and believed in Russia at the time. Read Joseph Frank if you don't believe me.

[Anonymous No.10017970]

>>10016965
Hmm I never thought of it that way anon.

[Anonymous No.10018317]

>>10016979
Almost everything he wrote sounded like he was being held at gunpoint, especially Crime and Punishment's ending.

[Anonymous No.10018414]

>>10015641
Jesús esta complacido

[Anonymous No.10018445]

>>10018317
The ending is so absurd it's almost tongue in cheek

[Anonymous No.10019249]

>>10018445
What was wrong with the ending? I thought it was good.

[Anonymous No.10020360]

>>10016916
Pushkin my friend

[Anonymous No.10020371]

Dostoievsky only wrote to lick the tsar's ballsack for sparing him

[Anonymous No.10020445]

>>10020360
Where's a good place to start?

[Anonymous No.10020462]

>>10020445
Bronze Horsemen. But, in my opinion, Pushkin is very overrated.

[Anonymous No.10020463]

Truly the Rick and Morty of literature

[Anonymous No.10020467]

>>10020463
You take that back, you little whore!

[Anonymous No.10020469]

>>10015613
Nabokov>Tolstoy>Dostoevsky

[Anonymous No.10020792]

>>10020463
Kek

[Anonymous No.10020896]

>>10015619
fpbp

Proust is the greatest writer of all time, although Joyce and Dostoevsky are very close

[Anonymous No.10021091]

>>10017107
Nabokov was trash.
Just kidding. But his theories on other writers is often trash because he had an enormous ego and he was trying to elevate himself above them and he was smart enough to know there would be internet autists on the internet who would choose to read him instead of another author because he said something funny about them. And he was an aesthete, which is kinda gay. Don't get me wrong he was one of the writers who best understood the importance of aesthetics, not just in physical presentation, but in the way the reader's mind actually consumed the book, but being a complete and total aesthete only goes so far and, I think, held him back from being even better. Also, it's kinda gay.

[Anonymous No.10021141]

>>10021091
You sound like you are more than just "kinda" gay.

[Anonymous No.10021799]

>>10015641
>that elongated head
The flaws in middle age portraiture are no excuse. Cervantes was ayylmao.

[Anonymous No.10021803]

>>10020360
>>10016916
Turgenev, my friends.

[Anonymous No.10021806]

>>10021091
I agree, but only because he trashed Faulkner, and infuriates me.

[Anonymous No.10021846]

>>10020463
But he was an anti-nihilist and Rick and Morty is based on shallow teenage nihilism

[Anonymous No.10021859]

>>10015613
i disagree

[Anonymous No.10022042]

Any The Grand Inquisitor illustrations?
When I google "The Grand Inquisitor" it gives me images of some lightsaber moron...

[Anonymous No.10022651]

>>10021846

The emotional conceit of the show is dissecting and controverting the psychological makeup of a nihilistic personality. You should watch the show. Don’t base all your opinions on 4chan maymays.

[Anonymous No.10022686]

He sucks, too much Christ-insanity.

[Anonymous No.10022703]

>>10016965
>not to mention a jew
Go back.
>>>/r/thedonald

[Anonymous No.10022727]

>>10015613
Dosto is the best for a certain demographic...very emotional and solipsistic in a young male way

[Anonymous No.10022733]

>>10017107
Nabokov is the literary equivalent of David Lynch. Anyone who mentions him in a serious context should be embarrassed.

[Anonymous No.10022734]

There is no best writer you idiot

[Anonymous No.10022748]

>>10020463
Too far.

[Anonymous No.10022759]

>>10022727
How do I ascend past being this demographic? I'm 22.

[Anonymous No.10022783]

That's what all the high school 'intellectuals' think. Until they read the 'Possessed', that is. Then Fjodor Mihailovits become the syonym for hardcore, right-wing reactionary.
But they rarely read it. Their professors don't recommended it.

Said novel, 'Idiot', 'Dead house' and 'Crime..' are good novels no doubt and only Solzenitsyn have managed to follow in the same trails (similary Shalamov can be compared to Tsehov of course).

I don't understand the praise for 'Brothers Karamazov'. It's uncomplete, it doesnt offer anything that Idiot doesn't, so what is the selling point?

[Anonymous No.10022854]

>>10022686
Ha! Excellent quip, good sir. +1

[Anonymous No.10022939]

>>10022783
t. communist

[Anonymous No.10023284]

>>10015619
Agree with you, Proust is one of the greatest. Although Dostoyevsky also comes close.

[Anonymous No.10023485]

>>10015613
>What if like, everyone is responsible for everyone's sin? WOAAAH

[Anonymous No.10023493]

>>10022759
>I'm 22.
Get laid

[Anonymous No.10024752]

>>10015613
Picked up a copy of Brothers Karamazov today for 37¢. What should I expect? Are there any prerequisites I should read?

[Anonymous No.10024861]

>>10024752
I'm about half way through it. If you haven't read any before the russian names can get a little confusing, but there aren't really any prerequisites. Although If it's your first Dostoevsky book I might start with something a little easier/shorter.

[Anonymous No.10024910]

>>10024861
Thanks for the pointers! I'm entirely new to Dostoevsky and Russian lit. I'll check out his earlier stuff. Any recommendations?

[Anonymous No.10025010]

>>10024910
I would say crime and punishment or notes from the underground. But it doesn't really matter too much. Just start with whatever sounds most interesting to you.

[Anonymous No.10025869]

>>10024752
Be familiar with the Bible. That's it.

[Anonymous No.10025883]

>>10020463
I think I feel real hate here

[Anonymous No.10025885]

>>10015613
Brothers Karamazov is the greatest novel ever written.

[Anonymous No.10025933]

>>10025885
sure, if you've read ten novels in your life

[Anonymous No.10026708]

>>10022783
Well, let us look through writing. It seems like you are really contused, mentally injured imbecile. I can say it face to face, how about you come and listen? All this bullshit that you wrote is just plain and simple fucking lie, you indoor Rambo. Your life would not get better just because you wrote a lot. Bullshiting is not a hard job, lots of fags like you thawed out in a spring. People say about fags like you: 'Mom did not want it, dad did not even try'. Read my message to you closely, try to analyze it and make some conclusions for yourself.

[Anonymous No.10026731]

Top-4
Idiot
The Brothers Karamazov
Crime and Punishment
Demons

[Anonymous No.10026758]

>>10025869
I was reading up on it and saw this: "It is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, judgment, and reason, set against a modernizing Russia, with a plot which revolves around the subject of patricide." That doesn't ruin anything, does it? No more than knowing of Cain and Abel?

[Anonymous No.10026768]

>>10026758
Oh fuck me I misread it. I thought it read fratricide not patricide

[Anonymous No.10027541]

>>10022939
But it's the Communists who go from praising Fjodor Mihailovits to hating him after reading the Possessed/Devils?

>>10024910
The Dead house is a camp memoir, very easy read and especially interesting - alongside with Tsehov's Sahalin notes - if you're gonna read Solzenitsyn's Arhipelag GULag, since he repeatedly compares the old 'Archipelago' to the new (Soviet) one.

[Anonymous No.10027578]

>>10015660
>but he constantly makes his books worse by implementing political statements that are unnecessary and out of the place

that's what i thought reading his books

[Anonymous No.10027630]

>>10015660
For fucks sake, how can you write a book about nineteenth century Russia without going into politics? You cannot describe Peter of the said century without radical student circles, all the revolutionary ideas of them and so forth. Thats like writing about Russia without vodka, muzhik, footwraps and lapti.
And especially if the writer himself was a part of radical intelligentsia, who in time realized the complete idiocy of Russian fanatic maximalist attitude.

Just admit it: it's because he's critizing the political ideas which you're so fond of, but which eventually caused unlimited suffering. If he went and critized the muh evil reactionary capitalists (which didn't exist before the last two decades of 19th Century in Russia), you woudn't mind.

[Anonymous No.10027638]

>>10015748
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlfnY9TNa5g

[Anonymous No.10027917]

>>10021803
>>10020360
>>10016916
Where my Gogolbois at

[Anonymous No.10027962]

>>10021806
Same here. Faulkner is one of the few authors I'll defend to the death. Pure genius.

[Anonymous No.10028076]

>>10015613
*blocks your path*

[Anonymous No.10028140]

>>10016888
It's a good telenovela. And also one of the best books ever written.

[Anonymous No.10028146]

>>10020360
No.
>>10021803
No.
>>10027917
Yes.

[Anonymous No.10028185]

Dostoyplebsky is the ultimate author for pseudo-literates and pseudo-philosophers. If you are too intelligent to read genre and too retarded to read (an objectively superior writer like) Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky is your guy. The first time I had the misfortune of deciphering one of his scribblings, I thought to myself, "was this written by an autistic teenager trying to emulate what great literature of the past must have seemed like to him?" I soon discovered that it was the exact opposite; this endlessly moralizing and sometimes downright inexcusable "prose" was written by a much older failure of a man, who is now lauded by academics and the denizens of internet forums such as this one. Truly sickening.

[Anonymous No.10028201]

>>10015660
I feel the same way about most of the political parts (hell, he even shows some kind of self awareness in The Demons), but in my opinion you don't read Dostoevskij because he's written formally perfect books, then a little political blab doesn't disturb that much.

[Anonymous No.10028219]

Step aside, old farts.

[Anonymous No.10028501]

>>10017107
Nabakov was just butthurt, he shit talked everyone for no reason

[Anonymous No.10028739]

>>10015641

PHENOTYPE

[Anonymous No.10029565]

>>10020463
Dostoevsky is abused by pseudo-intellectuals, sadly.
The most well-read and well-educated persons I know all respect Dostoevsky, probably as number 1.

[Anonymous No.10029588]

>>10015641
>Déjenmelos
>No dejadmelos
no

[Anonymous No.10029604]

>>10015613
Dostoevsky and Shakespeare are probably the top tier writers.

[Anonymous No.10030062]

>>10021091
>internet autists on the internet
>internet on the internet
>internet internet.

[Anonymous No.10030637]

>>10029565
This doesn't mean anything, though. The most well-read people you know can be plebs for all we know.

[Anonymous No.10030765]

>>10027917
Here friend. However Checkhov is also based.

[Anonymous No.10031685]

>>10016888
It's not good, it's fantastic.

[Anonymous No.10032642]

[Anonymous No.10032671]

>>10016888
Best book ever written.

He named it The idiot because anyone who doesn't like this book is an idiot.

[Anonymous No.10032678]

>>10015641
Ayyyyyyyy mijo

[Anonymous No.10032869]

>>10028185
yet Tolstoy thought Dostoyevsky was a genius

[Anonymous No.10032910]

>>10015619
why is it that all french people seem to have bulging eyes?

[Anonymous No.10033913]

>>10016888
Yes, you're very good.

[Anonymous No.10034016]

>>10015660
you have no idea what you are talking about

[Anonymous No.10035580]

>>10032910
their great great grandmothers were whores for moors. Just like Sicilians.

[Anonymous No.10035796]

>>10022733
Toplel, m8

[Anonymous No.10035806]

>>10015660
Pasta From the Undergound.

[Anonymous No.10035826]

>>10035580
>moors
It's MOOPS

[Anonymous No.10036024]

>>10017409
Just recently read about how Tolstoy and Dostoevsky never met each other. They had mutual acquaintances, they admired each other's works, they both even attended a lecture once and maybe saw each other in the crowd, but were not introduced.

But in 1881, a relative of Tolstoy who was acquainted with Dostoevsky, read to him one of Tolstoy's letter to her. It was the time when Tolstoy had his spiritual crisis which resulted in his anarcho-christian teaching, and in the letter, Tolstoy had described his newly developed views on Christianity, his rejection of miracles described in the Bible, including the Christ's resurrection itself, of any clerical authority, his perception of the Christ only as a spiritual teacher, and other points of Tolstovian doctrine.

Hearing this, Dostoevsky was grabbing his head and was desperately repeating "Not that, not that!" («He тo, нe тo!»). As this Tolstoy's relative recalls in her memoirs, by the end of the letter Dostoevsky looked like he was determined to argue against Tolstoy's point. It was just weeks before Dostoevsky suddenly died.

[Anonymous No.10036046]

>>10036024
Why do I feel like he would've completely btfo'd Tolstoy out of this galaxy if he only had the chance?

[Anonymous No.10036060]

>>10022733
>even comparing these two
what the fuck

[Anonymous No.10036215]

I've read The Double, Notes From Underground, Crime And Punishment, The Gambler. They were all good, except The Gambler, which still had its better moments. Did anybody mention the inception of The Gambler? From wikipedia

>Fyodor Dostoyevsky then agreed to a hazardous contract with F. T. Stellovsky that if he did not deliver a novel of 12 or more signatures by 1 November 1866, Stellovsky would acquire the right to publish Dostoyevsky's works for nine years without any compensation to the writer. He noted down parts of his story, then dictated them to one of the first stenographers in Russia and his wife-to-be, young Anna Grigorevna, who transcribed them and copied it neatly out for him. With her help, he was able to finish the book in time.

The article doesn't mention how close a thing this was. The publisher deliberately evaded Dostoevsky, who then figured that he could satisfy conditions by having a duty policeman produce a receipt for the manuscript.- at ten a.m., two hours by the deadline.

[Anonymous No.10036219]

>>10036215
>at ten a.m.,
that should say PM

[Anonymous No.10036946]

>>10036024
Where did you read about this, bub?

[Anonymous No.10036978]

>>10036946
I first came across the story from Ignat Avsey's extended material in the Dostoevsky books in the Alma Classics line

[Anonymous No.10037066]

dosto sure is great.

[Anonymous No.10037094]

>>10036978
Thanks lad.

[Anonymous No.10038267]

>>10025885
Pffff

[Anonymous No.10038296]

>>10032910
>French
Gainsbourg and Proust are Jews.

[Anonymous No.10038298]

>>10037066
colorization has come so far