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/lit/ - Literature

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[ERROR] No.2177450 [Reply] [Original]

>read the Idiot
>didn't expect it to be some shitty love drama
Holy shit, worst Dostoevsky I've read.

>> No.2177456

HOW DARE A LITERARY GREAT EVER WANT TO EXPRESS EMOTION!

>> No.2177461

>read the Idiot

Sums up the thread.

>> No.2177464

>>2177456
>emotion
>5 men conflicting over 2 women
>nothing but jealousy and crying
Dostoevsky should of just cut everything out of the book except Ippolit's speech and only release that.

>> No.2177463

i know that feel, bro.

>iknowthatfeelbro.jpg

>> No.2177477

>>2177464
The Possessed is worse

>Hey Stavrogin just thought I'd stop by to discuss the ethics of suicide/love affairs/socialism
>by the way [plot point]
>excuse me while I burst into tears
>next chapter

>> No.2177482

>>2177477
I liked Demons better, there were a large mess of characters and conflict. There was a little bit of love drama, but it didn't create the center of the story. The center was Verkhovensky being an asshole(obviously I simplify things), but anyways I enjoyed his trolling better than The Idiot's endless love drama.

>> No.2177483

>>2177464

>should of

Holy shit, not on my /lit/.

>> No.2177484

>>2177477

Shut your whore mouth, Demons was a fantastic novel, and without all that dramatic shit the book wouldn't have been nearly as good (at least not in terms of the caricatural or dramatic aspects of the characters and plot).

>> No.2177489

whats a good next dosto if i read crime and punishment and loved it?

>> No.2177490

Well, at least Crime and Punishment is good. The Russians are overrated.

>> No.2177491

>>2177484
I'm not criticizing it for the drama. No one should read Dostoevsky and expect someone to not burst into tears within the first couple of pages, but I wasn't into the heavy caricature. It felt like a very lazy novel.

>> No.2177495

>>2177483
That occurs in more published books than I am comfortable with, too. Presumably they were edited, but 'should of' is everywhere. Illiterate pigs.

>> No.2177515

HAVE A CRY OP, HAVE A FUCKING CRY

>> No.2177520

>>2177489
might as well read notes from underground if you haven't already.

>> No.2177522

>>2177520

neat, tyvm

>> No.2177524

>>2177490

Pleb here. Is it better or worse than BK and/or Notes from the Underground?

>> No.2177560

>>2177495
Get use to the phrase becoming accepted in the English language. Irregardless of your feelings this aint a stagnant language and is bound to change.

>> No.2177576

Crime and Punishment's my favorite because people tend to forget its the only that's the least bit readable, except for the lesser works, Notes from Underground and other storie.s

Brothers K, Demons, Idiot are all agony to read. however, D is such a genius that you need to read them all. i'm about to start the adolescent.

>> No.2177577

>>2177495
if it's in dialogue, it's intentional and you're an aspie
if not, don't read that book

>> No.2177586

>>2177576
HOW ARE THEY EVEN AN AGONY?

IF YOU THOUGHT THEY WERE, GOOD LUCK WITH THE ADOLESCENT.

>> No.2177627

Guy thinks that he can create his moral own moral code outside the presence of god.

Guy is ruined by his heretical moral code

Guy is saved when he turns back to god


Congrats, you have now read every Dostoevsky novel ever written (including houses of the dead) Now go read something worthwhile you pseudo-intellectual wanna-be-auto-didactic prick.

>> No.2177641

>>2177627
Only Crime and Punishment fits your description. Honestly, I don't remember anyone being 'saved' outside of it. The only book by Dostoevsky that's not C&P but has happy end I remember is The Adolescent, and its ``happiness'' had nothing to do with MC turning into Jesus freak. No every ``heretical'' character is ruined by the end of a book either, Verkhovensky, for example, is doing just fine. I don't remember 'Notes from Underground' mentioning God at all, and ``humiliated and insulted'' isn't even about the ethics.

>> No.2177647

>>2177586
>HOW CAN YOU HAVE AN OPINION?

Thanks for reminding me why I don't come here anymore, Capsguy.

>> No.2177648
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[ERROR]

>>2177627

>some things happen
>things change

Congratulations, you just read and saw every work in existence. No need to bother with any of it from now on.

>> No.2177653

>>2177647
THE WAY THE POST WAS MADE WAS THAT IT WOULD BE AGONY FOR ALL READERS.

BUT NO WORRIES.

>> No.2177655

>>2177641

Ivan in Brothers K
Dostoyevsky (or whatever the main character is called) in The House of the Dead
It is the entire point of Notes From the Underground

It is all Dostoevsky does, he got all theological when he was in the gulag and wrote a bunch of books about how secular humanism is bullshit and everyone should be a christian.

Not my fault if you people are too stupid to realize you are reading the same thing over and over again.

As far as I'm concerned Dostoevsky is on the same level as Sue Grafton or Danielle Steele... only more obnoxiously preachy.

>> No.2177661

>>2177648

Yes because What I said can be applied broadly to any author... oh wait, no it can only be applied specifically to Dostoevsky because he is a one trick pony who's credit is based solely on the legions of idiots who swear by his work because they are too dim to understand it.

>> No.2177664

>>2177661
That's right, people who like what you don't like are clearly of inferior intellects.

Can we talk about something that matters, now?

>> No.2177667
File: 95 KB, 1024x1024, High Five.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
[ERROR]

>>2177655
>As far as I'm concerned Dostoevsky is on the same level as Sue Grafton or Danielle Steele... only more obnoxiously preachy.

>> No.2177673

>>2177655
>he got all theological when he was in the gulag

Oh, I see. Nevermind then.

>> No.2177675

>>2177664

Actually people who are willing to read the same story written in 15 different ways ARE of inferior intellect. Especially if they didn't notice that all the stories have the exact same point.

You want some great authors who don't write teh same thing over and over:
Steinbeck
Camus
Tolstoy
Shakespeare
Faulkner

Pretty much anyone in the western cannon.

>> No.2177677

>>2177675
>people who are willing to read the same story written in 15 different ways ARE of inferior intellect [citation needed]

>> No.2177679

>>2177675
NICE ENTRY LEVEL THERE BRO

REAL INTELLECTUAL OF YOU

>> No.2177682

>>2177677
>implying anon isn't a psychologist of renown, stating science fact

>> No.2177685

>>2177677

Pretension aside, Dostoevsky had one thing to say: Any moral code devised outside of god is erroneous. If you didn't catch this by the second book of his you read, you really do have poor reading comprehension.

>>2177679
I would take your insults seriously if you didn't write in caps

>>2177682
Sarcasm duly noted and just as duly ignored.

>> No.2177687

>>2177685
THE POINT REMAINS THE SAME

>> No.2177690

>>2177687

Your grammar and syntax remain suspect.

Seriously, people. THIS is who is defending Dostoevsky. Think about it. Ad hominem it may be, but still poignant.

>> No.2177692

>>2177685
This is the weirdest crusade I've ever seen in my life.

I don't know why it's so important to you to thrash around like this, but the fact is that it is nothing to you whether people read Dostoevsky and enjoy the same general story that he often uses.

It is nothing to you. So, like, chill out.

>> No.2177695

>>2177692

I guess I'm still soar that I had to read 5 of his novels through my education. Once you read one of them, you should be excused from reading the rest.

To be fair, I love Orwell and he is guilty of the exact same thing, so is Ayn Rand (though I have never really gotten around to reading any of her stuff). Like what you like, but let's call a spade a spade and admit that everything Dostoevsky wrote had the exact same point.

>> No.2177694

>>2177690
IT'S NOT JUST I.

YOU REMIND ME OF MAJOR MEDIA, SELECT THE MINORITY OR MOST EXTREME IN ANY GROUP IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN IT AS A WHOLE.

COOL MOVES

CAPTHA COOLING AGRAMPN

>> No.2177696

>>2177675
Funny you mentioned Tolstoy. You're calling Dostoevsky preachy, but at least he'd never included several chapters of meta-text explaining why Napoleon sucks in his books. The only point that guy has is ''Peasantry rules'' and he's straightforward as hell about it.

>> No.2177697

>calling Dostoevsky a "novelist"

>> No.2177698

>>2177697
?

>> No.2177699

>>2177694

>It's not just me.
I pointed out that it was ad hominem. Unfair, perhaps, but the fact remains that you called me entry level and seem to have the mastery of the English Language of a 10 year old.

>>2177696
I will admit that the last 10% of War and Peace is pretty much useless, as it is pretty much Tolstoy ranting about how Napoleon wasn't that great but just a product of the times he was in. Still, Anna Karenina and Ivan Ilyach are certainly not about how there is no such thing as great men, so at least he had other things to say.

I think the sections of War and Peace in question were just Tolstoy blowing off some steam about how everyone seemed to respect this man who was responsible for the deaths of millions of his countrymen. I completely disagree with him on his point about greatness in man, but I still enjoyed the book.

>> No.2177720

Dead Souls > anything this alcoholic, deranged asshole ever wrote.

You guys.

>> No.2177730

>>2177560

>encouraging the use of "should of"
>using irregardless

there is no god

>> No.2177732

>>2177730

That joke went over your head in a bad way. Such a doggy dog world we live in.

>> No.2177734

>2177732

I think you mean, dog eat.

>> No.2177740

>>2177734

Let's not split heirs, to each Theron.

>> No.2177744

>>2177720

Dead Souls was an unfinished clusterfuck.

Sorry, Gogol did a lot better stuff than that.

>> No.2177963
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[ERROR]

>>2177586

How were they agony, HMM? i don't think it's shocking to say that a lot of great authors have meandering, confusing, boring parts in great novels.

Brothers K - 1st half - endless scenes between different romantic partners rambling meaninglessly about conflicted love while alyosha travels around hearing stories. 2nd half - endless bullshit criminal procedural. dmitri and devil scene is the only reason to read that novel.
idiot - endless meaningless family drama with the 2 families before the unexpected, pointless climax with rogozhin
demons - endless, endless, endless, endless, endless, endless, endless, meaningless, pointless rambling conversations between families in the town with absolutely no point, as the several dozen anarchist characters are vaguely and hazily sketched. then some interesting things happen in the last few hundred pages....

Look, I love Dostoevsky. I think he's one of my favorite authors. but like Tolstoy rambling for 40 pages about history, and DFW rambling for 1000 pages, good novelists torture you sometimes. personally I don't think it detracts from the quality. the real agony is a book like The sun also rises, where it's just bad, bad, bad, and then bad-

>> No.2177969

It's true that most Russian authors of the 19th century would be vastly improved with a modern editor.

>> No.2178021

>>2177969
no it's fucking not, it's true that people should fucking read fiction they want to read and not fiction they feel like they 'ought' to read for some arbitrary reason.

so sick of hearing people say how dostoevsky (or any other russians) are so dry, so difficult to read etc. wow no shit a book that you DIDN'T REALLY WANT TO READ IN THE FIRST PLACE is uninteresting to you?

>> No.2178037

>>2178021

More to the point: modern critics should stop being afraid and criticise these old masters for padding their work with so much unneccessary prose and call them out on the fact that if they had modern editors their work would stand up a lot better in the modern age.

>> No.2178047
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[ERROR]

>>2178021
>>2178037
calm down, sparky. no one's saying they didn't want to read anything. or that these books don't deserve praise.

we're just saying that some great books, actually a lot of them, have passages that are part of setting up the themes, characters, events, etc, that can get sort of repetitive.

I still wanted to read finnegans wake and proust even when they were torching my ass with difficult prose. No one told me to read them, and I didn't think tell myself it was good while shoving my true desire for sci-fi James Patterson into my subconscious, as you seem to think.

>> No.2178066

>>2177685
How does Notes from the Underground advocate a moral code premised in god? For that matter, how is the same book as Crime & Punishment? Theistic overtones are present in much of his work, but they are not all conclusively the same book.

And people who read Dostoevsky because he is on some essentials list...well, it isn't a bad thing, but you are exposing yourself to some old styled, essentially, drama. A lot of people don't like that and can't appreciate it.

>> No.2178067

>>2178021

>people should fucking read fiction they want to read and not fiction they feel like they 'ought' to read for some arbitrary reason

[Deep & Edgy]

>Herp derp bad books derp Schopenhauer herp made-up stuff about made-up people is SRS BSNS, mkay guise?

[/Deep & Edgy]

>> No.2178103

Fyodor is so kewllll

>> No.2178124

>>2177963
id like to know your favorite authors and telling why you like them so much ( please? )

>> No.2178130

>>2177627
OP here, and in all honesty The Idiot doesn't follow your routine. Myshkin is a very sinless character and devoted christen (the damn boy is a dirty slavophile), and yet he's destroyed by the world around him.

-------

In Demons, Pyotr Stepanovich is an atheist/nihlist that destroys many lives and then walks away without any repercussions.

Stavrogin turns to God and is destroyed by Tikhon's willingness to forgive him, but his inability to forgive himself.

Shatov turns back to God and is murdered.

Watcha chokin on dicks for?

>> No.2178163

"My position in regard to Dostoevsky is a curious and difficult one. In all my courses I approach literature from the only point of view that literature interests me-namely the point of view of enduring art and individual genius. From this point of view Dostoevsky is not a great writer, but a rather mediocre one-with flashes of excellent humor, but, alas, with wastelands of literary platitudes in between."

-Nabokov

Personally, I have mixed feelings about him. I don't give a shit about his religion, which was clearly the main thing he was talking about in his books. I can appreciate it in the sense that it captures the feel of Russia at a certain point in history, but that's it. I agree with Nabokov in that he WAS pretty funny and witty when parodied various utopian ideas in his novels and intellectual masturbation--like that character in BK who has a reputation of being intelligent simply for knowing the name of a capital that his teacher didn't. How petty is that? It's a great point about knowledge versus wisdom. Things like that strike me as very good. The fucking endless melodrama, however, stinks. It is indefensibly shit.

>> No.2178174

Herp derp bad books derp Schopenhauer herp good writing is SRS BSNS, mkay guise?

>> No.2178190
File: 19 KB, 337x300, ahmadinejad.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
[ERROR]

>thinks The Idiot is about love

reread it, fag.

>> No.2178216

>>2178190
I did, a majority of this book is useless love drama

>> No.2178222

>>2178216
Maybe to a sperg who can't see the issues that D really spends time looking at through all of the "useless love drama."

>> No.2178280

I don't care that Dosto tends to be preachy (the only time it annoyed me was at the end of Crime and Punishment). He knows how to write really dark, twisted characters (Stravoguine, Kirilov, Hippolit, the Underground Man, Ivan). He treats them with respect, and they shine in every scene they're in.

The dialogue and drama are also very entertaining to me, but I admit he uses the same types of characters and narrative devices over and over, and that can get old.

>> No.2178294

>>2178280
confirmed for reading disgusting constance garnett translation

>> No.2178302

Reading Dostoevsky some time ago has given me an insta-hardon for "fallen women" now. What do?

>> No.2178307

>>2178302
Define "fallen women"

>> No.2178321 [DELETED] 

>>2177679

>When great literature reaches a wide enough demographic it suddenly loses all its value. Everyone should dig up the most unheard of authors, even though their lack of talent was what established their anonymity...

Common pathos of the /lit/ teenager, mistaking obscurity in taste for intellectualism, and looking like a complete fucking try hard idiot in the process.

>> No.2178331

>>2177679
>When great literature reaches a wide enough demographic it suddenly loses all its value. Everyone should dig up the most unheard of authors, even though their lack of talent was what established their anonymity...

Common pathology in the /lit/ teenager, mistaking obscurity in taste for intellectualism, and looking like a complete fucking try hard idiot in the process.

>> No.2178347

>>2178307

bitches that fell yo

>> No.2178358

>>2178294

Nice try, but not quite.

I read it in French, and I have no clue how to write these names in English, so I just followed my intuition.

>> No.2178381

>>2177489
Read the Dream of a Ridiculous Man.

>> No.2178708

>>2178331
Oh cool, now we're not allowed to disagree on literature.