How you got into Dostoyevsky?

[Anonymous No.22830495]

Audible had a version of “Anna Karenina” (I know it’s Tolstoy, let me finish, lol) with Maggie Gyllenhaal as the narrator. I love the sound of her voice and, in my ignorance, I thought “this will be really soothing and also very boring and lovely to fall asleep to”. It was lovely to fall asleep to, but it was not boring.

I ended up “reading” it a second time in hardback.

Shortly after that I was invited to the opera, and the opera we were to see was “Werther” (for real, I know I’m taking the long way there, and that this is a German book…). I’d never seen an opera, and I wanted to understand, so I bought a copy of the novel it was based on, “The Sorrows of Young Werther”. I was enthralled. I re-read passages multiple times, just because they were so beautiful and so relatable before moving on to the next part.

It was then that it occurred to me…I might actually like “classic” literature. In fact, it was hard to focus on the kinds of things I previously read.

So I grabbed a copy of “White Nights”. And then “The Death of Ivan IIyich”, and then “The Double”. I wanted to test the waters with shorter pieces.

Then I picked up “Demons”, and at the same time read a collection of Chekhov short stories. And that really settled it. I liked Russian Literature. And specifically, I liked Dostoevsky the most.

So I read Crime and Punishment in about a week and a half. When I finished, I turned to my husband and said “you know…it turns out this IS in fact one of the greatest novels ever written.”

I tend to read more than one thing at a time. I just started “Notes from the Underground”, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (I thought I’d try other flavors of Classic) and a large volume of Tolstoy short stories. I wanted to wait a week or two before moving to my next long form Dostoevsky. I have both “A Raw Youth” and “The Brothers Karamozov” waiting and I’m not sure which one I’ll start next, but what I do know is that I will read them both, because I am currently completely uninterested in other things.

In short, I have ADHD, and my current hyper fixation is Russian Literature, with a focus on Dostoevsky, and it’s the most obnoxious hyper fixation I’ve had since I first got into BTS. (And I would apologize for bringing up BTS in a Dostoevsky forum, but I’m not actually sorry. Humans are complex and have many, many layers.)

[Anonymous No.22830500]

>>22830495
I read notes from underground and thought it was shit.
I read The Brothers Karamazov and cried at the end.
I'm going to read The Idiot next.

[Anonymous No.22830512]

>>22830495
>And specifically, I liked Dostoevsky the most.
you don't. you don't get into dostoevsky. an obsession with dostoevsky is the mark of an essentially adolescent mind. he's earth shattering between the ages of 13 and 19, and then he ought to be laid aside

[Anonymous No.22830525]

back when I started browsing /lit/ TBK was probably the most discussed book here so I had to check it out

[Anonymous No.22830526]

>>22830512
>frogpost
cool, name an author you prefer.

[Anonymous No.22830530]

>>22830526
OP should stick with Tolstoy, far superior to Dostoevsky's shrill hysterical preaching

[Anonymous No.22830535]

>>22830530
I love Tolstoy but he is the one who is sometimes guilty of "shrill preaching"

[Anonymous No.22830552]

>>22830535
>sometimes
Yes, sometimes. The later novels/stories, the end of W&P. But Dostoevsky only knows one voice -- the screech of the moralist -- and no other. His "novels" (they're really his poor attempt at writing dialogues but for some reason he didn't make them plays) are wickedly compelling if you've never encountered serious philosophical thought before. Most people never do (and never will again after reading Dosty) so they walk away from Dosty thinking that he's some kind of titan. He's not. On a sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph level, he's a horrid writer. His characters are all flat cardboard figurines propped up in a church window. It's all just cheap sensationalism with a faux-intellectual veneer

[Anonymous No.22830569]

>>22830552
>screech of the moralist

aah yea i guess that explains your feelings on the matter

[Anonymous No.22830592]

>>22830495
“Diary's of writer”

[Anonymous No.22830594]

>>22830569
>aah yea i guess that explains your feelings on the matter

[Anonymous No.22830596]

>>22830552
at least you actually suggested something else even if it is just the other author OP mentioned
I haven't read Tolstoy but this post might have convinced me

[Anonymous No.22830601]

>>22830596
tolstoy's the greatest russian novelist. if you like russian novelists there's really only one ending place, and it's tolstoy. chekhov's stories are also good. turgenev can be dull but he's fine. pushkin's stories are stellar

[Anonymous No.22830727]

>>22830552
i really dont get it, tolstoys moralizing is basically identical in its nature (christian), but is much more shrill and half-cocked and lacks nuance and is absolutely equally as prevalent throughout his work despite how youve framed it. ive read the big two novels and a dozen of his novellas and short stories ans all of them were pure christian moralism front to back

if you hate D for his moralizing I genuinely dont understand what you see in tolstoy. Is it just Tolstoys talent for realism that you like?

[Anonymous No.22830744]

>>22830552
>t.Nabokov

[Anonymous No.22830768]

>>22830552
your dead wrong. His heroines are godtier and unparalleled. It's the way he wrote girls that shows his unrivaled virility, I can't think of anyone else who comes close