Is this person correct about Dosto and Tolstoy?
>>24742597Close, he did not mention that Dosto is a second-rate novelist
>>24743975Blud had to put on his thinking cap for this take
>>24743975Second-rate is too generous.
>>24742597I genuinely don’t know how Tolstoy isn’t universally considered to be the greatest modern writer. In terms of writing ability he simply is. Nabokov was right, he’s just incomparable and in his own league. And I say this as someone who also adores Dostoevsky
>>24744015Because he was a poseur and largely a propagandist too.
>>24744018buzzwords
>>24744020He pretended at being poor and created literature which favored the interests of the state. Satisfied?
>>24742597No, because that person isn't me and I'm always objectively correct about all things
>>24744015Tolstoy is an okay novelist, but nowhere close to the likes of Melville or Joyce.
>>24744039>Melvilleone hit wonder> Joycegenius. best writer of the 20th century.
>>24744053>one hit wonderPierre, Confidence-Man, Clarel. I like his short story collection more than Dubliners.
>>24744056>Pierre, Confidence-Man, Clarel.Not hits or wonders.
>>24743975He is if you're a style over substance nigger like Nabokov.
>>24742597I dislike intensely The Brothers Karamazov and the ghastly Crime and Punishment rigamarole. No, I do not object to soul-searching and self-revelation, but in those books the soul, and the sins, and the sentimentality, and the journalese, hardly warrant the tedious and muddled search. Dostoyevsky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity – all this is difficult to admire. I do not like this trick his characters have of ”sinning their way to Jesus” or, as a Russian author, Ivan Bunin, put it more bluntly, ”spilling Jesus all over the place." Crime and Punishment’s plot did not seem as incredibly banal in 1866 when the book was written as it does now when noble prostitutes are apt to be received a little cynically by experienced readers. Dostoyevsky never really got over the influence which the European mystery novel and the sentimental novel made upon him. The sentimental influence implied that kind of conflict he liked—placing virtuous people in pathetic situations and then extracting from these situations the last ounce of pathos. Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment—by this reader anyway. Dostoyevsky seems to have been chosen by the destiny of Russian letters to become Russia’s greatest playwright, but he took the wrong turning and wrote novels.
I’m currently reading Brothers Karamazov (at around page 700) and honeslty it’s a chore, I don’t enjoy it one bit.I absolutely loved AK and W&P so I figured that if I like Tolstoy so much I’d like the “other big russian” as well but it’s clearly not the case.
>>24744192>W&PWhat's the appeal? I somewhat liked AK (except part 8, everything involving Levin was AWFUL) but W&P felt underbaked. Too many throwaway characters with too little substance to them
>>24744207I loved W&P because of the characters and their evolution, the epic historical context, the author’s analysis on both history and psychology. I also very much enjoyed the Levin parts of AK, especially in the beginning when he’s not yet married to Kitty. It seems we have very different tastes lol, are you a Dostoievsky lover perchance?
>>24744230>are you a Dostoievsky lover perchanceI remember loving C&P all the way back in high school, but I'm reading Demons rn and I'm not feeling it. Favourite writers are probably Flaubert and Henry James.
Amateurs.
>>24744241NTA but Demons can be not very interesting to read but it's great in the finale and as the sum of ideas put into it, remember to read the omitted chapter before the epilogue at least. Stavrogin is one of the best written characters in Dostoevsky's works.
>>24744177inventive perceptions, details, structures, sentences, jokes are all substance. characters that cant be reduced to ideas are substance. the same boring trite about some general human condition isn't.
