>>24746754
Average Anna Karenina paragraphs (boring):
>Vronsky, standing beside Oblonsky, watched the carriages and the passengers, totally oblivious of his mother. What he had just heard about Kitty excited and delighted him. Unconsciously he arched his chest, and his eyes flashed. He felt himself a conqueror.
>“What is so exquisite,” he thought, as he returned from the Shtcherbatskys’, carrying away with him, as he always did, a delicious feeling of purity and freshness, arising partly from the fact that he had not been smoking for a whole evening, and with it a new feeling of tenderness at her love for him—“what is so exquisite is that not a word has been said by me or by her, but we understand each other so well in this unseen language of looks and tones, that this evening more clearly than ever she told me she loves me. And how secretly, simply, and most of all, how trustfully! I feel myself better, purer. I feel that I have a heart, and that there is a great deal of good in me. Those sweet, loving eyes! When she said: ‘Indeed I do....’

Average Ulysses paragraphs (brilliant):
>BOYLAN: (To Bloom, over his shoulder.) You can apply your eye to the keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a few times.
>BLOOM: Thank you, sir. I will, sir. May I bring two men chums to witness the deed and take a snapshot? (He holds out an ointment jar.) Vaseline, sir? Orangeflower...? Lukewarm water...?

Average Gravity's Rainbow paragraphs (divinely inspired):
One little feeb in South Dakota,
One little hustler in San Berdoo,
One little chink run away from the railroad
With his ass just as yellow as Fu Manchu!
One with the clap and one with a goiter,
One with the terminal lepro-see,
Cripple on the right foot, cripple on the left foot,
Crippled up both feet 'n' that makes three! Well one little fairy, even one bull dyke,
One little nigger, one little kike,
One Red Indian with one buffalo,
And a buffalo hunter from New Mexico ...

And on, and on, one of each of everything, he's the White Cocksman of the terre mauvais, this Crouchfield, doing it with both sexes and all animals except for rattlesnakes (properly speaking, "rattlesnake," since there's only one), but lately seems he's been havin' these fantasies about that rattlesnake, too! Fangs just tickling the foreskin . . . the pale mouth open wide, and the horrible joy in the crescent eyes....

>>24746775
Havent read any of these books, but I guess some semblance of clarity and directness that mimics the presentation of what can be understood (by me) to be real human lives having real human experiences, albeit mundane, does indeed seem boring in contrast to the randomness of implied sexual implications, and the repeated loud use of slurs in a seemingly casually zany way, completely disconnected from any actual human context or experience.

>>24746754
AK's strength is in its psychological insight across a broad spectrum of characters, not something autists recognize or value

>>24746892
If I wanted a broad but shallow look at characters' psychological profile, I'd rather just talk to real people instead of slumping over a book. And if I wanted an in-depth character study, I'd read Henry James.

>>24746907
The profiles aren't shallow though, and Tolstoy knows how to actually write compelling narratives unlike James.

>>24746892
I just finished AK last week. It really is amazing how insightful Tolstoy is. He knows how everyone from every strata thinks, how pretty girls or old men think, even how a dog thinks... So many lives compressed into that novel... He captured life.

>>24746754
I've heard it's one of the most Schopenhauerian works ever, so I'll definitely be reading it soon.

>>24746754
Who dismisses Anna Karenina as anything but a masterpiece

>>24747140
It's just an average realist novel. It doesn't really do anything out of the ordinary when compared to Dickens, Eliot or Flaubert.

>>24747206
Utter nonsense

>>24746907
Thanks for proving my point, b.