This kind of sucks, at least everything after the first part. Why is everyone so manic and melodramatic all the time? Why is it so needlessly long?
>why is a melodramatic feuilleton so long and melodramatic damn idk mantry poetry if you want shorter, maybe? you fiction readers are cute
>>24849191Dostoevsky is a massive cuck and he sucks as all other russhits do, nothing good has ever come out of their frozen shithole.
>>24849211Still better than the English novel and their boudoir psychology.
I really enjoyed it overall but everything involving ippolit desperately needed to be cut, like holy shit, it just completely derails the flow of the book and contributes nothing to the narrative
>>24849206Amusingly pretentious little post, thank you for that. If you could actually read between the lines, you'd notice I'm not complaining about length in general but about this particular novel's excesses. Plenty of long 19th century works don't feel bloated or hysterical; even Dostoevsky managed restraint with The House of the Dead. I don't "want shorter," I want better. I know that needs to be spelled out for the particular autist in the room, but I made this thread to discuss the book.
>why is everyone so manic and melodramatic all the time?Because it's a Dostoevsky novel.
>>24849191Too me it's his greatest work. I don't like Dosto though, he's a moralizing prick. Why is everyone manix and melodramatic? To contrast the calm and collected Idiot. Why is it long? Because Dosto is the type of guy who needs brick to tell you murder is bad.
>>24849191>Revised Constance GarnettIs this the best translation?
>>24849191>manic and melodramatic all the time? Why is it so needlessly long?if you don't like it you don't like dosto. most of us fans do not say his works are needlessly long but they are long. and the melodrama is characteristic of his fiction. if he didn't resort to melodrama, his works would be even longer since melodrama is often a shortcut in fiction to get from point A to point B.
enjoy it for the funny side plot involving general ivolgin and his family
>>24849191It is questionable whether one can really discuss the aspects of ''realism'' or of ''human experience'' when considering an author whose gallery of characters consists almost exclusively of neurotics and lunatics. Besides all this, Dostoyevsky's characters have yet another remarkable feature: Throughout the book they do not develop as personalities. We get them all complete at the beginning of the tale, and so they remain without any considerable changes, although their surroundings may alter and the most extraordinary things may happen to them. In the case of Raskolnikov in ''Crime and Punishment,'' for instance, we see a man go from premeditated murder to the promise of an achievement of some kind of harmony with the outer world, but all this happens somehow from without: Innerly even Raskolnikov does not go through any true development of personality, and the other heroes of Dostoyevsky do even less so. The only thing that develops, vacillates, takes unexpected sharp turns, deviates completely to include new people and circumstances, is the plot. Let us always remember that basically Dostoyevsky is a writer of mystery stories where every character, once introduced to us, remains the same to the bitter end, complete with his special features and personal habits, and that they all are treated throughout the book they happen to be in like chessmen in a complicated chess problem. Being an intricate plotter, Dostoyevsky succeeds in holding the reader's attention; he builds up his climaxes and keeps up his suspenses with consummate mastery. But if you reread a book of his you have already read once so that you are familiar with the surprises and complications of the plot, you will at once realize that the suspense you experienced during the first reading is simply not there anymore. The misadventures of human dignity which form Dostoyevsky's favorite theme are as much allied to the farce as to the drama. In indulging his farcical side and being at the same time deprived of any real sense of humor, Dostoyevsky is sometimes dangerously near to sinking into garrulous and vulgar nonsense. (The relationship between a strong-willed hysterical old woman and a weak hysterical old man, the story of which occupies the first hundred pages of ''The Possessed,'' is tedious, being unreal.) The farcical intrigue which is mixed with tragedy is obviously a foreign importation; there is something second-rate French in the structure of his plots.
